Indo-Aryan migrations

The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Eastern Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. thumb|The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption which underlies the Western theory. The assumption is that the Indo-Germanic people are the purest of the modem representatives of the original Aryan race. ~ B.R. Ambedkar thumb|right|It is indeed coming to be doubted whether the whole story of an Aryan invasion through the Punjab is not a myth of the philologists. ~ Sri Aurobindo thumb|The Indo-Aryan problem is likely to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, so we might as well attempt to address it in a cordial fashion. ~ Edwin Bryant thumb|In the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated. ~ Jean-Paul Demoule thumb|In the days when historians supposed that history had begun with Greece, Europe gladly believed that India had been a hotbed of barbarism until the “Aryan” cousins of the European peoples had migrated from the shores of the Caspian to bring the arts and sciences to a savage and benighted peninsula. Recent researches have marred this comforting picture. ~ Will Durant thumb| Indo-European scholars should have scrapped all their historical reconstructions and started again from scratch. But that is not what happened. Vested interests and academic posts were involved. ~ Edmund Leach thumb|There is no archaeological or biological evidence for invasions or mass migrations into the Indus Valley between the end of the Harappan phase, about 1900 B.C. and the beginning of the Early Historic period around 600 B.C. ~ J. M. Kenoyer thumb|An ostrich-like attitude is perpetuating the Aryan invasion myth. ~ B. B. Lal thumb|Certainly the assumption that the Aryas were recent ‘immigrants’ to India, and their enemies were ‘aborigines’, has done much to distort our understanding of the archaeology of India and Pakistan. ~ Colin Renfrew thumb|It is time to end the "linguistic tyranny". ~ Jim Shaffer thumb|Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! ~ Swami Vivekananda thumb|If the so-called “invasion” of IA speakers is not (yet) visible in the archaeology, it must be stressed that such movements rarely leave clear physical traces. ~ Michael Witzel Indigenous Aryans, also known as the Out of India theory (OIT), is the idea that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. __NOTOC__ Archaeology · Philology Quotes A So far as the Rig Veda is concerned, there is not a particle of evidence suggesting the invasion of India by the Aryans from outside India... So far as the testimony of the Vedic literature is concerned, it is against the theory that the original home of the Aryans was outside India.... B.R. Ambedkar, Who Were The Shudras(1946) The theory of the Aryan race set up by Western writers falls to the ground at every point… Why has the theory failed?... the theory is based on nothing but pleasing assumptions and inferences based on such assumptions… Not one of these assumptions is borne out by facts… The assertion that the Aryans came from outside and invaded India is not proved and the premise that the Dasas and Dasyus are aboriginal tribes of India is demonstrably false… The originators of the Aryan race theory are so eager to establish their case that they have no patience to see what absurdities they land themselves in… The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago. B.R. Ambedkar Who were the Shudras, 1946. Writings and Speeches, Volume 7 edited by Vasant Moon, Education Department, Govt. of Maharashtra Publications, Mumbai, 1990. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption which underlies the Western theory. The assumption is that the Indo-Germanic (sic) people are the purest of the modem representatives of the original Aryan race. Its first home is assumed to have been somewhere in Europe. These assumptions raise a question: how could the Aryan speech have come to India? This question can be answered only by the supposition that the Aryans must have come into India from outside. Hence the necessity for inventing the theory of invasion. The . . . assumption is that the Aryans were a superior race. This theory has its origin in the belief that the Aryans are a European race and as a European race it is presumed to be superior to the Asiatic ones. . . . Knowing that nothing can prove the superiority of the Aryan race better than invasion and conquest of the native races, the Western writers have proceeded to invent the story of the invasion of India by the Aryans, and the conquest by them of the Dasas and Dasyus. . . . The originators of the Aryan race theory are so eager to establish their case that they have no patience to see what absurdities they land themselves in. They start on a mission to prove what they want to prove and do not hesitate to pick such evidence from the Vedas as they think is good for them. B. R. Ambedkar. Who Were The Shudras(1946). Writings and Speeches, Volume 7 edited by Vasant Moon, Education Department, Govt. of Maharashtra Publications, Mumbai, 1990. Quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 3. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. The support which this theory receives from Brahmin scholars... is a very strange phenomenon. As Hindus they should ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its expressed avowal of the superiority of the Aryan races over the Asiatic races. but the Brahmin scholar has not only no such aversion, but he most willingly hails it. The reasons are obvious. The Brahmin… claims to be a representative of the Aryan race and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him to establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and their superiority. He likes particularly that part of the theory which makes the Aryan an invader and a conqueror of the non-Aryan races. For it helps him to maintain his overlordship over the non-Brahmins. