Manda (clan)

Jat Clan: Manda
Distribution	Punjab (Pakistan), Punjab (India) and Rajasthan
Descended from:	Kshatryas
Branches:	None
Religion	Hinduism and Islam
Languages	Rajasthani and Punjabi
Surnames:	Chaudhary

Manda (Arabic: ماندا‎) (Hindi: मंडा) gotra Jats are found in Pakistan, Sialkot, Jaipur, Pali, Nagaur, Kota, Bhilwara districts in Rajasthan.

The Mandas in Iran - The First Historical Empire of Jats

The ancient Mandas are even now a clan of the Jats in India. It is they who gave the first Historical Empire of the Jats in the western Plateau of Iran. They are named in the Puranas also. Tee Visnu Purana mentions them as Mandakas. By removing the Suffix “ ka” the name appears in its old and present form. A country called Mandavya is mentioned in the Agni Purana. ^[1] Sankhyana Aranyaka, too mentions these people and so does Varahamihira, who, in his Samhita, locates them in the north, as well as the northwest of India. Madaiya is their Persian name.^{[citation needed]}

In the last quarter of the eighth century B.C., the area of Azerbaijan to the south of Lake Urmia was inhabited by various Jat clans. The two clans whose names had come down in history are called the Mannai and the Mandas. These two clans are nowadays called in India as the Manns and the Mandas. In 720 B.C. or so, the Assyrian King, Sargon II, attacked these people and the Assyrians captured their chief called Dayaukku. He was a Manda chief and perhaps nature took a hand in saving his life, because contrary to the Assyrian custom, his life was not only spared but he was sent, along with his family to Hamath. Thus it seems that before the last decade of the eighth century B.C. they were acknowledging the suzerainty of Assyria and it is mentioned that 22 of their chiefs swore the oath of allegiance before Sargon II. The name of their chief if given as Deiokes, son of Phraortes by Herodotus and other Greek writers. As per History of Persia, he was the same as the chief named by the Assyrians as Dayaukku. His name may well be Devaka because the suffix ‘s’ or ‘us’ is generally added to personal names by the Greeks. It was Devaka, who established the first empire of the Manda Jats in about 700 B.C. The later Achaemenian empire was an offshoot of Manda empire, because Cyrus the great, was an offshoot of Manda empire, because Cyrus the great, was son of Mandani, a daughter of the last Manda emperor. Cyrus the Great was an Achaemenid Persian, son of the local Persian king Cambyses I of Anshan and the Manda princess Mandane of Manda clan, who was the daughter of Astyages, the last Manda emperor.^[2] Before he united the Persians and Mandas under a single empire, he was the ruler of Anshān, then a vassal kingdom of the Median Empire, in what is now part of Fars Province in southern Iran. The name of the queen was Aryenis (skt. Aryani),^{[citation needed]}

The Manda Empire

Up to the nineteenth century, this brilliant empire was called the “ Empire of the Medes” . It was so called by the Greek writers as well as in the Old Testament. The country of the Medes, called Media was the northwestern neighbour of the Mandas - the actual name of the empire builders. Even Media was eventually annexed to the empire of Manda. This was perhaps the reason of the serious mistake of history where the Mandas and the Medes were confused with each other. The Medes were traders of Greek stock and were living in small principalities. They never had any empire. Confounding the brave Mandas with the effete Medes was the most unfortunate event in history. The mistake became so prevalent that even a proverb was invented in English equal to the effect that a certain thing is as unchangeable as the laws of Medes and Persians. The mistake was detected when the monuments of Nabonodus and Cyrus were unearthed. It was then discovered that the whole history was based upon a philological mistake. It was found that the name of the empire and its people, was not Medes but Manda.^{[citation needed]}

The founder of the empire, Deiokes, hereinafter mentioned as Devaka, immediately formed a powerful army. When the country was secure, he decided to build his capital for which the mighty granite range of mount Alvanda was selected and at a height of 6,000 ft. above sea level the capital of Ecbatana was built. Its present site is the eastern part of modern Hamadan.^{[citation needed]}

After this preparations Devaka started expansion of his empire. The Assyrians could never have dreamt that this mountain shepherd at no distant date, would sack the great Nineveh and cause the name of Assyria to disappear from amongst the nations of the world. The adjoining areas were annexed to the Manda Empire and after consolidating it for 50 years, Devaka was succeeded by his son Fravarti, the Phraortes of the Greeks in 655 BC The Persians were the first to be conquered. Gaining more than self-confidence from their successes, the Mandas attacked the Assyrian empire but were defeated and Fravarti himself was killed.

