Grierson asserted that the Khasas were one of the warrior "Kshatriya tribe of Aryan origin" with linguistic connections to both Sanskrit and Iranian languages, who lost claim to Vedichood due to non-observance of Vedic rules. Roman geographer Pliny The Elder described the ancient Khasas/Khasiras (referred as 'Casiri') as one of the Indian ethnicity. Saka origin theories Historian Rahul Sankrityayan proposes the origin of the Khasha tribe from the Shaka tribe and further identifies Khashas and Shakas to have been two different waves of the same race. The Shakas were in Indian subcontinent before the first century BCE while the Khashas spread over the Himalayas and extensively populated the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand and the later waves of Shakas got diffused into them. Historian Omchand Handa contends that the "sun worship" among Khashas is a Shaka legacy and perhaps the standing Surya images with long boots which was commonly found at the Khasha belt of Himalaya. Some examples of it are the Bara-Aditya at Katarmal and Surya images of Baijnath, Bageshwar and Dwarahat. History Medieval history in Uttarakhand-Nepal Khasas are believed to have arrived in the western reaches of Nepal at the beginning of first-millennium B.C. or middle of first-millennium A.D. from the north-west. The earliest linguistic evidences related to Nepali language also substantiates the linguistic intrusion of an Indo-Aryan speaking Khasa tribe from the West or Northwest Himalayas into Central Himalayas at the present day regions of Western Nepal. It is likely that they absorbed people from different ethnic groups during this immigration. They had extensively populated the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand and they had entirely dominated the inner Himalayan belt up to Nepal. Previously, Khashas had strongly established themselves from Afghanistan to Nepal from ancient period and as per internal evidences, they managed the village level theocratic republics like Gram-Rajya and Mandals under various local clans and identities. The ruling Katyuri dynasty (700-1065 CE) of Kumaon who were of Khas origin, was one of the ruling houses of Joshimath that claimed the sovereignty over other Gram Rajyas of the entire territory. The Katyuris ruled from Joshimath in the Alaknanda Valley and later they shifted their capital to Baijnath. They have also been connected to the medieval Khasa Malla kingdom. The Khasa kings of West Nepal-Uttarakhand formed the famous Malla Kingdom, which ruled Humla from the eleventh century before collapsing and splintering into local chiefdoms during the fourteenth century. In