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Volume 7 edited by Vasant Moon, Education Department, Govt. of Maharashtra Publications, Mumbai, 1990. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. The discourse about the Indo-Europeans was also dependent on the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century, imperialism. To an even greater extent than concerned the view of Semites, racism was present in the scholars' depictions of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population. The Indo-Europeans were presented as humanity's cultural heroes, who, undefeated throughout history, spread knowledge and ruled over lower peoples, and who therefore seemed predestined to remain rulers even in the future. The “Aryan” colony of India came to have a special place in this context. The scholars' racist attitude made them seek evidence in the Vedic texts that the ancient Aryan immigrants (aryas) had had a racial consciousness, and that the caste society was a kind of apartheid system from the very beginning. But reference to the higher castes as “Aryan brothers" could also be used for humanitar­ian aims. By referring to the relationship between Europeans and Indians, people imagined that they could more easily reform the Hindu culture and modernize or “Indo-Europeanize" Indian society. Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.(310-11) The hypothesis, invented to fill the gap, that these ideas were borrowed by barbarous Aryan invaders from the civilised Dravidians, is a conjecture supported only by other conjectures. It is indeed coming to be doubted whether the whole story of an Aryan invasion through the Punjab is not a myth of the philologists. Sri Aurobindo The Secret of the Veda The indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in significance. There is no actual mention of any such invasion. The distinction between Aryan and un-Aryan on which so much has been built seems on the mass of evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference. Sri Aurobindo, quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 2 The bulk of the peoples now inhabiting India may have been the descendants of a new race from more northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions; but there is nothing in the Veda, as there is nothing in the present ethnological features of the country, to prove that this descent took place near to the time of the Vedic hymns or was the slow penetration of a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilized Dravidian peninsula. Sri Aurobindo. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or true than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,—the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inimical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogenous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a “henotheistic” Vedic naturalism; the ingenious and brilliant extravagances of the modern sun and star myth weavers. (...) Western Philology has converted it [the word arya] into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values.... Sri Aurobindo, 1910-1914, quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). So great is the force of attractive generalisations and widely popularised errors that all the world goes on perpetuating the blunder talking of the Indo-European races, claiming or disclaiming Aryan kinship and building on that basis of falsehood the most far-reaching political, social or pseudo-scientific conclusions. Sri Aurobindo, quoted in Danino, M., & Nahar, S. (1996). The invasion that never was (1st ed). Mother’s Institute of Research & Mira Aditi, Mysore, India. B These Hindus are supposed to have entered the country from the northwest; they are conjectured by some to have brought with them the Brahmanical religion, and the language of the conquerors was probably the Sanscrit. On these three meagre data our philologists have worked ever since the Hindustani and its immense Sanscrit literature was forcibly brought into notice by Sir William Jones -- all the time with the three sons of Noah clinging around their necks. This is exact science, free from religious prejudices! Verily, ethnology would have been the gainer if this Noachian trio had been washed overboard and drowned before the ark reached land! Helena Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled Over the course of the past half century, the model of an Indo-Aryan population invasion have been thoroughly problematized, and largely discredited within archaeology .. What the accumulation of archaeological evidence over the course of the twentieth century has inevitably demonstrated is that the major transitions in South Asian pre- and proto-history are gradual and often show little evidence for any outside origin… Archaeologists in particular have thus very much moved away from migrationist models, including the idea of Indo-Aryan invasions, as an explanation for cultural change in South Asia. And those scholars, both archaeological and otherwise, who continue to embrace an Indo-Aryan migration paradigm now generally present a very different model that sees the language change as resulting more from social processes than any substantial population movements. Boivin N 2007 Anthropological, historical, archaeological and genetic perspectives on the origins of caste in south Asia; in The evolution and history of human populations in south Asia: inter- disciplinary studies in archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics and genetics (eds) MD Petraglia and B Allchin (Dordrecht: Springer) pp 341–361 (Boivin 2007: 349). quoted in Danino, M. (2019). Methodological issues in the Indo-European debate. Journal of Biosciences, 44(3), 68. A principal motive of many Indian scholars in this debate is the desire to reexamine the infrastructure of ancient history that is the legacy of the colonial period and test how secure it actually is by adopting the very tools and disciplines that had been used to construct it in the first place. The Aryan invasion theory is a major foundation stone of ancient Indian history, the "big bang," and has therefore attracted the initial attention of many Indian scholars. Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. The Indo-Aryan problem is likely to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future, so we might as well attempt to address it in a cordial fashion. Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge A primary reason that Indian archaeologists have become disillusioned with the whole enterprise of the Indo-Aryans is because they have been offered, and initially accepted, a progression of theories attempting to archaeologically locate the Indo-Aryans on the grounds of the philological axiom that their nature was intrusive. These theories have successively proved to be wrong or questionable. The course of scholarship in the last century has evolved from images of blond, soma-belching, Germanic supermen "riding their chariots, hooting and tooting their trumpets" as they trampled down the inferior aboriginal Dasa through speakers of an Indo-Aryan language destroying the highly advanced civilization of the superior Dasa; to discrete trickles of Indo-Aryan speakers possibly coexisting in a neighborly fashion in the cities of the Indus Valley with the hospitable Dasa. As a result many archaeologists have become frustrated with the whole Aryan-locating enterprise and jettisoned the linguistic claims altogether. Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9 Up until the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in 1922, images of virile, blond, northern tribes swooping across the mountain passes on chariots and overpowering the primitive and ill-equipped natives they found on their way were presented as the standard version of the early history of the subcontinent. Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9 Although in various other academic fields and area studies, such as race science, postcolonial scholarship has completely deconstructed and exposed the colonial investment in the propagation of certain theories, the field of Indology, at least in present-day Western academic circles, has been very suspicious of these voices being raised against the theory of the Aryan invasions. Edwin Bryant: “The Indo-Aryan invasion debate: the politics of a discourse”, WAVES conference, Los Angeles. August 1998, abstract., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically but it is nevertheless established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology. Burrow, T., 1975: “The early Aryans”, in Basham A., ed.: A Cultural History of India, Oxford: OUP. page 21. Quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. C Up to now, Aryans have eluded every archaeological definition. There is so far no type of artifacts or ceramics that causes their discoverer to declare, 'The Aryans came here. Here is a typically Aryan sword or goblet!' Jean-Marie Casal, 1969. Casal, La Civilisation de l’Indus et ses énigmes, p. 205. Casal, J.-M. La Civilisation de l’Indus et ses énigmes, Paris, 1969. During the 1935 Parliament debates on the Government of India Act, Sir Winston Churchill opposed any policy tending towards decolonization on the following ground: 'We have as much right to be in India as anyone there, except perhaps for the Depressed Classes [= the SC/ STs], who are the native stock.' We have as good a right to be in India as anyone there except, perhaps, the Depressed Classes, who are the original stock. Winston Churchill. (According to some interpretations of the Aryan Invasion Theory, the upper castes in India are not of the native stock) Reproduced in C.H. Philips ed.: Select Documents on the History of India and Pakistan, part IV, p.315. , and quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. ISBN 978-8185990743 In the case of Indo-European language relationships, it is possible to make the argument that the creation of a hypothesis relating the languages of Northern India to those of Europe was initially created and promulgated by nineteenth century scholars in order to promote agendas of colonialism or racism. Clackson, James (2013). The Origin of the Indic Languages – The Indo- European Model, in Perspectives on the Origin of Indian Civilization (ed. Marcantonio, Angela and Jha, Girish Nath), Dartmouth: Center for Indic Studies, University of Massachusetts and New Delhi: D.K. Printworld (P) Ltd. (Clackson 2013:286) The existence of a group of people called Indo-Europeans or Vedic Aryans has achieved the status of received wisdom—it has been repeated so often that it is now accepted fact, despite there being no satisfactory archaeological evidence whatsoever to support the presence of an incoming group of such numbers as historical and archaeological explanations require. Coningham and Young, The Archaeology of South Asia, p. 85. Coningham, R. and R. Young. The Archaeology of South Asia: From the Indus to Asoka, c. 6500 BCE–200 CE, Cambridge, 2015. There is no indication from the Rigveda that the Aryans were conscious of entering a new country when they came to India. S.K. Chatterji "Race-movements and Prehistoric Culture", The Vedic Age. p. 157. quoted in : The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992. D Where are the burned fortresses, the arrow heads, weapons, pieces of armour, the smashed chariots and bodies of the invaders and defenders?... Despite the extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites, there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and the destruction on the supposed scale of the Aryan invasion. George F. Dales, “The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-daro” in Expedition (Pennsylvania University, 1964), vol. VI, p. 36-43. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9 In the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated. [...] There is in fact no evidence for the gradual progression of an entire material culture from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Atlantic or the Ganges—unless, of course, we drastically force the data. Jean-Paul Demoule - The Indo-Europeans_ Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West [T]here is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations. About models that attempt to explain migrations that are not visible in the archaeological record. Jean-Paul Demoule - The Indo-Europeans_ Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West In the Third Reich, even schoolchildren knew from their textbooks that this [= the Aryan] race had spread from the north to the south and east, and not the other way around. Savitri Devi, Souvernirs et Réflexions d'une Aryenne, p 273, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 561 As I walked over the ancient road and through the patches of dry weeds toward the temple, I reviewed all that I had read about India and all that I had seen firsthand. I recalled the fact that the highest classes were the lightest-skinned, that nothing was more insulting to an Indian than calling him "black," that "Varna" (caste) is the Indian word for color. The original language of the ancient Aryan invaders, Sanskrit, is an ancient Indo-European language with direct links to every other European language. Ancient Sanskrit literature even has descriptions of Aryan leaders as having light eyes and hair. As I neared the temple, I thought about the splendor that once was and about the dreadful squalor I had witnessed since my arrival in the India of today. David Duke, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding, 1998. In the days when historians supposed that history had begun with Greece, Europe gladly believed that India had been a hotbed of barbarism until the “Aryan” cousins of the European peoples had migrated from the shores of the Caspian to bring the arts and sciences to a savage and benighted peninsula. Recent researches have marred this comforting picture—as future researches will change the perspective of these pages. In India, as elsewhere, the beginnings of civilization are buried in the earth, and not all the spades of archeology will ever quite exhume them. Durant, Will (1963). Our Oriental heritage. New York: Simon & Schuster. By freeing themselves from this hypothesis drawn from earlier linguistic studies, archaeologists may now focus their attention on the archaeological evidence in its own terms... [There is a] continuing lack of agreement over the criteria by which the presence of the Indo-Aryans can be demonstrated. R. Dyson. 1993. "Paradigm Changes in the Study of the Indus Civilization." In Harappan Civilization (571-581). Ed. Gregory L. Possehl. 2d ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 11 E At some time in the second millennium BC, probably comparatively early in the millennium, a band or bands of speakers of Indo-European language, later to be called Sanskrit, entered India over the northwest passes. This is our linguistic doctrine which has been held now for more than a century and a half. Emeneau, M.B., 1980, Language and linguistic area: essays by Murray B. Emeneau selected and introduced by Anwar S. Dil, Stanford University Press, p.85. The idea has recently been challenged by archaeologists, who ― along with linguists ― are best qualified to evaluate its validity. Lack of convincing material (or osteological) traces left behind by the incoming Indo-Aryan speakers, the possibility of explaining cultural change without reference to external factors and ― above all ― an altered world-view have all contributed to a questioning of assumptions long taken for granted and buttressed by the accumulated weight of two centuries of scholarship. George Erdosy, Preface in: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity edited by George Erdosy, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, 1995. [T]here is no indication in the Rigveda of the Arya‘s memory of any ancestral home, and by extension, of migrations. Given the pains taken to create a distinct identity for themselves, it would be surprising if the Aryas neglected such an obvious emotive bond in reinforcing their group cohesion. Thus their silence on the subject of migrations is taken here to indicate that by the time of composition of the Rigveda, any memory of migrations, should they have taken place at all, had been erased from their consciousness. George Erdosy. 1989: Ethnicity in the Rigveda and its Bearing on the Question of Indo- European Origins. Erdosy, George. pp. 35-47 in ―South Asian Studies vol. 5. London 40-41 Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2008). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Several cultural traits with good Vedic and Avestan parallels have been found widely distributed between the southern Urals, Central Asia and the Indo-Iranian borderlands. However, even allowing for the uncertain chronology of Central Asian sites, few of these traits show the northwest-southeast gradient in chronology predicted by our linguistic models... They originate in different places at different times and circulate widely, undoubtedly through the extensive interaction networks built up in the mid-3rd to early 2nd millennia B.C... It is impossible, thus, to regard the widespread distribution of certain beliefs and rituals, which came to be adopted by Indo-Iranian speakers, as evidence of population movements. George Erdosy. 1995. