Abhira people

The Abhiras were a legendary people mentioned in ancient Indian epics and scriptures as early as the Vedas. They were a warlike tribe is admitted by all and Probably they were a semi-nomadic people as they are associated with various peoples and provinces. A historical people of the same name are mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. The Mahabharata describes them as living near the seashore and on the bank of the Sarasvati River, near Somnath in Gujarat.

Etymology
The term Abhira, means cowherd. The Vishnu Purana calls the Abhiras as Gopalas. In the Mahabharata, Arjuna also calls the Abhiras as Gopalas. The Amarakosha mentions Gopa, Gopala, Gosamkhya, Godhuk and Ballava as the synonyms for Abhira and says that the village or place where Abhiras lived is named as Ghosa or Abhirapalli.

History
The Abhiras appear in ancient India as a famous and numerous tribe already established in Punjab, Rajasthan and Sind at the beginning of the Christian era. Sanskrit literature shows Abhiras to be an dangerous race. In the first century AD south-west Rajasthan and western Sindh were globally called Abhiradesa literally "The Land of the Abhiras". The epic Ramayana does not directly mention the Abhira region, but mentions the marukantara living in the Thar desert of Marvar a place where Rama himself is supposed to have thrown a shaft on the land of the savage Abhiras Probably, by the end of the second century they had spread over the whole of India. The frontier districts of the Abhiradesa were the regions of Parkar and Hyderabad Sind (to the north of the Indus delta) and south-west Rajasthan comprising the districts of Marwar, Ajmer, Mewar, Pushkar, and the whole of southern Rajasthan up to Malwa and Saurashtra.

In the Mahabharata Abhiras are said to be degraded kshatriyas, which also suggests that they were once soldiers.

In the Mahabharata the Abhiras are mentioned by Sanjaya in the enumeration of the people of Bharatavarsha.

The scholars like R.G. Bhandarkar and Jayaswal feel that there is a strong evidence in Harivamsa Purana and Balacarita for the origin of cowherd-God Krishna among the Abhiras.

Along with the Vrishnis, the Satvatas, and the Yadavas, the Abhiras were followers of the Vedas, and worshipped Krishna, the head and preceptor of these tribes. Tradition goes that the Yadavas, Vrishnis, and the Abhiras were cattlerearers by profession. Lord Krishna has been conceived as a leader of the cowherds.

In the Padma-puranas and certain literary works, the Abhiras are referred to as belonging to the race of Krishna.

In archaeological inscriptions, Abhiras are mentioned as belonging to the race of Krishna.

The Narayani Army which the Krishna organised and which made him so powerful that his friendship was eagerly sought by the greatest kings of his time, is described in the Mahabharata as being all of the Abhira caste.

Sunil Kumar Bhattacharya says that the Abhiras are mentioned in the first-century work of classical antiquity, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. He considers them to be a race rather than a tribe. Scholars such as Ramaprasad Chanda believe that they were Indo-Aryan peoples. But others, such as Romila Thapar, believe them to have been indigenous. The Puranic Abhiras occupied the territories of Herat; they are invariably juxtaposed with the Kalatoyakas and Haritas, the peoples of Afghanistan. There is no certainty regarding the occupational status of the Abhiras, with ancient texts sometimes referring to them as warriors, as pastoral cowherders, but at other times as plundering tribes.

Rule of the Konkan
From 203 to 270 the Abhiras ruled over the whole of the Deccan Plateau as a paramount power. The Abhiras were the probably successors of the Satvahanas.

Nepali branch
Before the 12th century, an Ahir dynasty ruled some areas in what is now Nepal.

Connection to modern Ahirs
According to Ganga Ram Garg, the modern-day Ahir caste are descendants of Abhira people and the term Ahir is the Prakrit form of the Sanskrit term Abhira. Bhattacharya says that the terms Ahir, Ahar and Gaoli are current forms of the word Abhira. This view gets support in many writings.

M. S. A. Rao and historians such as P. M. Chandorkar and T. Padmaja have explained that epigraphical and historical evidence exists for equating the Ahirs with the ancient Abhiras and Yadava tribe.

