Ancient Ties
Archeological evidences clearly reveal links between India and the Central Asian countries, including Turkmenistan. These pre-historic links date back by about half a million years and span the Paleolithic, the Neolithic and to Bronze Age periods. This evidence lies in artifacts made of stone, bone, clay and metal.
Extensive work has been done on the earliest `all purpose’ stone tools in India and their diffusion to West Central Asia. These simple ‘chopper-chopping’ tools were made from pebbles found in rivers by sharpening one end through removal of flakes from one or both sides. They were primarily used for scraping or removing the skin and flesh of hunted animals. These implements and artifacts form part of what is know as the ‘Sohan’ or ‘Soan’ culture2. Its existence in India was revealed by de Terra and Paterson in 1935.3 Later on, it was reviewed by Drummond and Paterson. Further explorations by B.B. Lal, G.C. Mahapatra, V.D. Krishnaswami, S.P. Gupta, O. Prufer and D. Sen, and N.R. Banerjee led to discoveries of Sohan culture in vast areas of India
Initially, Sohan culture was believed to be an Indian phenomenon only. However, some pre-historians of Soviet Union could find its penetration into parts of Central Asia through crossing of the Hindukush and the Pamirs. Works of V. Ramov, Kh. A. Alphasbayev and others published in Soviet journals may be mentioned in this regard. The link was not restricted only to the ‘chopper chopping culture’ of the Old Stone Age; it continued into the Neolithic period. The research work of these scholars also show Indian influence some five thousand years ago.
The Indian links continued during the Bronze Age through sea and land routes. The discovery of the Lothal dockyard in Gujarat and further discoveries of Soviet archeologists elsewhere have strengthened this view. Archeologists like V.M. Masson, A.Y. Shchatenko, and B.A. Litvinski have thrown much light on the diffusion of the Indus/Saraswati valley civilization through the land route to south Turkmenistan. Excavations at Altin Depe, Khapuz Depe, Namazga Depe, Tahirbal Depe and Anan need to be highlighted in this connection.
India-Turkmenistan cultural links are revealed in pottery, copper and bronze artifacts, beads, ivory objects, terracotta objects and seals as well. There are similarities in materials used, final shapes and manufacturing techniques.
During the Bronze Age, the people of India and Turkmenistan had close links over a period of 4,000 years – from the end of the 3rd millennium and beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. onwards – as revealed by the excavations in the Gujarat coast, Rajasthan, Sind, Punjab and the Gangetic plain in western Uttar Pradesh; and, in Turkmenistan, in the relics of Altin Depe/Altynetepe and other places.8
The ancient Turkmen city of Merv played a significant role in facilitating trade and cultural relations between India and Turkmenistan on the one hand and with other neighbouring countries of Iran, Turkey and Asia Minor as well. An Islamic geographer of the 12th century mentions a prosperous merchant of Merv who had warehouses extending from the Volga basin to Gujarat in India. Both trade and transit trade made contributed then to Turkmenistan’s prosperity.
India and Turkmenistan had historic links since Central Asia and India formed a part of the Achaemide, Greek and Kushan empires. The discovery of a 300-sheet palm leaf Buddhist-Sanskrit manuscript near Merv10 dated to the 7th century AD containing the text of the Vinayapitaka of the Sarvastivad School needs a special mention.
Turkmenistan also formed part of the territory of the Parthian civilization (256 BC to 226 AD). Hyrcamia (modern Gurganch) was the capital of Parthia. Cyrus (Kurush) the Great of Iran and Alexander the Great of Macedonia ruled over the region.
Medieval Times
The trade between India and Central Asia was often disrupted due to the fluid situation in Afghanistan or due to Anglo-Russian rivalry. But trade with Turkmenistan continued through Iran. A sea and rail route – the Bombay-Batum sea route, the rail-route to Caspian Sea and the Turkmenistan port of Krasnovodsk across the Caspian – became popular towards the end of the 19thcentury due to reduced transport and transit costs as well as restrictions imposed by Russian authorities on goods imported through Bukhara.
