Arrian describes how Alexander the Great encountered the Pareitakai in Bactria and Sogdiana, and had them conquered by Craterus (Anabasis Alexandrou IV). Herodotus in 450 BCE described the Paraitakenoi as a tribe ruled by Deiokes, a Persian king, in northwestern Persia (History I.101). These coins are mainly found in Loralai in today's western Pakistan. The Parata kings are primarily known through their coins, which typically exhibit the bust of the ruler (with long hair in a headband) on the obverse, and a swastika within a circular legend on the reverse, written in Brahmi (usually silver coins) or Kharoshthi (copper coins). The dynasty of the Pāratas is thought to be identical with the Pāradas of the Mahabharata, the Puranas and other Vedic and Iranian sources. "Pārata Kings"), a dynasty of Indo-Scythian or Indo-Parthian kings. By 2500 BCE (the Bronze Age), the region now known as Pakistani Balochistan had become part of the Harappan cultural orbit, providing key resources to the expansive settlements of the Indus river basin to the east.įrom the 1st century to the 3rd century CE, the region was ruled by the Pāratarājas (lit. This involved the movement of finished goods and raw materials, including chank shell, lapis lazuli, turquoise, and ceramics. These villages expanded in size during the subsequent Chalcolithic when interaction was amplified. 7000–6000 BCE) and included the site of Mehrgarh in the Kachi Plain. The earliest settled villages in the region date to the ceramic Neolithic (c. The earliest evidence of human occupation in what is now Balochistan is dated to the Paleolithic era, represented by hunting camps and lithic scatter, chipped and flaked stone tools. This likely was a commission for a tribal Khan or chieftain for ceremonial use. The somber background colors are characteristic of Baluch weavings.
Alternating rows depict cypress trees and Turkmen Gül motifs in offset coloration. Large Baluch carpet, from the mid 19th century. Bailey reconstructs a possible Iranian name, uadravati, meaning "the land of underground channels", which could have been transformed to badlaut in the 9th century and further to balōč in later times. ĭuring the time of Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), the Greeks called the land Gedrosia and its people Gedrosoi, terms of unknown origin. A literal translation into Sanskrit, aparānta, was later used to describe the region by the Indo-Aryans. Historian Romila Thapar also interprets Meluḫḫa as a proto-Dravidian term, possibly mēlukku, and suggests the meaning "western extremity" (of the Dravidian-speaking regions in the Indian subcontinent). Taking them to be proto-Dravidian in origin, he interprets the term as meaning either a proper name milu-akam (from which tamilakam was derived when the Indus people migrated south) or melu-akam, meaning "high country", a possible reference to Balochistani high lands. Īsko Parpola relates the name Meluḫḫa to Indo-Aryan words mleccha ( Sanskrit) and milakkha/milakkhu ( Pali) etc., which do not have an Indo-European etymology even though they were used to refer to non-Aryan people. 985 AD that it was populated by people called Balūṣī (Baluchi), leading Hansman to postulate "Baluch" as a modification of Meluḫḫa and Baluḫḫu. Al-Muqaddasī, who visited the capital of Makran - Bannajbur, wrote c. However, Hansman states that a trace of it in a modified form, as Baluḫḫu, was retained in the names of products imported by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC). Meluḫḫa disappears from the Mesopotamian records at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Johan Hansman relates the term "Baloch" to Meluḫḫa, the name by which the Indus Valley Civilisation is believed to have been known to the Sumerians (2900–2350 BC) and Akkadians (2334–2154 BC) in Mesopotamia. It is likely that the Baloch were known by some other name in their place of origin and that they acquired the name "Baloch" after arriving in Balochistan sometime in the 10th century. The Baloch people are not mentioned in pre-Islamic sources. The name "Balochistan" is generally believed to derive from the name of the Baloch people. Distribution of Pakistanis who spoke either Balochi or Brahui as a first language at the time of the 1998 census of Pakistan