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The Kirāta () is a generic term in Sanskrit literature for people who had territory in the mountains, particularly in the and Northeast India and who are believed to have been Sino-Tibetan in origin.
In the Periplus, the Kirata are called Kirradai,"...among whom are the Kirradai, a race of wild men with flattened noses" who are the same people as the Pliny's Scyrites and Aelian's Skiratai; though Ptolemy does not name them, he does mention their land which is called Kirradia. They are characterized as barbaric in their ways, Mongoloid in appearance speaking a Tibeto-Burmese language."They are characterized as barbaric in their ways and Mongoloid in appearance (Shafer 124). From the widespread area in which the literary sources place the Kiratas Heine-Geldern (167) concludes that the name was a general designation for all the Mongoloid peoples of the north and east. Shafer (124), on the basis of the nomenclature of their kings, concludes that they spoke a Tibeto-Burmic language and were the predecessors of the Kirantis, now living in the easternmost province of Nepal."
The Sesatai (known to Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder as Saesadai or Sosaeadae), who traded the aromatic plant malabathrum, were described – in terms similar to descriptions of the Kirradai – as short and flat-faced, but also shaggy and white."Ptolemy calls them Saesadai and describes them more fully; they are not only short and flat-faced, as in the Periplus, but shaggy and white-skinned. ... The characteristics themselves indicate that the Sesatai were similar to the Kirradai, and their access to the border with China indicates that they lived, as Coedes suggests 'between Assam and China'".
Ancient Indian texts gives an indication of their geographical position. In the Mahabharata, Bhima meets the Kiratas to the east of Videha, where his son Ghatotkacha is born; and in general, the dwellers of the Himalayas, especially the eastern Himalayas, were called Kiratas. In general they are mentioned as "gold-like", or yellow, unlike the or the , who were dark Proto-Australoid people.
In Yoga vasistha 1.15.5 Rama speaks of kirateneva vagura, "a trap laid by Kiratas", so about 10th century BCE, they were thought of as jungle trappers, the ones who dug pits to capture roving deer. The same text also speaks of King Suraghu, the head of the Kiratas who is a friend of the Persian King, Parigha.
The meaning of 'Kirat' as is sometime referred as 'degraded, mountainous tribe' while other scholars attribute more respectable meanings to this term and say that it denotes people with the lion's character, or mountain dwellers.The Indian Journal of Social Work, Volume 62 By Department of Publications, Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 2001
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