Description of Taxak by James Tod
In our study of Inscriptions about Jats by Col Tod we find that these mention again and again kings of Taxak race. James Tod also says that Taxak are ancestors of Jats, that Taxak and Jats are same.
It has been already observed, that ancient inscriptions in the Pali or Buddhist character have been discovered in various parts of Rajasthan, of the race called Tasta, Takshak, and Tak, relating to the tribes, the Mori or Maurya, Pramara, their descendants.
It is important to understand the history of Takshak race before we study Jat History.
We reproduce the Chapter Chapter 7 Catalogue of the Thirty Six Royal Races from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, Volume I, Publisher: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press 1920, pp. 123-127
Tak or Takshak. —
[p.123]: Takshak appears to be the generic term of the race from which the various Scythic tribes, the early invaders of India, branched off. It appears of more ancient application than Getae, which was the parent of innumerable sakha. It might not be judicious to separate them, though it would be speculative to say which was the primitive title of the races called Scythic, after their country, Sakatai or Sakadwipa, the land of the great Getae.
Abulghazi makes Taunak[1] the son of Turk or Targetai, who appears to be the Turushka of the Puranas, the Tukyuks of the Chinese historians, the nomadic Tokhari of Strabo, who aided to overturn the Greek kingdom of Bactria, and gave their name to
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1 Abulghazi [Hist, of the Turks, Moguls, and Tartars, 1730, i. 5 f .] says, when Noah left the ark he divided the earth amongst his three sons : Shem had Iran : Japhet, the country of ' Kuttup Shamach,' the name of the regions between the Caspian Sea and India. There he lived two hundred and fifty years. He left eight sons, of whom Turk was the elder and the seventh Camari, supposed the Gomer of Scripture. Turk had four sons ; the eldest of whom was Taunak, the fourth from whom was Mogul, a corruption of Mongol, signifying sad, whose successors made the Jaxartes their winter abode. [The word means ' brave ' (Howorth, Hist, of the Mongols, i. 27).] Under his reign no trace of the true religion remained : idolatry reigned everywhere. Aghuz Khan succeeded. The ancient Cimbri, who went west with Odin's horde of Jats, Chattis, and Su , were probably the tribes descended from Camari, the son of Turk.
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[p.124]: the grand division of Asia, Tokharistan[1] or Turkistan : and there is every appearance of that singular race, the Tajik,[2] still scattered over these [104] regions, and whose history appears a mystery, being the descendants of the Takshak.
It has been already observed, that ancient inscriptions in the Pali or Buddhist character have been discovered in various parts of Rajasthan, of the race called Tasta, Takshak, and Tak, relating to the tribes, the Mori or Maurya], Pramara, their descendants.
Naga and Takshak are synonymous appellations in Sanskrit for the snake, and the Takshak is the celebrated Nagvansa of the early heroic history of India. The Mahabharata describes, in its usual allegorical style, the wars between the Pandavas of Indraprastha and the Takshaks of the north. The assassination of Parikshita by the Takshak, and the exterminating warfare carried on against them by his son and successor, Janamejaya, who at last compelled them to sign tributary engagements, divested of its allegory,3 is plain historical fact.
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1 Tacash continued to be a proper name with the great Khans of Kharizm (Chorasmia) until they adopted the faith of Muhammad. The father of Jala], the foe of Jenghiz Khan, was named Tacash. Tashkent on the [Jaxartes]], the capital of Turkistan, may be derived from the name of the race. Bayer says, " Tocharistan was the region of the Tochari, who were the ancient Tάχαρoι (Tochari), or Tάχαρoι (Tacharoi)." Amraianus Marcellinus says, " many nations obey the Bactrians, whom the Tochari surpass " (Hist. Beg. Bad. p. 7).
