Commenting on this article.
There are some issues that article raises that need further thought. For example, the so called Indians in Babylon have clearly Iranic names. baga-ina is part of a large number of theophorous names associated with the cult of the Indo-Iranian god bhaga: baga-dAta; baga-denu; baga-mithra (probably devatA dvandva with Iranic mithra, one such is son of mithra-dAta); baga-vIra; baga-pAna; baga-pAda to list some from hAkamAnashiya Iranic document. This suggests that there was an active cult of baga (c.f. bhaga-sUkta of vasiShTha on our side of the divide). The baga-ina in the said document is the son of a certain zimaka. The z initial again strongly indicates his Iranic identity. Hence, these so called hindu-s of Babylon were in all likelihood eastern Iranians from the Indo-Iranian borderlands rathern than Indians proper.
That also brings to question the true influence and degree of control of the east but the Iranian kShathiyatama-s. My suspicion is the reality was that it extended over some Eastern Iranian groups in the gandhAran-sindhu borderland, who were also called hindu by the hAkamAnashiya core.
As an aside I would also posit that:
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- these included the daeva worshipers whose shrines were desecrated by the Zoroastrian emperor &
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- the vaiShTha-s (and likely agastya-s) were close to this group on the Indo-Aryan side in a much earlier age.
In this point we may note a text with the related name bagaindu who is said to have been from the country of the parsumash associated with the court of Nebuchadnezzar. It looks like he was an Iranian of a certain “Persian country” (c.f. similar name of individual in baudhAyana SS).
On the other hand a document from Sippar from the 600s of BCE has the name that can be read as vIraka the son of sheta who issued a credit line: this chap could have been a real Indian. Then there is a certain darmaka father of patiShtana with band of archers from 400s of BCE who is said to belong to a certain Arya organization – he could again have been a real Indian “spelt” in an Iranic deaspirated form. Some Babylonian text mention a man hinduka & woman hindukA the mother of the chief merchant tutu. Could these have been Indians? Given above it is uncertain.
I could go on – may be should write this in more detail but will turn to the second point– that of meluhha. The author notes that at some point it become a name of distant place not necessarily the Harappan domain, like Nubia in Africa. I wonder if it always had that connotation & the Indo-Aryans acquired it as a loan-word in that general sense which became our familiar mlechCha. Otherwise it would be strange that the word mlechCha which emerges in perhaps the (late) brAhmaNa literature came from the name of the Harappans with whom the Arya-s had just mixed. The sense mlechCha is for a foreign rather than local land. Thus, as trade derived West Asian loan word it could have entered the IA vocabular in more or less the same sense.