Iran And India

[Guest]

Here's some of what Elst wrote about the Purus (Pauravas), the Vedas, migrations, etc:

Same link as the first one given in the earlier post, but read section 4.6.3. Dynastic history in the Puranas
Even the movement within India was first east to west and then the Purus went back east:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the fragmentary Vedic data and the systematic Puranic account tally rather splendidly. The <b>Puranas relate a westward movement of a branch of the Aila/Saudyumna clan or Lunar dynasty from Prayag (Allahabad, at the junction of Ganga and Yamuna) to Sapta Saindhavah</b>, the land of the seven rivers.  There, the<b> tribe splits into five, after the five sons of the conqueror Yayati: Yadu, Druhyu, Anu, Puru, Turvashu.</b>  All the rulers mentioned in the Vedas either belong to the Paurava (Puru-descended) tribe settled on the banks of the Saraswati, or have come in contact with them according to the Puranic account, whether by alliance and matrimony or by war.  Later, the Pauravas (and minor dynasties springing from them) <b>extend their power eastward, into and across their ancestral territory[B], and the Vedic traditions spread along with the economic and political influence of the metropolitan Saraswati-based Paurava people.

This way, the eastward expansion of the Vedic horizon, which has often been read as proof of a western origin of the Aryans, is integrated into a larger history.  The Vedic people are shown as merely one branch of an existing Aryan culture, originally spanning northern India (at least) from eastern Uttar Pradesh to Panjab.
...
Puranic history reaches back beyond the starting date of the composition of the Vedas.  [B]In the king-lists, a number of kings are enumerated before the first kings appear who are also mentioned in the Rg-Veda. </b>In what remains of the Puranas, no absolute chronology is added to the list, but from Greek visitors to ancient India, we get the entirely plausible information such a chronology did exist.  To be precise, the Puranic king-list as known to Greek visitors of Candragupta’s court in the 4th century BC or to later Greco-Roman India-watchers, started in 6776 BC. Even for that early pre-Vedic period, there is no hint of any immigration.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch24.htm continues with the Puranic king-list known to the ancient Greeks and Greco-Romans familiar with India:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Pliny wrote that the Indians date their first king, “Liber Pater” (Roman equivalent of Dionysus), to “6,451 years and 3 months” before Alexander the Great (d. 323 BC), while Arrian puts “Dionysus” as head of the dynastic list at 6,042 + 300 + 120 = 6,462 years before Sandrokottos (Chandragupta), to whom a Greek embassy was sent in 314 BC.23 <b>Both indications add up to a date, give or take a year, of 6776 BC</b>. 
...
One of Manu’s heirs was Ila, ancestress of Yayati, whose five sons became the patriarchs of the <b>“five peoples” who form the ethnic horizon of the Vedas, one of them being Puru; in Puru’s tribe, then, one Bharata started the Bharata clan to which most of the Vedic seers belonged</b>. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So the Vedas were the compositions of seers part of the Bharata clan of the Puru tribe.
Greeks chose a name familiar to them (the God Dionysus) to identify our first king (generally they call our Shiva "Dionysus"). "Liber Pater" is suggestive if it means Deliverer-Father, i.e. Manu who as per tradition saved humanity from the great flood. Not knowledgeable about Latin though.

4.6.4. Emigrations in the Puranas
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->What is more: <b>the Puranas mention several <i>emigrations</i>. </b>The oldest one explicitly described is by groups belonging to the Afghanistan-based Druhyu branch of the Aila/Saudyumna people, i.e. the Pauravas’ cousins, in the pre-Vedic or early Vedic period.  They are said to have moved to distant lands and set up kingdoms there.  Estimating our way through the dynastic (relative) chronology given in the Puranas, we could situate this emigration in the 5th millennium BC.  It is not asserted that that was the earliest such emigration: <b>the genealogy starts with Manu’s ten successors, of whom six disappear from the Puranic horizon at once</b>, while two others also recede m the background after a few generations; and many acts of peripheral tribes and dynasties, including their emigration, may have gone unnoticed.  But even if it were the earliest emigration, it is not far removed from a realistic chronology for the dispersion of the different branches of the IE family. It also tallies well with the start of the Kurgan culture by Asian immigrants in ca. 4500 BC.

Later the <b>Anavas are said to have invaded Panjab from their habitat in Kashmir</b>, and to have been defeated and expelled by the Pauravas in the so-called <b>Battle of the Ten Kings</b>, described in Rg Veda 7:18,19,33,83.  <b>The ten tribes allied against king Sudas (who belonged to the Trtsu branch of the Paurava tribe) have been enumerated in the Vedic references to the actual battle, and a number of them are unmistakably Iranian: Paktha (Pashtu), BhalAna (Bolan/Baluch), Parshu (Persian), PRthu (Parthian), the others being less recognizable: VishANin, AlIna, Shiva, Shimyu, BhRgu, Druhyu.</b>  At the same time, they are (except for the Druhyus) collectively <b>called “Anu’s sons”, </b>in striking agreement with the Puranic account of an Anava struggle against the Paurava natives of Panjab.  Not mentioned in the Vedic account, but mentioned in the Puranic account as the <b>Anava tribe settled farthest west in Panjab (most removed from the war theatre), is the Madra (Mede?) tribe</b>. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->