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| The controversial '''Aryan invasion theory''' is a historical theory first put forth by the ] ] ] and others in the mid ] in ]. It is the predecessor of contemporary views of an ''']''' in the context of the expansion of the ]. | |||
| Müller and his contemporaries based their views on the reconstructed language of the ]s, and the accounts in the ], while they did not have available much of the archaeological evidence on which more detailed contemporary views are based. | |||
| As expressed, for example, by Charles Morris in his 1888 book "The Aryan Race," this theory holds that a ] race of ] warriors known as the ]s, originating in the ] mountains in Southeastern Europe, invaded Northern ] and ], somewhere between ] and ] BC. The invaders entered the ] from the mountain passes of the ], possibly on horseback, bringing with them the domesticated horse. The theory further proposes that this race displaced or assimilated the indigenous pre-Aryan peoples and that the bulk of these indigenous people moved to the southern reaches of the subcontinent or became the lower castes of post-Vedic society. The Aryans would have brought with them their own ] religion, which was codified in the Vedas around ] to ] BC. Upon arrival in India, the Aryans abandoned their nomadic lifestyle and mingled with the native peoples remaining in the north of India. The victory of the Aryans over the native civilization was quick and complete, resulting in the dominance of Aryan culture and language over the northern part of the subcontinent and considerable influence on parts of the south. The initial theory was built primarily on linguistic grounds, since there is no mention of an actual invasion or migration into India in the Vedic texts, and the Vedic texts do not refer to a homeland of the Hindus outside of India, in contrast to the ], which mentions an exterior homeland ] of the ancient Zoroastrians. | |||
| There are others, however, who take a completely different view, and do not accept that there was any specific Aryan migration from the west to India. These people tend to see a reverse migration from Western India to Central Asia, and from there into Europe. They claim either that the Proto-Indo-European language originated in India, or that Sanskrit was the actual proto Indo-European language and that it was the source of all later Indo-European languages. | |||
| The theory itself has a complex history — initial acceptance, subsequent modifications, and currently new challenges in terms of counter theories. No single conclusive theory now prevails. Rather, combinations of theories are generally accepted. | |||
| The theory was first proposed on linguistic grounds, following the discovery that ] was related to the principal languages of Europe (the ] language group). It was assumed that Northern India, in which languages derived from Sanskrit were spoken, must have been occupied by migrants speaking Indo-European languages. The dominant languages in Southern India, known as "]", were assumed to have been spoken by ] pre-Aryan peoples, who had been displaced southward. Hence the Aryans were said to have supplanted the Dravidians in the north of the subcontinent. | |||
| Initially ] assumed that the migrants would have been farmers, but later writers envisioned an invasion by nomadic warriors. The vedic literature however does not mention the Aryans to be nomads. It was proposed, on the basis of passages in the ] and assumptions about surviving racial hierarchies (see ]), that these invaders were light-skinned people who had subdued darker aboriginal people and then mixed with them. The theory fit some existing ideas that justified contemporary European ]. Initially, the aboriginal 'Dravidian' occupants of India were assumed to have been primitive, and the achievements of ancient India were credited to the descendants of the Aryan invaders. In the ], however, the ] was discovered. It was obviously advanced for its time, with planned cities, a standardized system of weights and bricks, etc, and it was understood that if the Aryans had invaded, then, regardless of their later achievements, they had in fact overthrown or at least supplanted a civilization more advanced than their own. | |||
| Accepted generally when it was first propounded, this theory has since been questioned on two fundamental grounds: firstly, whether the Aryans came through bloody ]s or through peaceful ], and secondly, whether the Aryans came from outside the Indian subcontinent at all. | |||
| ==See also== | |||
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| * ] | |||
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Latest revision as of 21:50, 10 December 2022
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