Ibbetson favours the theory that the Pathans are in the main a race of Indian extraction, that is, that the Pathan stock is decidedly Indian despite the admixture of foreign blood. According to him, the true Pathans are the modern representatives of an Aryan Indian race called by Herodotus the Pactiyae, which gave birth to many of the tribes represented to-day in and on the borders of the Peshawar Valley. According to this view the Pathans proper are those Pathan tribes which have a decidedly Pactiyan stock, in which the preponderating racial element is Indian; while the mixed Pactiyan and foreign tribes in which the stock is not Indian, but Afghan, Turk or Scythian, as the case may be, are Pathan by virtue of their Pactiyan blood, as well as by their geographical location, association, customs and language. But that the stock is in the main Afghan rather than Indian, seems borne out by the fact that from the earliest times of which historical records exist, we find the Pathan ever arrayed against and despising the Indian—evincing an antagonism which is not merely practical and political, but one of ideals and sentiment. On the other hand, although the Pathan tribes have had constant and bloody feuds with the Afghans, in their brief periods of peace they display a marked similarity of sentiment, ideals and aims, while the mental characteristics of the Pathan also approximate much more closely to the Afghan than to those of any purely Indian tribe. Of the other races and tribes to which the term Pathan is loosely applied, the _Ghilzais_ are a race of mixed Turkish and Persian descent, which has now become assimilated with the Afghans by sentiment and association. The _Tajiks_, another to which the term Pathan is applied, are of pure Persian origin, and are believed to be the remnants of certain Persian tribes who once inhabited Afghanistan before the advent of the Afghans by whom they were subdued. The Tajiks still retain their Persian speech. The _Hazaras_ are Persian-speaking Tartars who have long settled among the Afghans, but who hold among them a subordinate and dependent position. [Sidenote: Character]