Who Are The Jats? Origins And History | #AskAbhijit E15Q12 | Abhijit Chavda

While re-reading the history of the Jats, I come across statements like the Jat people are considered as the merged descendants of Indo-Aryans, Indo-Scythian tribes of the region merging to form the Jat people. They are known as Goths in Germany which was a tribe that defeated the Romans. This is basically stating that Jats are Aryans and it's false that the Aryan migration theory is a sham. So basically what you're asking is what is the origin of the Jats and were they always in India? Excellent question. So let's start at the very beginning. At the very beginning all the Rig Vedic clans were in India. Then you had the battle of the ten kings in which the losing coalition, all of the clans were expelled out of India. They had to run for their lives. So they went westwards, they went northwards and then the regions of Uttarakuru and Uttaramadra were formed which were named after Kuru and Madra regions of India which is the Ganga Yamuna region which is Kuru and the Madra which is west of that. So Uttarakuru and Uttaramadra were named after these ancestral regions of these exiled Rig Vedic clans. And later on these people, these exiled clans, they established great kingdoms in Central Asia. The whole of Central Asia was Indian. It was Indianized. They spoke Indian Sanskrit derived languages and most likely these are the ancestors of today's Europeans, the ones who spread westwards in great invasions. And these are also the ancestors of the Scythians and the Kushans who were also basically, see the Scythians are represented in artwork, modern artwork as being fair skinned, European looking skin, blonde haired or red haired. Right? That's how they are presented in popular artwork. But when you find Scythian burials, you analyse their DNA, you can tell their skin tone, their hair colour etc. We know that they had light skin but not white skin. So their skin tone would have been similar to mine. Okay? And they had dark hair and brown eyes. So they would look like me I guess. See, so that's what a typical Scythian looked like. They were of Indian origin. Today they are called Iranian peoples but the Iranians themselves are of Indian origin, FYI. So these Scythians, they roamed the whole of Central Asia, the great steppes of Central Asia, all the way from Eastern Europe, all the way into present day Xinjiang, so called Xinjiang of China, where the Kushans or the expanse across Eurasia. So these are Indian origin peoples. The Scythians were not one homogeneous people. They had their own clans and subdivisions. They may even have had a number of languages. And one of these Scythian clans was called the Massagetae. The Greek historian Herodotus from the 5th century or 6th century BCE, he wrote about this clan called the Massagetae. They are the Mahajaks. So these are people who had gone out of India and their homeland was east of the Caspian Sea. So it was the region north of Iran and parts of present day Afghanistan. And they entered into conflict with the Achaemenid dynasty, the Achaemenid dynasty of Iran. And they had a great queen called Tamri. In Greek they call her Tomiris. And she fought a great battle with the Persian king Cyrus, Cyrus the Great. It was a terrible battle, the worst, the most terrible battle the Greeks had ever seen. And she killed Cyrus the Great and took his head with her in retaliation for his killing her son. So these are the Massagetae or the Mahajaks. They went westwards and in Europe they were called the Goths and the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths. So these are the people who actually sacked Rome at one time. So there is this ethnic and cultural continuum that connects Europe and parts of Asia all the way up to India. And so these Massagetae or Mahajaks are connected to the Jat people of India. The Jat people in India are spread across many states mostly to a significant extent in Punjab, Haryana but also in western UP, parts of Rajasthan etc. It's a very large geographical extent. So the Massagetae or the Mahajaks, this Scythian clan or tribe were an extension of the Indian Jat people. It is not known whether they came into India and reunited with the Indian Jats or not but it is the same people. And the same people, their descendants are still found in Europe. And there is a great similarity in names also of the Jat people and people in certain parts of Europe especially Germany. So I will refer you to a very good article about this topic. Let me share that on the screen. So here it is. The article is called Uttarakuru and the Jats. It's by Dr. Subhash Kak. I highly recommend you read this article. It gives a great deal of information about this very specific question. Very interesting article and you should read more more articles by Dr. Kak who is a wonderful scholar. So that is the answer in brief to this question. It's a very long roundabout story but the Jats are basically Indians and they are closely connected to the Mahajaks or the Massagetae clan of the Scythian people who were also an Indian people, Indian origin. And they are connected to the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths and various Germanic people as well. So it's the same ethnicity and ancestry overall. Very interesting story.