[gothic-l] Re: Fwd: Konow

Wed Jun 25 07:13:03 UTC 2003

The Goths had nothing whatsoever to do with India or any indian 
people. I cannot understand why anybody in his right mind would want 
to follow this ludicrous theory up. Please read some of the more 
recent major historical works outlining the history of the Goths, 
which should make it perfectly clear that any presumed link to India 
is nonsense.

Dirk 

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Ravi Chaudhary" 
<ravichaudhary2000 at y...> wrote:
> --- In JatHistory at yahoogroups.com, "Sunny" <sunnytjatsingh at y...> 
> wrote:
> Hi Ravi, please note my major mistake, I finally found the time to 
> read it carefully – the Junnar Inscription was dated 2nd Century 
A.D. 
> not 150 B.C.  Here is part of my synopsis on the article by Konow, 
> you can post it on the Germanic groups:
> 
> In Panjabi language, the plural word for Jat is Jatan or Jutan; 
i.e. 
> Jatan De Putra, means Son's of Jats.  One would think this form 
seems 
> to represent a palatalized form of Gut or Gutan, which opens up 
> lexical similarities to a tribe called Gutones, who traded in 
amber, 
> per Pytheas, and situated near the mouth of the Vistula river.   
> This leads us to an interesting article written by Sten Konow, 
> entitled "Goths in Ancient India" in which he makes reference to 
some 
> inscriptions found at Junnar in Western India dated around the 
second 
> century A.D. (Konow 1912: 380).  These inscriptions make reference 
to 
> a people characterized as "Gatana" and "Gatas", of whom Konow takes 
> to be Goths based on the personal names attached to these – Irila 
and 
> Cita (Konow 1912).  
> Konow takes the name Irila to be a regular Gothic form for Swedish 
> Erila, Anglo-Saxon eorl, English earl, Old Norse jarl, Old Saxon 
erl, 
> and connected with the ethnic name erula or heruli (Konow 1912: 380-
> 381).   This etymology seems reasonable.  The name Cita, however, 
> somehow, Konow translates to Helda, which appears to be somewhat of 
a 
> stretch (Konow 1912: 381).  He summarizes with, "Both Irila and 
Cita 
> are characterized as gatas, and this latter word is the regular 
> Indian form corresponding to Latin goti, the Goths (Konow 1912: 
> 381).  He continues, "The Goths must accordingly have called 
> themselves gutans or gutos and not gotans or gotos (Konow 1912: 
> 382)."  He is further convinced that the Indian "Gata" must have 
been 
> inscripted correctly, as "Indians have always been keen observers 
of 
> sounds
and those who wrote the word gata in the Junnar inscriptions 
> can only have heard the original denomination from the mouth of 
these 
> gatas themselves (Konow 1912: 383)."  
> Now it is unlikely that the Goths proper would have migrated, even 
as 
> traders, to India by pushing their way through Central Asia, as 
Konow 
> suggests (Konow 1912: 385).  However, according to Shore, the Goths 
> had trading networks as far as Samarkhand (Shore 1906: 55), so it 
is 
> possible, though not likely that the Goths could have ventured into 
> India.  It is even less conceivable that the Goths came through sea-
> faring contact from the Indus delta.  What is more reasonable is 
that 
> the "gatas" of Konow are actually the Getae, rather the Massagetae, 
> of Central Asia, who probably existed in the form of Saka Satraps 
of 
> India, or even members of Da Yuezhi/Yuti (Massagetae (Knobloch 
2001)) 
> or Kushan tribe, and, therefore, generically speaking the "gatas" 
> must have been a tribe of the Indo-Scythians of the Greek writers.  
> If we look towards the later Alani, we know from Marcellinus that 
> they were once the Massagetae, and their territories flowed all the 
> way to India (Rolfe 1956).  It is therefore, more plausible that 
the 
> Massagetae were responsible for those inscriptions found at Junnar 
> and that these "Gata" are now represented by the Indian Jats who 
live 
> not to far from that region today.  Satya Shrava, in his 1981 work, 
> Sakas in India, said, "The Jats are none other than the Massagetae 
> (Great Getae) mentioned in Diodorus as an off-spring of the ancient 
> Saka tribe.... a fact now well-known (Shrava 1981: 2-3)."
> So what does Konow's view lead us to?  His view of the Goths being 
> known as "Gutans" seems fairly strong, as Pytheas, Ptolemy, Tacitus 
> and Pliny refer to a tribe near the Vistula river in modern Poland 
as 
> Gutones, Guttones, and Gothones (Konow 1912).  Though not proven, 
> these Gutones may very well be represented by the Wielbark 
> archaeological complex, see Christensen (Christensen 2002).  Konow 
> writes, "If I am right in identifying the gatas of the Junnar 
> inscriptions with the Goths, the only theory which will suit the 
> facts is, I think, that the various forms goti, Gotou, gatas, have 
> all been taken from some Gothic dialect which agreed with most 
> Germanic tongues in changing an old u to o when and a or o occurred 
> in the following syllable (Konow 1912: 383)."  And further Konow is 
> inclined to believe that his Indian Goths actually spread out from 
> their location on the Vistula eastwards towards India, thus the 
> Gutones of early classical writers, who were situated on the 
Vistula 
> were the same as the Indian Gatas.  Now the actual case may be 
quite 
> the other way around, or perhaps simultaneous movement.  I incline 
to 
> take Konow's Gatas to be the Massagetae, who were also classified 
in 
> later times as Sarmatians (McGovern 1939).  As we know that Poland 
> was once termed Sarmatia – could this not represent the continuity 
of 
> the Massagetae, at least in part, from Poland eastward to Central 
> Asia, and quite possibly to Indo-Scythia?  In The Sarmatians, 
> Sulimirski summarizes the contributions of the Sarmatians:
> 
> At different points in time their [Sarmatians] peoples and tribes 
> were driven into almost every western European country, and they 
were 
> forced eastwards as far as China.  The descendents of those who 
came 
> to England in AD 175 probably still live somewhere in the country

