South Asian Y chromosomes in Southeast Asia

Citation: Contrasting paternal and maternal genetic histories of Thai and Lao populations

Look at the R and H frequencies. Peach and violet respectively. Compare to South Asian haplogroup frequencies.

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Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

[irrelevant tripe deleted…don’t do that again or i’ll ban you (if you respond to this comment i’ll ban you)]

Deep Bhatnagar
Deep Bhatnagar
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

Or maybe the people having less of Upper Caste genes because they preferred to remain outside of large dynasties in jungles as tribes, maybe they never tried to establish contact with the so called high castes as they preferred the ways of their ancestors, maybe it was not the upper caste who were discriminatory but seeing their unwillingness to engage they started discrimination against them & lastly if High caste genetic marker is much more in other places outside Indian subcontinent then can we say that maybe some groups {Merchants, priests or royal representative} used to migrate a lot resulted in making these genetic markers while other groups preferred to stay in regions their ancestors settled resulting in the genetic differences we are now noting among these groups ?

Point i am trying to make is – It is already assumed in social science that people have natural tendency to othering but what social scientists miss here that othering is a process of acknowledging & mending differences. Yes it may produce discriminatory, indifferent or violent behaviors but the degree & the presence of various behaviors is different among different communities of various regions what they essentially miss here is that not all othering is bad which is what they basically project.

It has also been noted that there used to be a belief that people who do sea voyages or do sea travel they would lose their ‘castes’ & ‘Varnas. Maybe it was the case of people controlling sea routes not wanting the other groups to know the advantages of sea routes thus creating these myths like ‘Kaala Pani’ or ‘Black Water’. In the childhood i only knew the term to denote it as a punishment Britishers used to give to Indians by sending them to jails in the most Isolated places in earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kala_pani_(taboo)

http://oneindiaonepeople.com/navigation-in-ancient-india-and-social-taboo-against-overseas-travel/

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=_EGyjSppOx8C&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=Caste+sea+travel&source=bl&ots=-PY5aA2yIR&sig=vl39tqnGUzDz0viglSDE2V5tEr8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwinhoSyo9TfAhXKYo8KHctZAYgQ6AEwCHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=Caste%20sea%20travel&f=false

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=xBzLGFT6hk8C&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=varna+caste+sea&source=bl&ots=81ZcIC8n_d&sig=PYe7t_7hvK1-LiOk3qj82Zrlibc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiI3ISAptTfAhVEVH0KHTGjCQY4ChDoATAHegQIABAB#v=onepage&q=varna%20caste%20sea&f=false

One should also check the ‘Laskar or Lascar or Lashkar archives’ if one wants to know the interaction between these myths as they formed and changed since colonial intervention.

I am mentioning all of this because it relates to travel & interaction between different communities which is relevalent to the topic at hand i.e. to discuss how, why & which people took part in these voyages and how they might have interacted with each other.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

Likely predominant Brahmin migration from North India to both Burma and Thailand associated with early Brahminism in South East Asia. The ratios of R to H is more heavily skewed than in even Brahmin populations in North India.

Cambodia is different became migration was primarily from south india, although led by a Brahmin elite from the Pallava kingdom.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

The Malay peninsula came under predominant south Indian influence, so that could explain why Yuan2 has exclusive H input.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

There is also significant Indian paternal ancestry associated with non-Brahmin upper castes (haplotypes J, L and Q) in both Burma and Thailand.

It seems the Brahmins got the main lead through their elite status, but other Indians with west eurasian Y chromosome J also left a more significant mark.

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

This predominant Brahmin migration perfectly fits in with myths of Brahmins from India establishing kingdoms in SE Asia (Kauṇḍinya – Funan empire), and the widespread use of Sanskrit among these emerging polities.

http://www.academia.edu/3271323/The_spread_of_Sanskrit_in_Southeast_Asia

KTM
KTM
5 years ago
Reply to  Razib Khan

Interesting. Where does all that G1b in the Karen come from?

Santosh
Santosh
5 years ago

This is slightly off-topic but what do Mr Razib Khan and also knowledgeable others think about the ethnic origins of the Pallava dynasty? I am completely lay regarding this and probably might be having no idea what I’m talking about but were they some kind of Persians originally as one theory goes or were they some type of Pre-Telugu- or Old-Telugu-native-language people? Or were they some beyond-northern-extreme type of Old-Tamil-native-language people?

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

Pallavas were a Brahmin dynasty from Andhra who were once feudatories of the Satavahana kingdom.