The Turkmen nobility played leading role in the Sultanate and Moghal periods in India. The Khilji and Tughlak dynasties were connected with this nobility. The Khiljis migrated from Khalach of the Lebar Vilayet of Turkmenistan. The Tughlaks were Bakharley Turkmen.12 Bairam Khan, the guardian of Emperor Akbar during his young days, was the father of the Hindi poet, Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana.
A Linguistic Perspective
Turkmen is the most standard Turk language of Eastern and Western Turks. It is worth noting that the Urdu language has its origin in Indo-Turk contacts in medieval times. Urdu itself is a Persianised Turkish word which originally meant ‘camp of the Turkish army’. In India, it means ‘court’ or ‘camp’. The language, in its initial stages, was known as ‘Hindi’ – the `language of Hind or India’. It was also known as ‘Hindwi’ or ‘Hindostani’.
This language traveled to different parts of India in the company of Sufis (Muslim mystics) and was freely accepted with the incorporation of regional or local influences. It was known as Gujari, Dakhni or Dehlavi.13 Hindi language was also influenced by the Turkic language. The number of Turkic words in Hindi, according to Dr. Bhola Nath Tiwari – a noted scholar – is at least 125.
Some of the Turkic words in current usage in Hindi are: Urdu, Bahadur, Uzbak, Turk, chaku (knife), kainchi (scissors), Qabu (in control), chammach (spoon), thope (cannon), thopachi (gunner), barud (gun-powder), biwi (wife), chechak (small-pox), lash (dead body), sarai (inn) and bawarchi (cook). The s‘chi’ of Turkic language is very much in use in Hindi.
Turkmen are descendants of Iranians and Uighur Turks15. Uighur, the literary form of various Turkish idioms spoken north and south of the Tien Shan, derived its name from the Uighur script, which in turn is derived from the Syriac. It was widely used in Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian literature. Its use in Buddhist literature increased when Uighurs gained power in the Tarim valley around 860 AD and founded their own kingdom.
The languages of India and Central Asia had profound mutual impact. The genesis and development of Urdu and Turkic lexemes in Hindi are the result of Indian-Central Asian contacts. Sanskrit also had a profound impact on the languages of Central Asia and vice versa. The Shaka and Slav languages, which were spoken in Central Asia, had strong links with Sanskrit as well. The connection between Turkic languages and the Aryan languages is very ancient.16 Caldwell has given voluminous data and a massive analysis of the links of the Turk-Mongol languages with South Indian languages in his book, A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Language. The work, however, had many shortcomings. Caldwell links Dravidian languages with the Scythian languages which were also spoken in Turkmenistan. But, the Scythian is a very loose grouping and, therefore, his study lacks a sharp focus.
Some valuable information about Indo-Central Asian linguistic links is also available in the History of Central Asia (written in Hindi) by Rahul Sankrityayan. The vocabulary of the Russian language given by him shows massive lexical similarity with Sanskrit.
Here, it needs to be mentioned that the difference between the languages of the Rigveda and Avesta and that between Sanskrit and Old Persian is mostly phonetic; and not grammatical. The Iranian languages of Central Asia and Iran are intimately related to Indo-Aryan languages. This needs mention as Old Persian was also used in the past in parts of Turkistan.
Dr. Ram Vilash Sharma, a well-known Indian scholar, has brought many lexical, phonetic, morphological and syntactical similarities of the Turkic and Mongol languages with Indian languages in his Hindi publication, Bharat ke Prachin Bhasha, Parivar aur Hindi. He compares the languages of Turk-Mongol and Finno-Ugrian family with the languages of India.
Turkic, like many Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, shows the tendency of palatization. But unlike Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, it does not use cerebrals. It adds the semi-vowel ‘y” before some vowels attached to ‘k’ and ‘g’. Arabian words ‘katib’ (secretary), malum (known) and ‘majkur’ (said earlier) become kyatip, malyum and majkyur respectively. This trait is found in Kashmiri also. Here ‘a’ in ‘majkur’ is shortened. The ‘b’ of ‘katib becomes ‘p’. Arabic ‘kitab’ and Sanskrit ‘rang’ become ‘kitap’ and ‘rank’ in Turkic. Thus ‘b’ and ‘k’ are devoiced in that language. When the pronominal suffix ‘i’ (his or her) is added, then ‘p’ is again voiced and the word becomes ‘kitabi’. This trait is visible in Sanskrit also.
