Where did the Gujjars come from? I asked Tejveer Mavi, a young, handsome, self-confident millennial herdsman from the back of the beyond, barely a stone's throw from the glass and glitz of Gurgaon.
Two years ago, I had descended on his hamlet, Mavigarh, now largely rebuilt with concrete and connected by wifi. That visit had turned out to be incomplete, because the obstinate clansman who had brought me along, left me in the lurch after tempting me to the secrets of this dense patch of Gujjarland tucked away deep in the forested Aravalli hills.
Tej, turned out to be different: adventurous, positive, no-nonsense, with little to hide. Above all, he was helpful. A budding hobby archaeologist with an impeccable track record, Tej claims to have made 25 prehistoric discoveries in the wild. You could call him the Indiana Jones of, well, India. What else? I will lead you to his many dens in this series.
"The Mavi came here a thousand years ago or so, from Gujarat," Tej Mavi told me, between sips of unadulterated, and unpasteurised sweet cow milk, milched straight from the udder, "leading other clansmen in search of pasture." Seven elders, Tej recalled his oral history, settled at the foot of a rocky outcrop, where once stood a fort, and a civilisation now lost to time.
Populated by one big family that descended from those elders centuries ago, marriage is prohibited within the settlement, as everyone is brother and sister to everybody else.
The Gurjar-Pratihara ancestry from Gujarat, home to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is old story, part oral history - part textbook theory. What is lost in time is that the Gujjars, who call themselves Aryavanshi (of Aryan descent), migrated to India from Gurjan in old Persia. Like the Saka, Hun, Turk, Jat, Afghan, and Mongol before and after them, the Gujjar too were driven out of their homeland, triggering continuous migrations to modern Gujarat.
Crossing the Hindu Kush, they turned to their spiritual homeland, India, in the early centuries of the Christian era, when Gurjaristan, present Georgia (Persian: Gurgan), began to be colonized first by Christian, and later, Islamic warriors and evangelists. Subsequently, Turk and Mongol warlords too played havoc, uprooting the Gujjars lock, stock and barrel once and for all. Those left behind, converted.
Holding on to their Vedik moorings, in the face of often violent proselytization, they led their flock over centuries across cold deserts and high mountain passes. From Gujarat they ventured up the Indus-Yamuna plains to what largely constitutes their present homeland, now racially united, but religiously divided, forever, as Hindus and Muslims.
The migration of the Gujjars to India is, perhaps, among the most peaceful translocations of any race through global history. They did not descend down the Hindu Kush either as swashbuckling horseriders or as marauding invaders knocking down edifices, cultures, and civilisational signposts. Instead, they just walked in, hard and long, quietly, shepherd's crook in hand, with cattle and cart, from the Steppes.
The name "Georgia" probably originates from the Persian term "gurj" or "gurjān". The word was later borrowed into Syriac and Arabic, and then into Medieval Latin as "Geōrgia," the sound influenced by the popularity of Saint George in the region.
Some versions trace the name's origins to the Middle Persian term "wiruz-ān" (meaning "Iberians, Georgians"). It may also have stemmed from "gurg" meaning "wolf" the herder's hideous companion forever on the lookout for prey.
Here, at Mavigarh, leopards have replaced the wolf as ever lurking shadow.
We came across the big cat's footprints in the thicket, its prey, and poop, followed by the paw marks and poop of their lurking scavenger companion, the hyena. We heard the leopard growl from behind the thicket. But the elusive spots gave us the royal slip.
Join me in this wild adventure, before I give you some more. In time.
© Shubhrangshu Roy
8 March, 2025
For a two-year-old jotting, click here.
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