What a tangle.
Your eastern Iranian language dates from antiquity, but it was the language of a fugitive people, driven from disaster to disaster, until at last, a mongrelised collection of ethnicity occupied some parts of southern Afghanistan.
The Kushans were a central Asian tribe driven out by the Hiung Nu, who then occupied the Ferghana Valley. This drove out the previous occupants, the Sakas, or Scythians, who then descended on the cities of Bactria, centred around Balkh, which were Greek cities, peopled by the remnants of the Alexandrine invasion and the wars of the Diadochi. The Kushan language was an Indo-European language of the Centum division, not the Satam division.
The Scythians, whom you forgot to mention, or perhaps never knew about, first occupied Bactria, or Balkh, and then, in the second phase, decades later, when the Yueh-chi or Kushans attacked again, descended into Arachosia, some part of which was renamed Sakasthan after them; currently it is known as Seistan.
They were tribesmen and nomads who spoke an east Iranian dialect. This is where the east Iranian dialect connection began and ended, for the time being.
They, and allied tribes known as the Pahlavas, ruled southern Afghanistan for a brief period, until the Kushan Empire overwhelmed all local resistance.
The Huns, so-called, were not Attila's Huns, but a completely different tribe known as the Ephthalites, probably of mixed ethnicity, including Scythian and Iranian, and attacked and over-ran parts of the Kushan Empire, including their holdings in Afghanistan. It is thought that they were a mixture of Sogdian (one of the Saka provinces under the Achaemenids) with two or three or more other tribes, including proto-Turkish tribes. Turk + Saka, more or less.
- Persians, under the Achaemenid Empire;
- Greeks and Macedonians, under the Alexandrine Empire;
- Greeks under the Diadochi, in this case, under Seleukos Nikator;
- Greeks from the cities of the north;
- Scythians, or Saka, later the Saka-Pahlava from Ferghana, later Balkh, later Seistan;
- Kushan from Takla Makan, then Ferghana, then the whole of north-west India and Afghanistan;
- Ephthalites;
These were the peoples and kingdoms and empires who conquered Afghanistan and ruled without local resistance, none at all, during the period 580 BC to 552 AD. The Ephthalites gave their name, in altered form, to the Abdali, so now you know when you can start bragging: after 552 AD, before that, you were cannon fodder, in a manner of speaking, since one never knows, you may start arguing that there was no cannon then.
You mentioned Ghurids, and Ghaznavids, and Lodhis, Khiljis, Tughlaqs and Mughals. Probably in an attempt to capture the flavour of the successive dynasties that ruled Afghanistan, and then moved into north India at the turn of the millennium. Ghurids and Ghaznavids were dynasties, not people; Khiljis were hybrids with a lot of Turkic blood, and so were Tughlaqs. Lodhis were Pushto, the Mughals were Persianised Turks, who called themselves Mongol to gain the prestige of the Mongols by association; this was a conceit begun by Timur.
What of them? What was common to them, or what was their common link to you? Since you disclaim the brotherhood of Islam. That was the only link, and hardly a link, considering the constant warfare between each and every faction.
They were greater warriors and adventurers than anybody else, so that line of yours sounds singularly unconvincing.
Very true.
Still not certain either way.
We must take refuge in some certainties, therefore. These are easy to pick out. These are all of them concerning Pakistan, not one concerning India. All concern the sub-national feelings of Pakistan.
Good luck with your efforts.
