Talk:Saka
From Academic Kids
Saka or Shaka are names that Persians and Indians called Sarmathians and Scythians by it,so this article must be redirected to Scythian page. (Anonymous User:81.12.38.14, not otherwise represented at Wikipedia)
- On the other hand, the article on Scythia and the Scythians is now well grounded in archaology, referenced, and linked. This speculation on "race-origins" does not belong at Scythia. This article needs some intellectual ballast. --Wetman 08:31, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
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"Pottery associated with Saka peoples has also been found in Iran?"
- The text reads "These Sakas followed other Aryans into present day Iran, and returned back to their original area in Central Asia." What motivates such a contortion? Is this a post-Soviet equivalent of "Pottery associated with Saka peoples has also been found in Iran?" A disinterested outsider senses that in such contortions several ideological dogmas seem to be served at once. Hard for a Westerner to disentangle. In Soviet archaeology in Central Asia, excellent technique was habitually combined with race-political interpretations. Is there any way to cut the spin and tell the story here? --Wetman 15:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- The entire second paragraph looks like it's heavily contaminated with a lot of needless, irrelevant, and discredited race-science POV. There is no credible evidence linking the Saka, a putatively Iranian-speaking Central Asian nomadic group, with the Germans, the resemblance of "Saka" and "Saxon" aside. The spin can be cut from this article, but it would involve starting from scratch. Janos Harmatta, a credible source on pre-Islamic Central Asian nomads, would link the Khotan Saka (existing far later than 3000 BC, but carrying the ethnonym) ultimately to the Kushans by way of the Yueh-chih of Chinese sources. The problem with the whole shebang is that nobody writing the relevant histories from the Greeks to the Chinese were particularly consistent or accurate in naming groups of "barbarians". Designations like Yueh-chih or Xiong-nu get applied to different groups living in the same places at different times, who might not have had anything in common with one another.--KASchmidt 05:11, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
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Merge proposal
As far as I know Saka (Scythian) and Shakya (the Buddha's tribe) are totally unrelated, although both were probably Indo-Aryan (since the Shakya were Kshatriya). I have never seen anywhere a connection between the two, appart from some vague suggestions from time to time. I really don't think the articles should be merged. PHG 11:33, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
- I'll second that. There's an "Aryan Scythians" agenda lurking here. --Wetman 17:13, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