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 11 We reiterate that there is no indication in the Rigveda of the Arya‘s memory of any ancestral home, and by extension, of migrations. Given the pains taken to create a distinct identity for themselves, it would be surprising if the Aryas neglected such an obvious emotive bond in reinforcing their group cohesion. Thus their silence on the subject of migrations is taken here to indicate that by the time of composition of the Rigveda, any memory of migrations, should they have taken place at all, had been erased from their consciousness. George Erdosy, 1989: Ethnicity in the Rigveda and its Bearing on the Question of Indo- European Origins. Erdosy, George. pp. 35-47 in ―South Asian Studies vol. 5. London 40-41 Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2008). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. One thing which keeps on astonishing me in the present debate is the complete lack of doubt in both camps. Personally, I don’t think that either theory, of Aryan invasion and of Aryan indigenousness, can claim to have been "proven" by prevalent standards of proof; even though one of the contenders is getting closer. Indeed, while I have enjoyed pointing out the flaws in the AIT statements of the politicized Indian academic establishment and its American amplifiers, I cannot rule out the possibility that the theory which they are defending may still have its merits." Koenraad Elst, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, (1999) The linguistic "aryanization" of India by white Aryan invaders from Europe formed a complete case study of all that the upcoming racist worldview stood for. Elst K. The Saffron Swastika (2001), Volume I It is against the stereotype of overbearing macho invaders, but the Aryans secretively stole their way into India, careful not to leave any traces. Elst, K: Linguistic Aspects of the Aryan Non-Invasion Theory, in Bryant, E. F. (2008). The Indo-Aryan controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history. London: Routledge. F In the Indian subcontinent, the archaeological assemblages considered to reflect the coming of the Aryans... do not provide any stable or consistent picture. H.P. Francfort, The Archaeology of Protohistoric Central Asia,‘ p. 154. Francfort, H.-P. The Archaeology of Protohistoric Central Asia and the Problems of Identifying Indo-European and Uralic-Speaking Populations,‘ in Christian Carpelan, et al., eds, Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European: Linguistic and Archaeological Considerations, Helsinki, 2001, pp. 151–168. G By showing that the Hindus are mere upstarts and squatters on the land (as they themselves are in America, Australia and other places!), they can set up their own claim. For then neither the Hindus nor the Europeans are indigenous and as to who should possess this land becomes merely a matter of superior might. ... No, the European... will never cease duping us into believing that we have no more right to this land than he has. Golwalkar, M.S. We, quoted in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". I.166 I have always felt that the idea underlying this theory has a basis other than the purely scientific or historical one. Ganganath Jha, 1940. Quoted from B.B. Lal in : Indian History and Culture Society., Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (2012). Bias in Indian historiography. 8-9 The Iranians had retained a distinct memory of the Indo-Iranian common home in their mythology but the Indo-Aryans... have nothing to say on the point. [... There is a ] distinctively Indian Rigvedic culture... a distinct product of the Indian soil... It really cannot be proved that the Vedic Aryans retained any memory of their extra-Indian associations. B.K. Ghosh, in : The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. I: The Vedic Age edited by R.C. Majumdar, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Publications, Mumbai, 6th edition 1996. , quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993) quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993) H During Gobineau's lifetime, the old theory of the Asian origin of the European languages and traditions, and of cultural movements from the East to the West, increasingly gave way to speculations on primeval movements from the West to the East, and on Aryan migrations from Europe, specifically Northern Europe, or even the North Pole, to India. According to these speculations, the European or Northern invaders gave their superior culture to the Indians and then lost their superiority through mixing with the local inhabitants and perished in a climate for which they were not suited. In 1903, E. de Michelis summarized this view by stating that Asia, and India in particular, was not the 'cradle', but the 'grave of the Aryans'. Wilhelm Halbfass quoted in Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines We know that the Hindus in India are a people mixed from the lofty Aryan immigrants and the dark-black aboriginal population, and that this people is bearing the consequences today; for it is also the slave people of a race that almost seems like a second Jewry. “Wir wissen, dass die Hindu in Indien ein Volk sind, gemischt aus den hochstehenden arischen Einwanderern und der dunkelschwarzen Urbevölkerung, und dass dieses Volk heute die folgen trägt; denn es ist auch das Sklavenvolk einer Rasse, die uns in vielen Punkten nahezu als zweite Judenheit erscheinen darf.” Adolph Hitler. Jäckel & Kuhn 1980:195, quoting Hitler 1920, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. Hitler, Adolf, 1920: Warum sind wir Antisemiten?, in Jäckel & Kuhn 1980, p.184-204. Jäckel, Eberhard, and Kuhn, Axel, eds., 1980: Hitlers sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905-1924, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart