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The controversial Aryan invasion theory is a historical theory first put forth by the German Indologist Friedrich Max Müller and others in the mid nineteenth century in India. It is the predecessor of contemporary views of an Indo-Aryan migration in the context of the expansion of the Indo-Iranians.
Müller and his contemporaries based their views on the reconstructed language of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and the accounts in the Rigveda, 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 Caucasian race of nomadic warriors known as the Aryans, originating in the Caucasus mountains in Southeastern Europe, invaded Northern India and Iran, somewhere between 1800 and 1500 BC. The invaders entered the Indian subcontinent from the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush, 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 Vedic religion, which was codified in the Vedas around 1500 to 1200 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 Avesta, which mentions an exterior homeland Airyanem Vaejah 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 Sanskrit was related to the principal languages of Europe (the Indo-European 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 "Dravidian", were assumed to have been spoken by autochthonous 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 Max Müller 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 Rig-Veda and assumptions about surviving racial hierarchies (see Dasa), 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 colonization. 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 1920s, however, the Indus Valley Civilization 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 invasions or through peaceful migration, and secondly, whether the Aryans came from outside the Indian subcontinent at all.
In its extreme version, this view proposes that no such Aryan migration or invasion occurred; that the Indus Valley civilization was the civilization described in the Vedas; and that the Aryans originated in India. A few racist organizations claim "brahmin" groups concocted this story. But Hindu texts do not mention any type of invasion. Some advocates of this position propose that the proto-Indo-European language actually originated in India, from which its earliest speakers spread westwards. Others believe that the Indo-European languages originated outside India, but that they spread into India before the development of the Indus Valley Civilisation. On this view, the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the IE languages evolved within India, along with the beliefs that became Vedic culture.
Proponents of linguistic and cultural continuity claim that Vedic elements were discovered in the Harappa and Mohenjodaro sites, as well as in Gujarat and off the coastlines of Eastern and Western India, the counter-theory proposes that the great Vedic Saraswati River is the dry river bed that has been identified in Northwestern India and that the 'Aryan race' is nothing more than those Indian tribes considered 'noble' for adherence to Vedic principles, not for their racial characteristics or lineage. This theory of the Aryan culture being indigenous sometimes proposes Vedic Indian culture coming into being as early as 5000 BC, and slowly developing till around the time of the dissolution of the Harappa and Mohenjodaro cultures, whose disappearance is linked to the drying of the Saraswati River. This bears significance because the Rig Veda talks mainly of River Saraswati. While many historians have tried linking this River to a river in Afghanistan,the supporters of the Indigenous Origin theory have tried showing that Saraswati actually flowed in North Western India. The problem is that Saraswati is a dead river. The folk tales, as well as later vedic literature, describe a drying 'Saraswati'. People still talk of places where the river was supposed to have flowed. The supporters of Indigenous origin theory also claim that the satellite pictures of an ancient river bed that had dried in North Western India actually belonged to the River Saraswati. The historians who believe in the aryan migration theory cannot also prove that Saraswati was some other river outside India. This is a big problem for them, as then the whole theory would need to be completely reformulated. They thus continue to believe that Saraswati was a river flowing outside Indian subcontinent.
Political and religious issues
Vedic Sarasvati River In India, the discussion of Indo-Aryan migration is charged politically and religiously.
Supporters of an Indo-Aryan invasion are faced with several accusations. The major one is that the British Raj and European Indologists from the 19th century to the present day promoted the Aryan Invasion hypothesis in support of Eurocentric notions of white supremacy. Assertions that the highly advanced proto-Hindu Vedic culture could not have had its roots in India are seen as attempts to bolster European ideas of dominance.
After Indian independence, Socialist and Marxist accounts of history proliferated in Indian universities. Opponents of the invasion theory contend that Marxists promoted the theory because its model of invasion and subordination corresponded to Marxist concepts of class struggle and ideology. Some modern opponents of the Aryan-Vedic continuity in India, like Romila Thapar, are Marxist.
In contrast, the proponents of a continuous, ancient, and sophisticated Vedic civilization are seen by some as Hindu nationalists who wish to dispense with the foreign origins of the Aryan for the sake of national pride or religious dogma. Another motivation may arise from the desire to eradicate the problem associated with the Indian caste system; the hypothesis that it may originally have been a means of social engineering by the Aryans to establish and maintain a superior position compared to the Dravidians in Indian society may be a source of discomfort.
Until legitimate and widely corroborated archeological evidence for either side of the argument emerges, ulterior motive rather than genuine scholarship will be seen as underpinning their respective theories.
Some Hindu thinkers have reacted against the theory on spiritual rather than historical grounds, claiming it to be 'materialistic'. Sri Aurobindo denies the Aryan invasion theory in his works. He writes: "But the indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of any such invasion..."(Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1971; pp. 23-4)