Tajiks consider themselves to be direct descendants of ancient Sughdians, but not all of them know what spaces were embraced by the boundaries of this people, how its culture was forming, how a long way of creation of its statehood was moulding, what kind of influence was exerted by this people on the language and culture of the present peoples of Central Asia, to what extent and which of them could have preserved their customs and traditions, what monuments of history and culture witness the ties between the present Tajiks with ancient Sughdians. With the aim of acquainting its readers with interesting and valuable historical materials which, as we hope, will help weightily the enrichment of our readers' spiritual potential "Varorud" plans a series of publications dwelling on all this variety. Tajiks consider themselves to be direct descendants of ancient Sughdians, but not all of them know what spaces were embraced by the boundaries of this people, how its culture was forming, how a long way of creation of its statehood was moulding, what kind of influence was exerted by this people on the language and culture of the present peoples of Central Asia, to what extent and which of them could have preserved their customs and traditions, what monuments of history and culture witness the ties between the present Tajiks with ancient Sughdians. With the aim of acquainting its readers with interesting and valuable historical materials which, as we hope, will help weightily the enrichment of our readers' spiritual potential "Varorud" plans a series of publications dwelling on all this variety.
"Sughd" is an Aryan (Iranian) - ancient Persian-Tajik word (Greek - "Sughdiana", Chinese - "Suli"), it occurs first in the ancientest written monument "Avesta" where it is called as the second largest country created by the supreme deity of Zoroastrians Ahuro Mazdo.
Sughd, the country of ancient Aryan communities and peoples. Is formed naturally-ecologically and culturally-anthropologically at the stage of paleometal of the epoch of eneolith (copper-stone age) and bronze, that is in the course of IV - I millennia B.C. in mountainous and flat zones of the reservoirs and the Haftrood (Seven Rivers) comprising the areas of the great mountainous systems: the Pamirs, the Alay, the Tien-Shan.
This country had everything: many cultivated fertile lands and irrigative systems, subterranean and terrestrial useful minerals, excellent climate and ecology, a lot of sun, fresh air and convenient communicative realias. And its primal lore was the intelligent, educated, highly intellectual population of complaisant, peaceful, unquarrelsome disposition, adapting itself to diverse modes of life and labour.
In Sughdian potential of inner progress development there functioned constant historic regularity of the demands for natural-ecologic, cultural-anthropological and social-economic derivatives leaning on the inexhaustible resources of four (2x2) natural reservoirs of Zarafshan - Syr-Darya (central), Kaska-Darya - Haftrud (peripherica) of continental Sughd and the fifth one being colonial civilizational demand for resources and forces of historically young communities and the tribes of the Deep Asia: Eastern Central Asia, Siberia, the Far East and the Pacific Coast.
And therefore in the world history: Sughdians - these are Hellenes on dry lands: planes, steppes and highlands;
Sughdians - these are Phoenicians on international communications of trade, cultural dialogue and diplomacy;
Sughdians - these are Hindus by their kindneass, wisdom, inclination for folk traditions and respect for cultural legacy;
Sughdians - these are Chinese of fine exquisite matters, great cookery specialists and gourmets, good-natured neighbours;
Sughdians - these are teachers of literacy, counting, trade, agriculture and gardening, good civilizations of young neighbourly peoples, authorities of far international ties;
Sughdians presented to the communications of trade and cultural dialogue, especially to the Great Silk Road Sughdian language literacy and alphabet;
Sughdians being creators (in the Early Middle Ages yet) of the Federative state with elected heads - ikhshids;
Sughdians are a people (together with other Eastern-Iranian nationalities) which ethnically gave away the entire itself to the classical Tajiks of the Middle Ages and converted through the latters into a component of mentally high agriculturists, artisans and intellectuals of a number of modern peoples of Central and Eastern Asia.
Taking all this into consideration, Sughdian are worthy of reanimation in all realias of cultural anthropology in the XXI-st century and the III-d millennium. This people and this country would have been a worthy part of the free democratic Open Society of the forthcoming universe.
In 2000 there terminated the chronologically durable six-millennia historic cycle of historico-geographical, ecological, cultural-anthropological formation with versatile efflorescence and civilizational upsurges - that of Sughd viloyat, a part of Central Asia and contemporary Tojikiston. In August-November of 2000, first the viloyat Majlis of deputies and then Majlisi Oli of the Republican of Tojikiston reinstated the name of this historic region called Leninabad oblast in the Soviet epoch.
In ancient times Sughd viloyat which occupied the fertilest reservoirs of the Syr-Darya, the Zarafshan, the Kashka-Darya and the Haftrud rivers was famous for developed agriculture (being motherland of cultural plants) - wheat and other grained crops, gardening, viticulture, melons and gourds of the best world sorts - for urbanization and handicrafts industry; it became an enormous granary of Central Asia and the Middle East on the Trans-Eurasian Great Silk Road, and Sughdians themselves always were the most active participants of commercial-economic and intellectual dialogue on the dichotomy East-West.
In Sughd viloyat there were carried into effect grand manysided historico -archeologic researches, they defined six-millennia-dates since the inception of irrigative agriculture settled urbanization handicraft industry - Alma mater civilization of urban and oasis centers of Sarazm type (Panjakent region), later on it was a turn of a series of early eastern towns - Khujand, Isfara, Kurukad, Gaz, Isad -being equal in age to Alexander the Macedonian and the epoch of Hellenism. The peoples inhabiting Sughd viloyat have a grand historic cultural-anthropologic heritage, they possess modern highly practical intellect in the branches of agrarian and processing industries, production of polemetals extracted from mountains, they have an availability to organize the output of commodities on the spot according to the principle "from raw stuffs to final product".
This Sughdian pearl of the Orient with multiple tiers of mountains-ecologic, valley-fluvial and lake landscape with coniferous forests spread out both horizontally and vertically contains at the same time the zones of high mountainous tourism, treatment and rest; in the perspectives it may provide all the range of services of the Asian variant of "Swiss" infrastructure in the pearly quarter of world space confined in the ring of the Tien-Shan and the Pamirs-Alay mountainous labyrinths.
The availability of the materials raised by scientific explorations in practically all the branches of knowledge permits to create an informative analytical library of "Sughdology" in "Varorud" miniatures about the past and the present of this heavenly region of the earth.