The ‘PIE-in-India’ hypothesis is not as easily refuted as the ‘Sanskrit-origin’ hypothesis, since it is not based on ‘hard-core’ linguistic evidence, such as sound changes, which can be subjected to critical and definitive analysis. Its cogency can be assessed only in terms of circumstantial arguments, especially arguments based on plausibility and simplicity. Hans Hock. HOCK 1999a: “Out of India? The linguistic evidence”, p.1-18 in “Aryan and non-Aryan in South Asia: evidence, interpretation, and ideology” 1999. (Proceedings of the International Seminar on Aryan and non-Aryan in South Asia, Univ. of Michigan, October 1996) Quoted in I The Aryas do not refer to any foreign country as their original home, do not refer to themselves as coming from beyond India, do not name any place in India after the names of places in their original land as conquerors and colonizers always do, but speak of themselves exactly as sons of the soil would do. If they had been foreign invaders, it would have been humanly impossible for all memory of such invasion to have been utterly obliterated from memory in such a short time as represents the differences between the Vedic and Avestan dialects. Srinivas Iyengar. 1914. "Did the Dravidians of India Obtain Their Culture from Aryan Immigrant[sic]." Anthropos 1-15.(79-80) quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 3 J Nothing, in the present state of archaeological research ... enables us to reconstruct convincingly invasions that could be clearly attributed to Aryan groups. Jean-François Jarrige, “Du néolithique à la civilisation de l’Inde ancienne” (Paris: Arts Asiatiques,vol. L-1995), p.24, 21 quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009 This [Aryan invasion] theory of Indian civilization is perhaps one of the most perduring and insidious themes in the historiography and archaeology of South Asia, despite accumulating evidence to the contrary. Peter G Johansen: ‘ (Johansen 2003, p. 195). Johansen PG 2003 Recasting the foundations: new approaches to regional understandings of South Asian archaeology and the problem of culture history. Asian Perspect. 42 193–206 in Danino, M. (2019). Methodological issues in the Indo-European debate. Journal of Biosciences, 44(3), 68. K Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations. J.M. Kenoyer, 1991 a. "The Indus Valley Tradition of Pakistan and Western India." Journal of World Prehistory 5:331-385. Also in 1991b. "Urban Process in the Indus Tradition: A Preliminary Model from Harappa." In Harappa Excavations 1986-1990 (29-60). Ed. Richard H. Meadow. Madison, Wis.: Prehistory. quoted In The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Edwin Bryant, 2001,p.190 There is no archaeological or biological evidence for invasions or mass migrations into the Indus Valley between the end of the Harappan phase, about 1900 B.C. and the beginning of the Early Historic period around 600 B.C. JM Kenoyer, (Kenoyer 1998: 174) in The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History ed. Bryant E., L Patton [Indians] became active propagators who appropriated this discourse to fight the presumed historical injustices of Indian society. In the south of India, political parties were created that claimed to represent ‘Dravidian’ interests against ‘Brahmanical’ supremacy.... If this theory reproduces the specific cultural experience that Europe has had of India in the guise of historical truth, then it is high time to take the ongoing controversy about the AIT out of the realm of partisan politics. Keppens, Marianne & Roover, J.(2014). Orientalism and the Puzzle of the Aryan Invasion Theory. Pragmata: Journal of Human Sciences 2,2 51–76 (Keppens and Roovers 2014:18) It is certain ... that the Rigveda offers no assistance in determining the mode in which the Vedic Aryans entered India., .. If, as may be the case, the Aryan invaders of India entered by the western passes of the Hindu Kush and proceeded thence through the Punjab to the east, still that advance is not reflected in the Rigveda, the bulk at least of which seems to have been composed rather in the country round the Sarasvati river. A.B. Keith: "The Age of the Rigveda", (1922: 79); 1922, The Age of the Rigveda ' in The Cambridge History of India , Vol.I. quoted from THE ṚGVEDA AND INDO-EUROPEANS Author(s): Nicholas Kazanas Source: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 80, No. 1/4 (1999), pp. 15-42 . also in : The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992. L An ostrich-like attitude is perpetuating the Aryan invasion myth. B.B. Lal, (2010): “An Ostrich-like Attitude Is Perpetuating the ‘Aryan Invasion’ Myth”, in B. R. Singh (ed.) (2010), p. 23-36. Bal Ram Singh (2010): Origin of Indian Civilization, Dartmouth MA, Center for Indic Studies - Delhi, D.K. Printworld. Why do serious scholars persist in believing in the Aryan invasions?... Why is this sort of thing attractive? Who finds it attractive? Why has the development of early Sanskrit come to be so dogmatically associated with an Aryan invasion?