The Pahlavas
Sign in to savethumb|Figure of a foreigner, found in Sarnath. This is a probable member of the West Asian Pahlava or Saka elite in the Gangetic plains during the Mauryan period.
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
16 sectionsContents
- In Puranic texts
- ''Pānca Ganahas'' or five hordes
- In the ''Ramayana'' and ''Mahabharata''
- The ''Uttarapatha''
- The ''Udyoga-Parva''
- The Kurukshetra War
- In other texts
- ''Manusmriti''
- The ''Mudrarakshasa'' drama
- ''Brihat-Katha-Manjari''
- ''Kavyamimamsa''
- See also
- Notes
- Ancient texts cited
- References
- Sources
thumb|Figure of a foreigner, found in Sarnath. This is a probable member of the West Asian Pahlava or Saka elite in the Gangetic plains during the Mauryan period.
The Pahlavas are a people mentioned in ancient Indian texts. According to Patrick Carnegy, a Raj-era ethnographer, the 4th-century BCE Vartika of Katyayana mentions the Sakah-Parthavah, demonstrating an awareness of these Saka-Parthians, probably by way of commerce. Knowledge of the Pahlavas is distilled from the literary references in texts like the Manu Smriti, various Puranas, the Ramayana, the , and the .
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “The Pahlavas” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.