Original or Oldest Recorded Area of the Baluchis

 

Original or Oldest Recorded Area of the Baluchis

 Shrikant G. Talageri 

 

As half-baked people (see the comments to my article just before this one, on my challenge to Koenraad Elst) keep claiming that the Baluchi people came to Baluchistan (presumably from the west?) in “medieval times”, here are the answers given by Google Overview to certain questions asked by me:

 

1. “Earliest recorded references to the Baluchi people”.

Google AI Overview reply:

“The earliest definite mentions of the Baloch people appear in 10th-century Arabic chronicles, with Arab geographers like Istakhri and Al-Muqaddasi describing them as a distinct group in the Kerman, Khorasan, Sistan, and Makran regions, powerful and nomadic, inhabiting areas from the Iranian plateau eastward. While some theories link their name to much older terms like Meluḫḫa or Gedrosia, these are speculative, with the first concrete historical references pointing to the Islamic period. 

Key Historical Mentions:

·         9th-10th Centuries CE: Arab geographers document the Baloch in the eastern Iranian plateau, noting their presence in Makran and Sistan.

·         Ibn Khordadbeh (9th Century): Described them as strong animal herders in Makran, living in wooden houses.

·         Al-Muqaddasi (10th Century): Identified them as the population of Panjgur, the capital of Makran.”

 

2. “Makran”

Google AI Overview reply:

“Makran is a semi-arid, coastal region and historical area straddling the border of southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan, known for its harsh terrain and strategic location on the Arabian Sea/Gulf of Oman, with recent Iranian discussions focusing on developing it as a new economic/political hub, possibly even a new capital, due to its maritime potential. Historically, it was a significant route for trade and invasions (like Alexander the Great's) and included a princely state in British India until the 1950s. 

Geography & Demographics

·         Location: A coastal strip in the Balochistan region, shared by Iran (mostly) and Pakistan.

·         Terrain: An arid plain rapidly rising to mountains, with a long coastline.

·         People: Inhabited by Baloch people, with historical Hindu and Buddhist presence, and significant cultural ties across the border.”

 

3. “Sistan”

Google AI Overview reply:

“Sistan is a historical and geographical region in southeastern Iran and southwestern Afghanistan, known for its extreme dryness, rich ancient history (home to heroes like Rostam), and status as the Sistan Basin, a major endorheic watershed fed by the Helmand River. Today, it largely encompasses Iran's large, strategically important Sistan and Baluchestan Province, known for its diverse culture, handicrafts (like Suzan-doozi embroidery), and significant natural resources.”

In short: all the earliest recorded historical references to the Baluchis place them in Baluchistan (spread out over present-day southwest Pakistan and southeast Iran) and surrounding areas. There are no earlier references to them in any other historical records placing them anywhere else.

 

In the dāśarājña battle hymn in the Rigveda, the Bhalāna are referred to as taking part in the battle in Central Punjab, on the banks of the Paruṣṇī (present-day Ravi) river, along with tribes bearing names identifiable as the proto-names of almost all the other historically-known Iranian peoples.

Even Witzel identifies them as follows:

1. "the Bhalānas tribe took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV 7.18) that settled the suzerainty of the Bharata chieftain over the Panjab tribes. The Bhalānas are identified with the Bolān pass and river near Quetta in Baluchistan" (WITZEL:1999a:24).

2. And again: "The southernmost tribe mentioned in the RV are the Bhalānas took part in the Ten Kings Battle (RV.7.18) and are certainly to be located near the Bolān pass and river near Quetta" (WITZEL:2000a:§11).

 

The only (and really inane) argument made by people trying to have them originating much further west outside India is the fact that in the classification of Iranian languages, Baluchi is classified as a “Northwestern Iranian language”.

I asked Google the question (just for the record): “is Baluchi a Western Iranian language?”

The Google AI Overview reply: “Yes, Balochi (or Baluchi) is classified as a Northwestern Iranian language, part of the broader Western Iranian branch, related to Persian and Kurdish, though spoken today mainly in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, with its classification stemming from historical links to older Iranian languages like Parthian and Middle Persian”.

But the classification of Iranian languages into “Western Iranian” and “Eastern Iranian” (and further sub-groupings) is a purely linguistic classification based on the known historical geographical locations of the major Iranian languages which share these characteristics. Persian and Kurdish are more to the west (as far west as inside Turkey), and so languages closely sharing the same linguistic characteristics are called “Western Iranian” languages. But, as we saw above, Baluchi is, from the earliest recorded references to it, located in and around Baluchistan, and never in western Iran or Turkey.

And the earliesr recorded evidence show that all these Iranian languages (“Western Iranian” and “Eastern Iranian”) are located in the Punjab at the time of the dāśarājña battle in the earliest Rigvedic times.

And later, see what historical records say about the “Western Iranian” Persians:

“We find no evidence of the future ‘Iranians’ previous to the ninth century BC. The first allusion to the Parsua or Persians, then localized in the mountains of Kurdistan, and to the Madai or Medes, already established on the plain, occurs in 837 BC in connection with the expedition of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. About a hundred years afterwards, the Medes invaded the plateau which we call Persia (or Iran) driving back or assimilating populations of whom there is no written record” (LAROUSSE 1959:321). 

“By the mid-ninth century BC two major groups of Iranians appear in cuneiform sources: the Medes and the Persians. [….]  What is reasonably clear from the cuneiform sources is that the Medes and Persians (and no doubt other Iranian peoples not identified by name) were moving into western Iran from the east” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974, Vol.9, 832).

“‘Persians’ are first mentioned in the 9^th century BC Assyrian annals: on one campaign, in 835 BC, Shalmaneser (858-824) is said to have received tributes from 27 kings of Paršuwaš; the Medes are mentioned under Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BC) [….] There are no literary sources for Iranians in Central Asia before the Old Persian inscriptions (Darius’s Bisotun inscription, 521-519 BC, ed. Schmitt) these show that by the mid-1^st millennium BC tribes called Sakas by the Persians and Scythians by the Greeks were spread throughout Central Asia, from the westernmost edges (north and northwest of the Black Sea) to its easternmost borders” (SKJÆRVØ 1995:156).

So it is time people stopped raising juvenile objections to the identification of the Rigvedic bhalānas with the Baluchi people, or claiming that the Baluchi language is a “western Iranian” language and that this therefore proves that they originated in West Asia or western Iran.