History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c21.s1.2

v1.c21.s1.2

Secondly Bāṇa's Harsha Charita says that Pratāpavardhana defeated the Huns, the Gujars, the Mālavas, the Sindhus and many others. Does that mean that all these people were Huns or came along with or after them? There is an unaccountable tendency in antiquarians of India to assign foreign and Scythic origin to each and every forward people found in Indian history. Thus the Jats and even the Rajputs are assigned a foreign and a Scythic origin. If the Jats, the Gujars and the Rajputs with their clearly Aryan features are foreigners and Scythians where are the Indo-Aryans, those people who spoke the Aryan Sanskrit or Vedic language, who according to the Vedas, and the Epics supported by the Avesta came to and settled in the Panjab and Rajputana? Have they disappeared? The lower strata in these parts are Dravidian by their ethnic characteristics and if the Jats, Gujars, Rajputs and the Brahmins are foreigners-Greek, Śaka or Hūna, where indeed are the Indo-Aryans so famous in the Vedas, the Mahābhārata and the Manu Smṛiti? We may conclude therefore that the ethnic characteristics of the Jats, the Gujars and the Rajputs viz. their long heads, their fine noses and their tall statures are undeniably Aryan and that there is nothing in history which suggests or proves that they came from outside India in historic times.