Like Dravidian languages, no word of Turkic has an initial ‘r’ and ‘l’. This tendency has become somewhat lax in Dravidian languages. Tamil ‘irandu’ (two) is sometimes spoken as ‘randu’. Turkic and Dravidian languages usually do not use two consonants together in the beginning of a word. ‘Slav’ is pronounced ‘Islav’ (as ‘school’ is pronounced ‘iskul’ in eastern India). The English word ‘club’ is pronounced as ‘kulup’ or ‘klup’. Like Prakrit, some mid-consonants become vowels or semi-vowels. Persian ‘agar’ (if) and ‘digar’ become ‘ayar’ and ‘diyar’. The fricative ‘f’ in borrowed Persian words becomes ‘p’ in Turkic languages. The fricative ‘kh’ of Arabic and Persian words usually becomes ‘h’. Arabic ‘fun’ (art), khala (mother’s sister), ‘khabar’ (news) and Persian ‘hafta’ (week) become ‘pan’, ‘hala’, ‘habar’ and ‘hapta’ respectively.
Like Dravidian languages, the use of aspirates is absent in Turkic languages. Most of the Indian languages use dental and palatal sibilants – s and sh. The cerebral sibilant ‘sh’ is used mostly in Sanskrit words. The Aryan and Dravidian languages, and to some extent Turkic, have the tendency to convert dental and palatal sibilants into palatal ‘ch’ and ‘chh’. In Sanskrit, the roots ‘gash’ (gam, to go) and ‘prash’ (to ask) and prashna (question) become ‘gachchh’ and ‘prachchh’ respectively. The Sanskrit word ‘bhasha’ becomes ‘peshu/pechu’ in Tamil; the Sanskrit root ‘ish’ (to drink) is transformed into ‘ich’ (drink) into Turkic.
Dr. Ram Vilash Sharma has pointed out many other similarities and parallels at the lexical level. Turkic lexemes for Sanskrit ‘kar’ (to do), ‘kal’ (time), ‘kup’ (well), ‘kati’ (how many), ‘kim’ (who) are: ‘kil’, ‘kara’, ‘kuyu’, ‘kach’ and ‘kim’. Turkic ‘kara’ (black), Tamil ‘karu’ and Sanskrit ‘kar (of ‘andhakar) are related.
Hindi uses the relative suffix ‘ka, ki, ke’; in Turkic, it is ‘ki’. `Janma’ (birth) of Sanskrit is derived from the root ‘jan’. In Turkic, ‘dagum’ (birth) and ‘ichim’ are derived from ‘dagh’. The negative suffix – ma in Sanskrit – and –ma in Turkic is identical.
Indian languages, except for Khasi and Kashmiri, follow the ‘subject-object-verb’ syntactical pattern. Turkic language has the same. However, the pronominal suffix follows the verb in Turkic like in Sanskrit.
Neither the Sanskrit ‘ami’ (or ‘mi’) nor the Turkic ‘im’ are freely used as first person singular pronoun, I, as is done in Bengali and Marathi. The word for ‘I’ in the Sanskrit and Turkic languages is ‘aham’ and ‘ban’ respectively. Turkic languages uses a pronominal suffix after the noun as in ‘babam’ (my father; baba =father, -m = my). (Baba’ is used for father in many Indian languages).
The pattern of adding a pronominal suffix as well the suffix for ‘I’, in this case, is of Indian origin. It is followed in Arabic and Persian. Both Hindi and Turkic add the verb denoting ‘to do’ to the noun to make a verb (‘karana’ in Hindi, ‘kam karna, to do the work; ‘kilmak’ in Turkic, namaj kilmak, to do or perform namaj).
In many cases, a new meaning emerges when two words are added; also, the density of meaning is increased by re-duplication of words. The pattern for the formation of higher numerals in Turkic, Dravidian and many Munda and Indo-Mongoloid languages is the same.
New discoveries in Turkmenistan and other parts of Central Asia and India during colonial days have brought out a lot of materials on the culture and languages of the two regions. However, the studies of the colonial studies have many drawbacks. In many cases, the cultural and linguistic continuum – both in terms of time and geographical spread – was ignored. Differences, rather than similarities, were emphasized. This deserves to be rectified.
