The Padaei ( el, Παδαῖοι) or the Padaeans are an Indian tribe described by the Greek historian
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society ...
in
''The Histories''. Herodotus describes them (III.101) as being darker than other Indians and living in a place which is very distant from Persia towards the south and east. An extract from his work (III.99) includes the following:
:"Another tribe of Indians, called the Padaei, who live to the east of these marsh Indians, are nomadic and eat raw meat. They are said to have the following customs. If any of their compatriots -- a man or a woman -- is ill, his closest male friends (assuming that it is a man who is ill) kill him, on the grounds that if he wasted away in illness his flesh would become spoiled. He denies that he is ill, but they take no notice, kill him, and have a feast. Exactly the same procedure is followed by a woman's closest female friends when it is a woman who is ill. They sacrifice and eat anyone who reaches old age, but it is unusual for anyone to do so, because they kill everyone who falls ill before reaching old age."
Scholars in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggested a number of possible identifications of the Padaei. Newbold thought that they were likely to be the Batta, a tribe of
Sumatra, who he said continued to practice cannibalism. Others have recorded that the Batta of the central Sumatran highlands not only were cannibals, but they also formerly ate their elders. Wheeler cited scholars who connected the name "Padaei" variously with a town in
Little Tibet (Ladakh), a river in
Kutch and the
Ganges
The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...
. He suggested that the name might be a general name or term for the nomadic inhabitants of north-western India.
William Smith, citing Mannert, suggested that they might be
Tatars
The Tatars ()[Tatar]
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different , and not an Indian tribe.
Latham pointed to the similarity of the name "Padaei" with that of the Batta and the
Veddah
The Vedda ( si, වැද්දා , ta, வேடர் (''Vēḍar'')), or Wanniyalaeto, are a minority Indigenous peoples, indigenous group of people in Sri Lanka who, among other sub-communities such as Coast Veddas, Anuradhapura Veddas ...
, and concluded that all that could be said as to the Padaei's identity was that they were a "rude tribe in contact with an Indian population." Rawlinson suggested that they may be the "Bhils, Gonds, or other aboriginal races of central India."
The reliability of Herodotus' description of the Padaei's cannibalistic practices has also been questioned by other scholars. Wheeler took the view that whether they were really cannibals "may be doubted."
James Rennell
Major James Rennell, (3 December 1742 – 29 March 1830) was an English geographer, historian and a pioneer of oceanography. Rennell produced some of the first accurate maps of Bengal at one inch to five miles as well as accurate outlines of Ind ...
said that Herodotus' description of the Padaei was an "odd mixture of truth and falsehood" which was probably a result of what he considered Herodotus' "very confined knowledge of India." Murphy and Mallory suggest that Herodotus' description may result from a misinterpretation of the ritual of dismemberment known to have been practiced by
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...
cultures who are believed to have spoken
Iranian languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
.
Footnotes
References
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*{{Citation , last=Wheeler , first=J. Talboys , title=The geography of Herodotus , year=1854 , place=London , publisher=Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GJYUXRosRIMC
Historiography of India
Tribes described primarily by Herodotus
Ancient peoples of India