Talk:Pahlavas

Moved from text

The following section was in the main article but does not deal with the Pahlavas at all. From an {{OR}}-catching point of view, it appears as if a connection between the Pahlavas and the Pallavas was being forced, the latter being a dynasty of southern India. The origins of both are far from established.

==Migration of Pahlavas==

According to Dr Jouveau Dubreuil, "the Pallavas were immigrants from north, or properly speaking from Konkan and Anarta into Deccan. They came into south India through Kuntala or Vanvasa..." (Jouveau Dubreuil).

Venkayya similarly suggests the Pallavas of Kāñcīpuram must originally have come from west of the Indus, "though the interval of time which must have elapsed since they left [Greater Iran] must be several centuries." (Venkayya, 1907:219-220)

V. A. Smith notes: "It is possible that the Pallavas were not one distinct tribe or class but a mixed population composed partly of foreigners and partly of the Indian population but different in race from Tamils and taking their name from the title of an intruding foreign dynasty (Pahlava) which obtained control over them and welded them into an aggressive political power" (Early History of India, 1924, Dr V. A. Smith).

-- Fullstop 14:34, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The connection between Pahlavas and Pallavas is pure extrapolation. The Sanskrit word "Pahlava" can be easily deformed into "Pallava" (Praktrithi-Vikruthi). There is no problem with both the terms being used in Puranas to mean the same people. The Pallavas of Tamilnadu/Andhra are entirely different people. Authoritative historians have never identified these two peoples. The attempts at the turn of the century to fuse the two peoples was in my opinion just a confusion.

Unfortunately, the edits made by Fullstop on 17th July bring the confusion right to the introductory paragraph, quite unreasonably, but don't amplify it in the text. These changes need to be reverted.

Reddyuday (talk) 11:57, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

{prod}

I support the {{prod}} placed by User:Swarm Internationale on 06:59, 7 December 2007.

• One significant problem with the article is that it makes real-world claims based on scripture, and these real-world claims are based on analysis by the author of the article himself, and not - as it should be - a regurgitation of the analysis in secondary sources.
• The other significant problem is that the articles linking to it are in the main referring to several (temporally and geographically) distinct historical peoples with similar names, but which have been conflated together here, with the only binding factor being (ambiguous!) references in scripture.

Under normal circumstances, this article would have been cleaned up by now, to include putting a concordance of the religious usage of the word in a different article with a more appropriate title (e.g. 'Pahlava (Hindu religious dialectology)' or some such), and properly discussing the academic discourse over that term in an encyclopedic context.
In the proper context, a concordance can itself be useful, but not when misused to extrapolate something that is not directly evident.
-- Fullstop (talk) 16:15, 8 December 2007 (UTC)