2 This singular race, the Tajiks, are repeatedly mentioned by Mr. Elpliinstone in his admirable account of the kingdom of Kabul. They are also particularly noticed as monopolising the commercial transactions of the kingdom of Bokhara, in that interesting work. Voyage d'Orenbourg a Bokhara, the map accompanying which, for the first time, lays down authentically the sources and course of the Oxus and Jaxartes. [The term Tajik means the settled population, as opposed to the Turks or tent-dwellers. It is the same word as Tazi, ' Arab,' still surviving in the name of the Persian greyhound, which was apparently introduced by the Arabs. Sykes (Hist, of Persia, ii. 153, note) and Skrine-Ross {The Heart of Asia, 3, 364 note) state that the Tajiks represent the Iranian branch of the Aryans.]
3 The Mahabharata describes this warfare against the snakes literally : of which, in one attack, he seized and made a burnt-offering (hom) of twenty thousand. It is surprising that the Hindu will accept these things literally. It might be said he had but a choice of difficulties, and that it would be as impossible for any human being to make the barbarous sacrifice of twenty thousand of his species, as it would be difficult to find twenty thousand snakes for the purpose. The author's knowledge of what barbarity will inflict leaves the fact of the human sacrifice, though not perhaps to this extent, not even improbable. In 1811 his duties called him to a survey
amidst the ravines of the Chambal, the tract called Gujargarh, a district inhabited by the Gujar tribe. Turbulent and independent, like the sons of Esau, their hand against every man and every man's hand against them, their nominal prince, Surajmall, the Jat chief of Bharatpur, pursued exactly the same plan towards the population of these villages, whom they captured in a night attack, that Janamejaya did to the Takshaks : he threw them into pits with combustibles, and actually thus consumed them ! This occurred not three-quarters of a century ago.
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[p 125]: When Alexander invaded India, he found the Paraitakai, the mountain (pahar) Tak, inhabiting the Paropamisos range ; nor is it by any means unlikely that Taxiles,[1] the ally of the Macedonian king, was the chief (es) of the Taks ; and in the early history of the Bhatti princes of Jaisalmer, when driven from Zabulistan, they dispossessed the Taks on the Indus, and established themselves in their land, the capital of which was called Salivahanpura ; and as the date of this event is given as 3008 of the Yudhishthira era, it is by no means unlikely that Salivahana, or Salbhan (who was a Takshak), the conqueror of the Tuar Vikrama, was of the very family dispossessed by the Bhattis, who compelled them to migrate to the south.
The calculated period of the invasion of the Takshaks, or Nagvansa, under Sheshnag, is about six or seven centuries before the Christian era, at which very period the Scythic invasion of Egypt and Syria, " by the sons of Togarmah riding on horses " (the Aswas, or Asi), is alike recorded by the prophet Ezekiel and Diodorus. The Abu Mahatma calls the Takshaks " the sons of Himachal," all evincing Scythic descent ; and it was only eight reigns anterior to this change in the Lunar dynasties of India, that Parsvanath, the twenty-third Buddha [Jain Tirthankara], introduced his tenets into India, and fixed his abode in the holy mount Sarnet.[2]
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1 Arrian says that his name was Omphis [Ambhi], and that his father dying at this time, he did homage to Alexander, who invested him with the title and estates of his father Taxiles. Hence, perhaps (from Tak), the name of the Indus, Attak ; [?] not Atak, or ' forbidden,' according to modern signification, and which has only been given since the Muhammadan religion for a time made it the boundary between the two faiths. [All these speculations are valueless.]
2 In Bihar, during the reign of Pradyota, the successor of Ripunjaya. Parsva's symbol is the serpent of Takshak. His doctrines spread to the remotest parts of India, and the princes of Valabhipura of Mandor and Anhilwara all held to the tenets of Buddha. [As usual, Jains are confounded with Buddhists. There is no reason to believe that the Nagas, a serpent-worshipping tribe, were not indigenous in India.]
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rof. B.S. Dhillon ISBN-10: 1895603021 or ISBN-13: 978-1895603026, p.120