Santosh
Santosh
5 years ago
Reply to  Karan

Okay, thank you very much. So some type of Pre-Telugu- and Old-Telugu-associated people then probably (though such-Sanskritic-much-wow). And probably also of the same type as the other early Brahmin-origin royal dynasties like the Kadambas of Karnataka (the earliest native royal dynasty to emerge from Karnataka) and the Salankayanas of somewhere-in-coastal-Andhra. About the good old Satavahanas themselves I don’t know what to think of- I tend to think they were originally as the same type of either the earliest Indo-Aryan natives of Maharashtra who gave it the ancestor of Marathi or a somewhat later migration of some royal elite families from the Delhi-Haryana cultural heartland region (or possibly the Patna region) close to the common era. But they give off a lot of this old Rajanya and Kshatriya vibes to me and do not at all feel like some sort of the Brahmins of the Parashuramic kind lol. But there is a lot of possibility that I am wrong.

Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago
Reply to  Santosh

When there are multiple theories of origin of a kingdom, it is not appropriate to just refer to a myth only.

First, the relationship of pallavas to Brahmins, aswatthama, bhishma, etc, are all myths. History is filled with such mythology, including calling pallava temples Arjuna thapas.

So far, the earliest discussion of the pallavas origin is the first conference of South Indian history, which noted that the pallava kingdom stretched from Bellary to bejawada. However the conference notes that the names of the kings, the scripts, and the writings in the inscription all were North Indian in origin whereas the satavahana dynasty clearly used local language and scripts.

Historians refer to bhogga , trilochana and Kalabharta as pallavas, but also as satavahana, kalbra, etc.

Nilakanta Sastri reviewed the origin of pallavas, and attributed the kanchipuram version of the dynasty having its origin in the region between orissa and Bihar and arriving at kanchi via Andhra. K.p. Jayswal privides the origin to be vakatakas intermarried with nagas and then to andra and subsequently to kanchi. The rationale are the inscriptions regarding simhavishnu in inscriptions in bellary and Guntur.

History is complex and should not be mixed with myths.

Xerxes the Magian
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Pallava does sound like Pahlavi though

Karan
Karan
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Whatever the origin of the Pallavas, it is clear that the Brahmin migration to SE Asia is a historical fact, here is a quote from the article I posted above:

‘G. Coedès (1964: 54) cites a Chinese text from the fifth century which states that:

“In the kingdom of Dun-sun there are more than a thousand Brahmans of India. The people of Dun-sun practice their doctrine and give them their daughters in marriage. Consequently, not many of these Brahmans go away.”‘

Santosh
Santosh
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Hello Vijay, as I indicated, I don’t even know much of the stuff that you wrote here, so I thank you very much for writing the above comment. It is my wish to try to see if it’s possible to know who these royal dynasties were and their mother-tongue affiliations, etc. but I have so far thankfully not ventured into the business in a moderately rigorous manner. There seems to be too much uncertainty regarding many of these questions and that puts me off instantly. For example, people still don’t know who the hell Satavahanas were and where was their origin- northwestern Deccan or eastern Deccan (I personally go with northwestern Deccan). And who the hell were all these Nagas and Yakshas? They were surely not some supernatural beings? Whatever! I don’t like this sort of thing at all!

sbarrkum
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Santosh

The Yakshas by Ananda Coomaraswamy. I went thru about half.
Many references and quotes from Indian/Hindu texts.
Heavy reading for me at least.

Pdf file
https://archive.org/details/YakshasAnandaCoomaraswamyK./page/n1

Text
https://archive.org/stream/YakshasAnandaCoomaraswamyK./Yakshas%20%20Ananda%20Coomaraswamy%20K.%20_djvu.txt

Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

To Karan

I do not know much about Indian origins in Cambodia and south east Asia except the genetic info. The Pallava influence in Cambodia is via trade, but the architecture and idol construction shows common influences, and I talked about them in a comment much earlier in BP.

To santosh

The nagas indicated here are not the nagas of mythology, but a real kingdom that existed before Guptas around a place called padmavathy. There may have been 9 or 12 kings, and naga coins are displayed in the museum in Bombay. I do not think Yakshas are for real.

However you stress an important point; the history of India is quite vague before the arrival of ghazni and Ghori. There is no one who can answer where satavahanas or pallavas or rashtrakutah or even chalukyas, but a billion people can talk about internecine warfare among kurus in great detail. Added to this is mixing mythology with history and geography. I wish the two myths disappear or lose impact like Iliad and odyssey so we can focus on real people. Just the 40 pages of babarnamah is more useful than the historical mess in India.

Xerxes the Magian
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Kamobja is Afghanistan.. why would the Pallava Name their Cambodia outpost after an Iranian territory if they weren’t Scythians?

Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

The last line should not say historical mess, but the mess made by mixing mythology with history.

Numinous
Numinous
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

@Zack:

Pallava does sound like Pahlavi though

I don’t know if this means much. Pallava also sounds to my ears like Ballabha (a North Indian Sanskritic name) pronounced the Southern way.

