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The term Eastern Ethiopian was a historical racial term to refer to the "indigenous people of India" due to the speculation that the indigenous people of India were racially Ethiopians or of Ethiopian origins.

Herodotus, Homer and other Greek authors called Indian people the Eastern Ethiopians or Eastern Æthiopians. Greek writers sometimes identified the Aethiopians of Egypt with the Eastern Aethiopians. Also the Egyptian and Indian geography were sometimes compared or identified: Arrian (vi. i.) mentions that the Indus River was thought by some ancient Greeks to be the source of the Nile.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky claimed that there was a direct racial and cultural link between the Dravidian peoples of India and Ethiopian people. She was attempting to show that Indian culture influenced Ancient Egypt via Ethiopia. She described many parallels between Egypt and India in her works.

After the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation Gottfried de Purucker remarked (referring to Secret Doctrine, vol.2, p.417):

A highly advanced urban civilization of Mohenjo Daro has been discovered on the Indus "between Attock and Sind," exactly the location mentioned in The Secret Doctrine as the abode of the Aethiopians.(Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary)

However, modern genetic studies that show any connection between Indian peoples and African peoples can only be attributed to common journey of Homo Sapiens.

Historical quotes

• Herodotus wrote about the people of India: They differed in nothing from the other Ethiopians, save in their language, and the character of their hair. For the Eastern Ethiopians have straight hair, while they of Libya are more woolly-haired than any other people in the world. (Herodotus: from The History of the Persian Wars, VII.70., c.430 BCE)

• Herodotus wrote about the people of India: "The whole of India is traversed by rivers. . . . As for the people of India, those in the south are like the Aethiopians in colour, although they are like the rest in respect to countenance and hair (for on account of the humidity of the air their hair does not curl), whereas those in the north are like the Egyptians." (Herodotus: The Geography of Strabo - Book XV (excerpts)

The appearance of the inhabitants is also not very different in India and Ethiopia: the southern Indians are rather more like Ethiopians as they are black to look on, and their hair is black; only they are not so snub-nosed or woolly-haired as the Ethiopians; the northern Indians are most like the Egyptians physically.

The Ethiopians are colonists sent from India, who follow their forefathers in matters of wisdom -- 1st century C.E. Apollonius of Tyana

India, taken as a whole, beginning from the north and embracing what of it is subject to Persia, is a continuation of Egypt and the Ethiopians -- the Itinerarium Alexandri, a document from ancient times

One needs to bare in mind that "Ethiopia" does not refer to the modern nation, and was also used to denote Africa immediately South of Egypt in particular, Africa in general, and sometimes used racially as in anything of Ethiopian origins.

See also

• Dravidian people
• Indo-Aryan people
• Austronesian people
• Munda people
• Adivasi

References

1. Ancient Greco-Roman descriptions of Egyptians
2. ^ Rashidi, Runoko. The Global African Community. The African Presence in Indian Antiquity. 1998. Accessed August 9, 2008. http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/india2.html

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