Aryan Invasion Theory (history and controversies)

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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 was invented in the context of European colonial expansion in the mid 19th century. It is the predecessor of contemporary views of an Indo-Aryan migration in the context of the expansion of the Indo-Iranians.

In favor of the Theory

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.

Initially Max Müller assumed that the migrants would have been farmers, but later writers envisioned an invasion by nomadic warriors. 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.

Critical of the Theory

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.

The only suggestion that there were bloody wars fought between the Aryans and the Dravidians is given by the Ramayan. Here a detailed account of a great battle of the Aryans and "demonic" forces is given. These "demonic" forces are also described as originating from Lanka, which is South of India. It may be interpreted that the original creater of the Ramayan, Valmiki potrayed the whole battle as an account between the Aryans being the good forces; and the Dravidians being the evil/demonic forces. Infact the Demonic forces are clearly decribed as dark or black in colour in every way, which is true of the general skin tone of people in the South of India.

However, the Ramayan also decribes Rama (on whom the Ramayan is centered) as dark/black/blue. There could be several explanations towards this:

1. He was actually dark. This could be because the Aryan's in an effort to settle on the Indian Sub-continent, married local women as their second and third wives; and over time the overall colour of the race became a wheatish complexion.

2. Valmiki produced a story that would unite all of India under Rama. He thus chose to show the enemy as hailing from Lanka (so that conveneiently the battle is not shown as an Indian civil war); and he showed Rama as dark skinned to bring about greater acceptance of this new King

3. The original story over time was edited be several writers to produce a more acceptable version and they used the tactics described in 2 above.

Political and religious issues

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.

Shrikant G. Talageri (1993: 47) thinks that the question whether the Aryans came from outside of India is not very relevant to Hinduism itself, which has all of its holy places in India (in contrast to other religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam). He noted that "Even if it is assumed that a group of people, called "Aryans", invaded, or immigrated into, India,... they have left no trace, if ever there was any, of any link, much less the consciousness of any link, much less any loyalties associated with such a link, to any place outside India."

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 like Sri Aurobindo have reacted against the theory on spiritual rather than historical grounds, claiming it to be 'materialistic'. Sri Aurobindo interprets the descriptions of war in the Rig Veda often as descriptions of spiritual warfare or as nature-poetry. Some Hindus have emphasized the fact that there is not an explicit mention of an Aryan invasion in the Hindu texts. Aurobindo thus 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: 23-4) Also Vivekananda (CW Vol. 3) remarked: "As for the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryan ever came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends."

Racial interpretations of the Vedic Aryans

Some early European Indologists have interpreted the Vedic texts in a racial sense. Isaac Taylor (The Origins of the Aryans. 1892: 226-227) noted that "German scholars have contended that the physical type of the primitive Aryans was that of the North Germans - a tall, fair, blue-eyed dolichocephalic race", while French writers have maintained that they were brachycephalic Gauls. This situation led Max Muller to proclaim: "I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar." (Max Müller. 1887: 120. Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas.)

Arya has also been interpreted by some as a term refering to only blond-haired and blue-eyed people. But apart from a few gods associated with the sun, there is in Sanskrit literature according to Michael Witzel only one golden-haired (hiranyakeshin) person , i.e. Hiranyakeshin, the author of the Hiranyakeshin-Shrauta-Sutra. (J. Bronkhorst and M.M. Deshpande. Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia. 1999: 390) While it is possible that this person was golden-haired, the author's name could also refer to one of the epithets of the solar deity Vishnu. These descriptions could also be poetic allegories: solar deities and gods associated with the sun were often described as golden-haired. On the other hand, there are references in Sanskrit literature where the hair of Brahmins is assumed to be black. For example, Atharva Veda 6:137. 2-3 contains a charm for making "strong black hairlocks" grow and in Baudhayana’s Dharma-Sutra 1:2, (also cited in Shabara’s Bhasya on Jaimini 1:33) we read the verse “Let him kindle the sacrificial fire while his hair is still black”.

Some verses of the Rig Veda have been interpreted racially. The tribes hostile to the Indo-Aryans in some Rigvedic wars are described as dark-skinned, e.g. RV 9.73.5:

O'er Sire and Mother they have roared in unison bright with the verse of praise, burning up riteless men,

Blowing away with supernatural might from earth and from the heavens the swarthy skin which Indra hates.

Other scholars like Hans Hock (1999) or Hermann Grassmann (Wörterbuch zum Rig Veda: 1872) think that this instance may refer to darkness, the "dark world" of the Dasas or to the nightly darkness over the surface of the earth.

Hans Hock (1999b) studied all the occurrences that were interpreted racially in Geldner's translation of the Rig Veda and concludes that they were either mistranslated or open to other interpretations. He writes that the racial interpretation of the Indian texts "must be considered dubious." (p.154) Hock also notes that "early Sanskrit literature offers no conclusive evidence for preoccupation with skin color. More than that, some of the greatest Epic heroes and heroines such as Krishna, Draupadi, Arjuna, Nakula and (...) Damayanti are characterized as dark-skinned. Similarly, the famous cave-paintings of Ajanta depict a vast range of skin colors. But in none of these contexts do we find that darker skin color disqualifies a person from being considered good, beautiful, or heroic." (p.154-155) Hans Hock also notes that the world of the Aryas is often described with the words "light, white, broad and wide", while the world of the enemies of the Aryas is often described with the words "darkness or fog". And in many of these instances, he notes, a "racial" interpretation can be safely ruled out.

According to another examination by Trautmann (1997) the racial evidence of the Indian texts is soft and based upon an amount of overreading. He concludes: "That the racial theory of Indian civilization still lingers is a miracle of faith. Is it not time we did away with it?" (p.213-215)

The earliest still existing commentary on the Rig Veda is the one by Sayana (14th century). According to Romila Thapar (1999, The Aryan question revisited), "There isn't a single racial connotation in any of Sayana's commentaries."

For a discussion of this topic, see also Dasa.

Literature

J. Bronkhorst and M.M. Deshpande. 1999. Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia
Bryant, Edwin: The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. 2001. Oxford University Press.ISBN 0195137779
Elst, Koenraad Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate. 1999. ISBN 8186471774 ,
Frawley, David The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India, 1995. New Delhi: Voice of India
Hock, Hans. 1999b, Through a Glass Darkly: Modern "Racial" Interpretations vs. Textual and General Prehistoric Evidence on Arya and Dasa/Dasyu in Vedic Indo-Aryan Society." in Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia.
Schetelich, Maria. 1990, "The problem ot the "Dark Skin" (Krsna Tvac) in the Rgveda." Visva Bharati Annals 3:244-249.
Parpola, Asko. 1988. The Coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the Cultural and Ethnic Identity of the Dasas.
Sethna, K.D. 1992. The Problem of Aryan Origins. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Talageri, Shrikant. 1993. Aryan Invasion and Indian Nationalism.
Trautmann, Thomas R. 1997, Aryans and British India. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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