Pakthas

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

The Pakthas were one of the tribes that fought against Sudas in the Dasarajna battle. Heinrich Zimmer connects them with a tribe already mentioned by Herodotus (Pactyans), and with Pakhtuns in Afghanistan.

The Greek historian Herodotus first mentioned a people called Pactyan living on the eastern frontier of the Persian Satrapy Arachosia as early as the 1st millennium BCE. It has been conjectured that these may be the ancestors of today's Pashtuns, but there is no specific evidence for this. In addition, the Rig-Veda mentions a tribe called the Paktues (in the region of Pakhat) as inhabiting present-day Afghanistan and some have speculated that they may have been early ancestors of the Pashtuns, but this too remains unproven. The Bactrians appear to have spoken a related Middle Iranian language and it is conceivable that some Pashtuns are at least partially related to them.

See also

• Alexandria in Arachosia
• Kandahar
• Pashtun people

References and footnotes

External links

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Wednesday February 06, 2008 at 02:16:52 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation