58 Satis Chandra Vidyabhfi.sana — The Saraka caste of India . [Mae. 



the province of Pegu in the south. Scholars now generally maintain 

 that Serike comprised i lie northern parts of China or those which tra- 

 vellers and traders reached by land. The ancestors of Indian S'arakas 

 did therefore probably originally come here from Northern China. The 

 S'arakas of India like the people of Northern China are noted for their 

 skill in weaving. In Sanskrit literature such as in the works of Kali- 

 dasa and others, Cinamqulca or Chinese cloth, is a general name for all 

 soft silken cloths. It is scarcely necessary for me to state here that the 

 intercourse between the Indians and Chinese has existed since a very 

 remote antiquity. According to the Mahabharata (2-26-9) Bhagadatta, 

 King of Assam, sent Kirata and Chinese soldiers to the great war of 

 Kuruksetra,near Delhi. Kalidasa in his Raghuvamsa states that Raghu, 

 King of Ayodhya, set out for conquest through the north-western front- 

 ier of India, conquered many people such as Utsava-Samketas, or 

 U-tsang tribe in Central Tibet and came back to his capital through the 

 north-eastern frontier crossing the Brahmaputra or Sangpo river in 

 Assam. But perhaps the most intimate relation between India and 

 China grew up with the establishment of Buddhism in the latter coun- 

 try. Between 2nd and 10th centuries A.D., hundreds of Indian mission- 

 aries went to China and Chinese pilgrims came to India. The S'arakas 

 were in all probability traders who followed the land-route previously 

 trodden over by religious pilgrims. The period of their migration to 

 India was probably the 12th century A.D. 



The Saraogies, I believe, are descended from the Sorgoe mentioned by 

 Megasthenes (Fragm. LVI) and Pliny (Hist. Nat. VI) in their list of 

 the Indian races. The two cities possessed by the Sorga? are located by 

 Megasthenes near the base of the Caucasus Mountain along the north- 

 ern frontier of Afghanistan. The Sorga3 w r ere perhaps the same as the 

 people living in the city of Sariga which, according to Ptolemy, was 

 situated in Area in the north-western part of Afghanistan. In the 

 sacred books of the Jains themselves it is found that Acharyya Jina Sena, 

 643 years after the death of Mahavira, i.e. ,116 in A.D., converted to Jain- 

 ism 82 Rajput villages and two villages of Vaisyas at a place now called 

 Khandela near Sikar in the north of Jaipur. The people who were thus 

 converted were known under the name of Saraogies. Believing in this 

 account supplied by the Jains themselves we may conclude that the 

 people called Sorgce that, in the time of Megasthenes in the 4th century 

 B.C., lived in the north-western part of Afghanistan, advanced in the 

 2nd century A.D. so far down as up to the north of Jaipur in Rajputana 

 and became designated as Saraogies. 



I have not been able to trace any kinship of the S'arakas of West 

 Bengal, Chota Nagpur, Orissa and Assam, with the Saraogies of North- 