… Sir Edmund Leach. "Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245. Where the Indo-European philologists are concerned, the invasion argument is tied in with their assumption that if a particular language is identified as having been used in a particular locality at a particular time, no attention need be paid to what was there before; the slate is wiped clean. Obviously, the easiest way to imagine this happening in real life is to have a military conquest that obliterates the previously existing population! The details of the theory fit in with this racist framework... Sir Edmund Leach. "Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245. The origin myth of British colonial imperialism helped the elite administrators in the Indian Civil Service to see themselves as bringing `pure' civilization to a country in which civilization of the most sophisticated (but `morally corrupt') kind was already nearly 6,000 years old. Here I will only remark that the hold of this myth on the British middle-class imagination is so strong that even today, 44 years after the death of Hitler and 43 years after the creation of an independent India and independent Pakistan, the Aryan invasions of the second millennium BC are still treated as if they were an established fact of history. Sir Edmund Leach. "Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245. Common sense might suggest that here was a striking example of a refutable hypothesis that had in fact been refuted. Indo-European scholars should have scrapped all their historical reconstructions and started again from scratch. But that is not what happened. Vested interests and academic posts were involved. Almost without exception the scholars in question managed to persuade themselves that despite appearances, the theories of the philologists and the hard evidence could be made to fit together. The trick was to think of the horse-riding Aryans as conquerors of the cities of the Indus civilization in the same way that the Spanish conquistadors were conquerors of the cities of Mexico and Peru or the Israelites of the Exodus were conquerors of Jericho. Sir Edmund Leach. "Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245. M There [is] no credible archaeological evidence to demonstrate, through elite dominance or any other mechanism, the type of language shift required to explain, for example, the arrival and dominance of the Indo-Aryans in India. JP Mallory, Twenty-first century clouds over Indo-European homelands, 2013, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins. The archaeological evidence for an expansion from the steppelands across historical Iran and India varies from the extremely meagre to total absence: both the Anatolian and the Kurgan theory find it extraordinarily difficult to explain the expansion of the Indo-European languages over a vast area of urbanized Asian populations, approximately the same area as that of Europe. Mallory, J. P., and D. Q. Adams. 2006. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. OUP Oxford. There is no evidence to show that these Vedic Aryans were foreigners or that they migrated into Sapta-Sindhu within traditional memory... The Vedic literature is intensively Indian in tradition, technique and outlook. ... So far as is known, none of the Sanskrit books, not even the most ancient, contains any distinct reference or allusion to the foreign origin of the Indians. ... Migrating races look back to the land of their origin for centuries.... The Vedic Aryans... must have lived in the Sapta-Sindhu so many centuries before the Vedic period, that they had lost all memory of an original home. K.M. Munshi, Quoted from B.B. Lal in : Indian History and Culture Society., Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (2012). Bias in Indian historiography. 9 P The Indians never knew for thousands of years that there was an Aryan invasion; their sacred literature is silent about it. About the middle of the last century . . . an invasion was suggested by the Western scholars. First it was an inference, then it became a presumption, and now it has become an article of faith. Pillai, Govinda Krishna. 1959. Vedic History. Allahabad: Kitabistan. (Pillai 1959, 67) quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13 Indian tradition knows nothing of any Aila or Aryan invasion of India from Afghanistan, nor of any gradual advance from thence eastwards. Ancient Indian Historical Tradition by F.E. Pargiter, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi-Varanasi-Patna, 1962. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. R Certainly the assumption that the Aryas were recent ‘immigrants’ to India, and their enemies were ‘aborigines’, has done much to distort our understanding of the archaeology of India and Pakistan. Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language, p. 195. quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009 When Wheeler speaks of ‘the Aryan invasion of the Land of the Seven Rivers, the Punjab’, he has no warranty at all, so far as I can see. If one checks the dozen references in the Rigveda to the Seven Rivers, there is nothing in any of them that to me implies invasion: the land of the Seven Rivers is the land of the Rigveda, the scene of the action. Nothing implies that the Aryas were strangers there. Nor is it implied that the inhabitants of the walled cities (including the Dasyus) were any more aboriginal than the Aryas themselves... Despite Wheeler’s comments, it is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley civilization. Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language, pp 188 ff. also quoted in The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History ed. Bryant E., L Patton Their oldest literature supplies no certain indication that they still retained the recollection of their former home; and we may reasonably conclude therefore that the invasion which brought them into India took place at a date considerably earlier. E.J. Rapson, "Peoples and Languages", The Cambridge History of India, edited by E.J . Rapson, 1922, p. 43. in The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992. S The Vedic Aryans, if at all they came from outside, ... must have lived in the Sapta-Sindhu [the region of the seven rivers in the ancient Punjab] so many centuries before the Vedic period that they had lost all memory of an original home. S. Srikanta Sastri " Appendix" to "The Aryan Problem", The Vedic Age, in:The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992. The Indo-Aryan invasion(s) as an academic concept in 18th- and 19th-century Europe reflected the cultural