Doesn’t mean the Pallava couldn’t have historic Iranian affiliations though. I’m just saying that the names sounding similar isn’t very significant. I also find it hard to imagine how an Iranic tribe could have leapfrogged the north Indian empires and kingdoms as well as the Deccan plateau to land in historic Pallava territory.

Kamobja is Afghanistan.. why would the Pallava Name their Cambodia outpost after an Iranian territory if they weren’t Scythians?

Kamboja is Afghanistan (an Iranian-speaking territory) today. But was it always so?

Xerxes the Magian
5 years ago
Reply to  Numinous

Evidence seems in favour of an Iranian association for the Kambojas – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kambojas

Santosh
Santosh
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Vijay, apparently this Padmavati is supposed to be somewhere in Madhya Pradesh and the Naga dynasty itself in north-central India including Madhya Pradesh. What do you think about the Nagas who apparently became close to either the Satavahanas (IIRC, these were apparently later day Satavahanas who were quite established in the eastern Deccan) or the Andhra-Ikshvakus by forging marital alliances? Were they supernatural beings or some kind of Pre-Telugu-speaking peoples? Similarly they apparently found these records or something about a Yaksha called Kubbeeraka or something somewhere around the Krishna-river-delta area and to my non-linguistic-playtime-persona, this word looks close to the Sanskrit word kubera which we are quite familiar with. Okay, anyway, letting the Yakshas aside, and again going against your wise suggestion and mixing myth with history, those Naga dudes really give off a lot of Pre-Telugu- and Pre-Gondi-Kui-speaking peoples’ (or Indo-Aryans who were in close association with Pre-Telugu and Pre-Gondi-Kui speakers) vibes to me. I mean, they are all concentrated in central India in stories such as Nala-Damayanti where historically the Telugu-Kui branch of Dravidian was moderately influential, their leader is in many stories called one karkoTaka which as a word is very likely Dravidian in origin and that too possibly of South Dravidian-II (either just Gondi-Kui or the entire Telugu-Kui) provenance, etc.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

It is unfortunate that we read different books and documents without integrating and cross-matching them. I have fairly extensive history of wars and concords between hundreds of Serbian tribes in China and Tibet with Chinese and Mongolians, including the names of tribes, places, their and Chinese rulers. My comment with one excerpt from this history (including the Serbian ruler Karan, the eldest son of Tancin, in China) together with hundreds of Serbian toponyms in China and Tibet somehow somewhere got lost?

These tribes had many successes in these wars, they had loses as well, many later escaped to the north to Siberia, Ural, Volga and many were assimilated into Chinese nation. The original names of these assimilated tribes were used until 300 AC. There is much information about retreat of Serbian tribes when they were outnumbered in China and India back to today’s Russia, Iran, Anatolia even back to Serbia. None ever mentioned about these returns to old homeland after many hundreds of years. They brought back to old homeland many stories and ritual songs from SA where their ancestors lived for two thousands of years. It is pretty unreal that many still oppose the existence of any arrivals from Europe to SA when is on other side the enormous amount of evidence of their genes, language, history, mythology, customs, toponyms. Migrations of Brahmins from India to China cannot be studied disconnected from their relationships with these European settlers…

For those pundits who today celebrate Orthodox Christmas including all other confessions and atheists I send traditional greeting ‘Hristos se rodi!’ and Happy New 7528. Year (according to the old Serbian calendar which is the oldest in the world).

AnAn
5 years ago

“Zack Zavidé says:
January 7, 2019 at 11:31 am
Kamobja is Afghanistan.. why would the Pallava Name their Cambodia outpost after an Iranian territory if they weren’t Scythians?”

I think Kamboja is Turan. Maybe Mazar was part of it. Anything south of Mazar is Gandhara. Even Mazar is often part of Gandhara.

AnAn
5 years ago

Santosh, I don’t think Nagas or Yakshas or Rakshashas are a reference to homo sapiens. Although maybe some humans allied with them?

Nagas, Yakshas and Rakshashas are things that might be partly experienced in meditation.

Santosh
Santosh
5 years ago
Reply to  AnAn

Yes AnAn, perhaps some kind of people group in central India (and northern southeast India?) were associated totemistically with snakes or something like that in ancient times?

Jaydeepsinh Rathod
5 years ago

Looking at the data (with highest proportion of R1a among Indian us a) and the history that we know so far, it may be argued that there is a case of Upper Caste Brahmin and Kshatriya groups from the southeastern & eastern flanks of South Asia contributing the maximum to the ancestry of SE Asians. This may include the Bengalis (the Palas), the Oriya (known as Kalinga anciently), the Andhras and the Tamils. I think that if we were to look into it, the strongest signal of admixture into SE Asian groups should come from Upper castes of the peoples mentioned above.

Brown Pundits