Wassaf Calls Them "A Kind Of Goblins Rather Than Human Beings, The Most
Daring Of All The Mongols"; And Mirkhond Speaks In Like Terms.
Dr. Bird of Bombay, in discussing some of the Indo-Scythic coins which
bear the word Korano attached to
The prince's name, asserts this to
stand for the name of the Karaunah, "who were a Graeco-Indo-Scythic tribe
of robbers in the Punjab, who are mentioned by Marco Polo," a somewhat
hasty conclusion which Pauthier adopts. There is, Quatremere observes, no
mention of the Karaunahs before the Mongol invasion, and this he regards
as the great obstacle to any supposition of their having been a people
previously settled in Persia. Reiske, indeed, with no reference to the
present subject, quotes a passage from Hamza of Ispahan, a writer of the
10th century, in which mention is made of certain troops called
Karaunahs. But it seems certain that in this and other like cases the
real reading was Kazawinah, people of Kazvin. (See Reiske's Constant.
Porphyrog. Bonn. ed. II. 674; Gottwaldt's Hamza Ispahanensis, p. 161;
and Quatremere in J. A. ser. V. tom. xv. 173.) Ibn Batuta only once
mentions the name, saying that Tughlak Shah of Dehli was "one of those
Turks called Karaunas who dwell in the mountains between Sind and
Turkestan." Hammer has suggested the derivation of the word Carbine from
Karawinah (as he writes), and a link in such an etymology is perhaps
furnished by the fact that in the 16th century the word Carbine was used
for some kind of irregular horseman.
(Gold. Horde, 214; Ilch. I. 17, 344, etc.; Erdmann, 168, 199, etc.;
J. A. S., B. X. 96; Q. R. 130; Not. et Ext. XIV. 282; I. B. III.
201; Ed. Webbe, his Travailes, p. 17, 1590. Reprinted 1868.)
As regards the account given by Marco of the origin of the Caraonas, it
seems almost necessarily a mistaken one. As Khanikoff remarks, he might
have confounded them with the Biluchis, whose Turanian aspect (at least as
regards the Brahuis) shows a strong infusion of Turki blood, and who might
be rudely described as a cross between Tartars and Indians. It is indeed
an odd fact that the word Karani (vulgo Cranny) is commonly applied in
India at this day to the mixed race sprung from European fathers and
Native mothers, and this might be cited in corroboration of Marsden's
reference to the Sanskrit Karana, but I suspect the coincidence arises
in another way. Karana is the name applied to a particular class of mixt
blood, whose special occupation was writing and accounts. But the prior
sense of the word seems to have been "clever, skilled," and hence a writer
or scribe. In this sense we find Karani applied in Ibn Batuta's day to a
ship's clerk, and it is used in the same sense in the Ain Akbari.
Clerkship is also the predominant occupation of the East-Indians, and
hence the term Karani is applied to them from their business, and not from
their mixt blood.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 289 of 655
Words from 150911 to 151417
of 342071