milieu of that period. Linguistic data were used to validate the concept that in turn was used to interpret archaeological and anthropological data.What was theory became unquestioned fact that was used to interpret and organise subsequent data. It is time to end the "linguistic tyranny" that has prescribed interpretative frameworks of pre- and proto-historic cultural development in South Asia. Jim Shaffer, 1984, ‘The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality’ in Lukacs JR (ed) The People of South Asia: the Biological Anthropology of India, Pakistan and Nepal, Phenum, NY. p.88. A diffusion or migration of a culturally complex ‘Indo-Aryan‘ people into South Asia is not described by the archaeological record. Migration, philology and South Asian archaeology by Jim G. Schaffer & Diane A. Lichtenstein The current archaeological evidence suggests that the original reconstruction indicating the occurrence of an Indo-Aryan invasion mistakenly associated linguistic change with the migration of peoples. Linguistic changes and affiliations are brought about by a complex series of cultural processes, many of which do not involve the physical movements of social groups. 1984 Shaffer, J.G. "The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality." In People of South Asia: The Biological Anthropology of India, Nepal and Pakistan. J.R. Lukacs, (Ed.). New York: Plenum Press, pp. 77-90. It seems that missionary scholars in India had already perceived the potential of the science of comparative philology in uprooting the hold of the Brahmins". ...Other missionaries found it preferable to target the non-Aryan identity of segments of the Indian populace rather than play up the Aryan commonalty. ... Devendra Swarup quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 1 Devendraswarup. 1993. "Genesis of the Aryan Race Theory and Its Application to Indian History." In The Aryan Problem (30-39). Ed. S. B. Deo and Kamath Suryanath. Pune: Bharatiya Itihasa Sankalana Samiti. No tradition of an early home beyond the frontier survives in India. The Oxford History of India by Vincent A. Smith, edited by Percival Spear, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 3rd edition 1970. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. V Of late, there was an attempt being made to prove that the Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes. I should not be sorry if they had been all drowned there, theory and all. Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our Scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends. Swami Vivekananda. Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Whenever the Europeans find an opportunity, they exterminate the aborigines and settle down in ease and comfort on their lands; and therefore they think the Aryans must have done the same! The Westerners would be considered wretched vagabonds if they lived in their native homes depending wholly on their own internal resources, and so they have to run wildly about the world seeking how they can feed upon the fat of the land of others by spoliation and slaughter; and therefore they conclude the Aryans must have done the same! But where is your proof? Guess-work? Then keep your fanciful guesses to yourselves! Swami Vivekananda, "The east and the west", Translated from Bengali. Complete Works, vol. 5 I have consulted during the last ten years or so, a large number of Veda scholars of international repute.... and they affirmed that there is not, in the hymns, any direct or indirect memory of a pre-Indian home in the minds of the authors. K.C. Verma, , quoted in Devahuti, D., & Indian History and Culture Society. (1980). Bias in Indian historiography. Delhi: D.K. Publications. p. 50-51 W It is best to admit that no proto-Aryan material culture has yet been identified in India. Sir Mortimer Wheeler. Early India and Pakistan (Bombay, 1959), p. 126.. The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992. The association of these groups with early bearers of the Aryan tongue is without warrant. If a word of warning is appropriate, it is on the desirability of avoiding an excessively Aryan 'preoccupation'. Sir Mortimer Wheeler. The Problem of Aryan Origins by K.D. Sethna, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1992. In the revised part dealing with prehistoric India in the Third Edition (1970) of The Oxford History of India by the Late Vincent A. Smith, edited by Percival Spear. p. 34. ... the "invasion model" ... has been supplanted by much more sophisticated models over the past few decades... This development has not occurred because Indologists were reacting, as is now frequently alleged, to current Indian criticism of the older theory. Rather, philologists first, and archaeologists somewhat later, noticed certain inconsistencies in the older theory and tried to find new explanations, a new version of the immigration theories. Michael Witzel, "Indocentrism", in Edwin Bryant, Laurie L. Patton (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History (Routledge, 2005), p. 348 If the so-called “invasion” of IA speakers is not (yet) visible in the archaeology, it must be stressed that such movements rarely leave clear physical traces. Michael Witzel (2006): “Rama’s Realm: Indocentric Rewritings of Early South Asian History”, in Garrett Fagan (ed.), Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public, London - New York, Routledge. 213 Z The question of Indo-European migrations into the subcontinent of India can, at best, be described as enigmatic. David G. Zanotti: “Another Aspect of the Indo-European Question: a Response to P. Bosch Gimpera”, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1975/3, p.255-270, spec. p.260., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. External links Category:History of India Category:History of Pakistan