Assurbanipal died in 626 BC and his successors were disputing the throne. Such an opportunity was not to be lost and second attack of Nineveh began. The Assyrian Emperor burnt himself in his palace and perished with his family. Thus in 606 BC Nineveh fell and so utter was its ruin that the Assyrian name was forgotten and the history of their empire soon melted into fable.^{[citation needed]}

Armenia and Cappadocia were including in the Manda Empire. Lydia was emerging as a powerful nation in the west and it was inevitable that the two powers should collide. The war began but in 585 B.C. when there was a total eclipse of the sun, it was stopped after six years of fighting, under a peace treaty. A daughter of the Lydian emperor was marred to the heir apparent of Manda, and the kingdom Urartu was annexed to Manda empire. Next year, i.e. 584 BC this great emperor died. Thus from a beaten nation he raised the Mandas into the most powerful and virile empire of that time. It is aptly stated that the east was Semitic when he began to rule but it was Aryan when he stopped. This leader in one of the great moments in history was succeeded by Ishtuvegu, Astyages of the Greeks. He was an unworthy son of a worthy father and he deviated from the basic policy of the Mandas,.i.e. to keep fit and ready for war. He had no son and his daughter named Mandani (after the clan name) was married to a small vassal prince of Elam.^{[citation needed]}

The first issued of princess Mandani was Cyrus who became the emperor, after putting in prison his maternal grandfather, Ishtuvegu. Three battles were fought, as per traditions preserved by the classical writers, before Ecbatana itself fell in 550 BC Cyrus was emperor of Persia and had inherited the empire of the Mandas., which was further extended by him. But this does not mean that efforts were not made to recover the lost empire. We hear that Cyrus himself fought wars against the Jats in Balakh and the Caspian sea. At both the places he was unsuccessful. Balakh remained under the Kangs, and the small kingdom of the Massagate ruled over by the Dahias, remained free and independent. The king of the Massagate kingdom was Armogha and his queen was simply called Tomyris which is a Scythian word, Tomuri, meaning queen. The king had died and the queen had taken the administration in her hands when Cyrus the Great asked her to marry him.^{[citation needed]}

The queen gathered her force and the battle which followed was most ferocious. On both sides there were Jats, and they fought to the finish. Herodotus says that of all the wars of antiquity, this was the most bloody. The Jats gained complete and final victory. Cyrus himself was killed. His body was searched and recovered from the battlefield.^{[citation needed]}

Thus we see that many Jat kingdoms in the north and east were free of the Persian empire which was an offshoot of the earlier Manda Jat empire. The defeat of Cyrus the Great and his death was a signal for the Jats under Persian Empire to take up the throne of Ecbatana. This was done by the Jats under their leader Gaumata. In the meantime Darius came and this second empire lasted for only six months because conspirators in the pay of Darius killed Gaumata in the Sokhyavati palace of Ecbatana. Darius wrote in his inscriptions; “Ahurmazda made myself emperor. Our dynasty had lost the empire but I restored it to its original position. I re-established sacred places destroyed by Magas. These Magas were the Magian priests of the Jat emperors who came to India along with them, as a result of war. They were called in India the Magas. The Taga Brahmans on the Yamuna river are their descendants. They are the Tagazgez of Masoudi. ^[3]

But the efforts did not cease there. In 519 BC Phravarti, another Manda follower of the Sun god of the Magi priests, fought for the lost empire. The Virks revolted in Hyrcania. But Darius, aptly called great, suppressed them and except lands on the frontiers of the empire. The Kangs remained free in north of Oxus river; and the Scythian Jats on the Danube were free. In fact, Darius, too attacked these invincible people with very large army and huge preparations of every short. At last Darius ordered on immediate withdrawal and returned to Persia.^{[citation needed]}

Mandas and other Jats came to India

It was a result of these wars that the first migration of the Jats took place and from the Manda Empire and from other parts of Central Asia they came to India. That is why Panini mentioned many cities of theirs in the heart of Punjab in the fifth century B.C. But memories die hard. Even today, we have our villages named after the cities lost in Iran. The names like Elam, Bhatona, Susana, Baga, Kharkhoda (Manda Kurukada), etc, are still the names of Jat village. It is these Jats whom Buddha Prakash Calls, “ exotic and outlandish people” who came to Indian at the time of successors of Cyrus, ^[4] and whom Jean Przyluski calls the Bahlikas from Iran and Central Aisa.^[5]

Eleventh century

Writing in the eleventh century, the geographer Al Idrisi noted that “The Mands dwell on the banks of the Mihran, from the boundary of Multan to the sea, and in the desert between Makran and Famhal. They have many cattle sheds and pasturages, and form a large population."^{[6][clarification needed]}

References

1. ^ Indian History Quarterly, IX, P. 476
2. ^ Suren-Pahlav, Sh., Cyrus The Great; The Liberator, ; Retrieved January 12, 2007
3. ^ Journal of Bombay Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, 1914, p. 563
4. ^ Buddha Prakash, Studies in Indian History and Civilisations, P. 35
5. ^ Journal Asiatique, 1926 , pp.11-13
6. ^ Elliot, H. M.; Dowson, John (1867). "Nuzhatu-l Mushtak of Al Idrisi". The history of India as told by its own historians. I. London: Trubner & Co.. p. 38. http://books.google.com/books?id=W9gix7jzhfcC&pg=PA85. Retrieved 2011-10-09. 

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Attribution

• The original text of this article was taken from http://www.jatland.com/home/Manda, which is licensed under the GFDL.