> Little remains to remind the modern world of their existence - the 
> Ossetinians
.the names of a few Slavonic peoples
 some European 
place-
> names
.a vague tradition of Sarmatian origin lingering among 
sections 
> of Polish nobility
(Sulimirski 1970: 202-203).
> 
> Can we add the pro-generators of the Goths to the list?  
Christensen 
> writes, "Ptolemy has positioned them near the Vistula, even 
> localizing them precisely on the right bank.  So might this mean 
that 
> he did not see them as Germanic at all, but rather as Sarmatian? 
> (Christensen 2002: 40)."  This suggestion may be of some weight.  
The 
> Alans, a late Sarmatian tribe, certainly spread to India, and we 
know 
> they were once the Massagetae (Rolfe 1956), could the Gutones and 
> the "Gatana" of Konow, who are represented today as Jats of India, 
be 
> the tail ends of the same people?  This needs future examination.  
> Until then we are left wondering about Arnold Toynbee's statement 
in 
> his  A Study of History:
> 
> It may not be fantastic to conjecture that the Tuetonic-speaking 
> Goths and Gauts of Scandinavia may have been descended from a 
> fragment of the same Indo-European-speaking tribe as the homonymous 
> Getae and Thyssagetae and Massagetae of the Eurasian Steppe who are 
> represented today by the Jats of the Panjab (Toynbee 1934: 435).
> 
> Best Wishes,
> 
> Cited:
> 
> Ammianus Marcellinus. Translated by J.C. Rolfe, Volumes 2 & 3. 
> Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard University Press: 1956.
> 
> Christensen, A.S. Cassidorus Jordanses and the History of the Goths 
> Studies in a Migration Myth. Copenhagen.  Museum Tusculanum Press: 
> 2002. 
> 
> Knobloch, E. Monuments of Central Asia. London. I.B.Tauris & Co 
Ltd.: 
> 2001.
> 
> Konow, S. "Goths in Ancient India." In The Journal of the Royal 
> Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. London.  Royal 
Asiatic 
> Society: 1912.
> 
> McGovern, W.M. The Early Empires of Central Asia. Chapel Hill, 
North 
> Carolina. University of North Carolina Press: 1939.
> 
> Shore, T. Origin of the Anglo-Saxon Race.  London. Kennikat Press: 
> 1971, first published in 1906.
> 
> Shrava, S. The Sakas in India. New Delhi. Pranava Prakashan: 1981.
> 
> Sulimirski, T. The Sarmatians. New York. Frederick A. Prager 
> Publishers: 1970.
> 
> Toynbee, A. A Study of History. Vol. 2., London. Oxford University 
> Press: 1939, First Published in 1934.
> --- End forwarded message ---

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