Abhiras Under Gupta Empire
During the reign of Samudragupta (c. 350), the Abhiras lived in Rajputana and Malwa on the western frontier of the Gupta empire. Historian Dineshchandra Sircar thinks of their original abode was the area of Abhiravan, between Herat and Kandahar, although this is disputed. Their occupation of Rajasthan also at later date is evident from the Jodhpur inscription of Samvat 918 that the Abhira people of the area were a terror to their neighbours, because of their violent demeanour. Abhiras were sturdy and regarded carried on anti-Brahmanical activities. As a result, life and property became unsafe. Pargiter points to the Pauranic tradition that the Vrishnis and Andhakas, while retreating northwards after the Kurukshetra War from their western home in Dwarka and Gujarat, were attacked and broken up by the rude Abhiras of Rajasthan.

The Abhiras did not stop in Rajasthan; some of their clans moved south and west reaching Saurashtra and Maharashtra and taking service under the Satavahana dynasty and the Western Satraps. Also founded a kingdom in the northern part of the Maratha country, and an inscription of the ninth year of the Abhira king Ishwarsena.

Abhiras as Yadavas
The Mahabharata and other authoritative works use the three terms-Abhira, Yadava and Gopa synonymously.

In the Mahabharata it is mentioned that when the Yadavas (though belonging to the Abhira group) abandoned Dvaraka and Gujarat after the death of Krishna and retreated northwards under Arjuna's leadership, they were attacked and broken up by the rude Abhiras of Rajputana. They were also mentioned as warriors in support of Duryodhana and Kauravas and in the Mahabharata, Abhira, Gopa, Gopal and Yadavas are all synonyms. They defeated the hero of the Kurukshetra War (Arjuna) who had slain the mighty warriors like Karna and Bhishma in the war. However Abhiras spared him when he disclosed the identity of the members of the family of Krishna.

The Yadavas, mentioned in the Mahabharata, were pastoral Kshatriyas among whom Krishna was brought up. The Gopas, whom Krishna had offered to Duryodhana to fight in his support when he himself joined Arjuna's side, were no other than the Yadavas themselves, who were also the Abhiras.

The Yadavas of the Mahabharata period were known to be the followers of Vaisnavism, of which Krishna was the leader. They were the Gopas (cowherd) by profession, but at the same time they held the status of the Kshatriyas, by participating in the battle of Kurukshetra. The present Ahirs are also followers of Vaishnavism. In the epics and the Puranas the association of the Yadavas with the Abhiras was attested by the evidence that the Yadava kingdom was mostly inhabited by the Abhiras.

According to famous historian K. P. Jayaswal, the Abhiras of Gujarat are the same race as Rastrikas of Emperor Ashoka and Yadavas of the Mahabharata.

According to Jayant Gadkari tribes such as Abhiras, Vrishnis, Andhakas and Satvatas after a period of long conflicts came to be known as Yadavas.

In the period between the third and tenth centuries the history of the Abhiras becomes extremely confused, both in brahminical records and epigraphic inscriptions. They begin to be associated with ancient Yadava dynasties such as the Chedis and Haihayas and are probably to be identified with the Kalachuri dynasty, one of whose rulers inaugurated the Kalachuri or Chedi era in A.D. 249.

According to historian G. H. Ojha, the assimilation of the Abhiras with the Yadavas was an accomblished fact by the 12th century.

Legendary figures in Hinduism
As a goddess, Gayatri is the personified form of popular Vedic hymn, Gayatri Mantra. According to the medieval Sanskrit text Padma Purana, the storm god Indra brought Gayatri, an Abhira girl, to Pushkar to help Brahma in a yajna, a ritual sacrifice. During the ceremony she became Brahma's second wife.

Historian Ramaprasad Chanda argued in 1916 that the goddess Durga evolved from "syncretism of a mountain-goddess worshiped by the dwellers of the Himalaya and the Vindhyas", a deity of the Abhiras conceptualised as a war-goddess.

The Padma Purana features Vishnu stating that, "I shall be born amongst you, O Ābhīras, at Mathura in my eighth birth".

Varna Status
The Abhiras were stratified into the four Varna categories of Abhira-Brahmins, Abhira-Kshatriyas, Abhira-Vaisyas and Abhira-Sudras.