It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by Cthulwho
I thought the Kurgan hypothesis, which suggests Indo Europeans originated in modern day Ukraine, was more widely accepted than the "out of India" theory.
As an adaptation of the Latin Arianus, referring to Iran, 'Aryan' has "long been in English language use". Its history as a loan word began in the late 1700s, when the word was borrowed from Sanskrit ā́rya- to mean the same thing it originally did in that Old Indic language, namely as a (self-)identifier of speakers of North Indian languages. When it was determined that Iranian languages – both living and ancient – used a similar term in much the same way (but in the Iranian context as a self-identifier of Iranian peoples), it became apparent that the shared meaning had to derive from the ancestor language of the shared past, and so, by the early 1800s, the word 'Aryan' came to refer the group of languages deriving from that ancestor language, and by extension, the speakers of those languages.
Then, in the 1830s, the term "Aryan" was adopted for speakers of Indo-European languages in general, in the erroneous belief that this was an ethnic self-identifier used by prehistoric speakers of European languages. This development was in turn instrumental to the development of the concept of an "Aryan race", which by the early 20th century became closely linked to Nordicism, which posited Northern European racial superiority over all other peoples (including Indians and Iranians). In Nazi Germany the classification of peoples as Aryan or not was most emphatically directed towards the exclusion of Jews.[n 1] This racialist interpretation engendered both the "Aryanization" programs of Nazi Germany, and – in a late 19th century British-mediated form – to a racialist reinterpretation of Indian society, texts and history. Following the end of World War II and the discovery of the genocide that the self-styled "Aryans" had caused, the word 'Aryan' ceased to have a positive meaning in general Western understanding. In colloquial modern English it is typically used to signify the Nordic racial ideal promoted by the Nazis.
It is indeed ironic that the origin of this theory does not lie in Indian records, but in 19th Century politics and German nationalism. No where in the Vedas, Puranas or Itihasas is there any mention of a Migration or Invasion of any kind. In 1841 M.S. Elphinstone, the first governor of the Bombay Presidency, wrote in his book History of India:
The actual origin of the myth is obscure. Hankins (The Racial Basis of Civilization, 1926) traces it back to the early period of the nineteenth century, and if its roots extend further into the past, they are not clearly uncovered. The German warmongers, in the latter part of the century, avidly adopted the myth as dressing for the doctrine sometimes called "Pan-Germanism": the doctrine of a race of supermen, destined to dominate the world with the ruthlessness of ancient savagery.
This doctrine of a great German race, however, is older than the Aryan myth. It was well established before Nietzsche fulminated against morality and humanitarianism. Perhaps the German paranoia can be traced back to Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, as Hankins implies, and as Kolnai (The War Against the West, 1938) seems to think it can be. This possibility is not important for our present purposes. The doctrine of a German race of supermen is certainly older than the Aryan myth.
One of the main ideas used to interpret and generally devalue the ancient history of India is the theory of the Aryan invasion. According to this account, India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500-100 BC, who overthrew an earlier and more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization from which they took most of what later became Hindu culture. This so-called pre-Aryan civilization is said to be evidenced by the large urban ruins of what has been called the "Indus valley culture" (as most of its initial sites were on the Indus river). The war between the powers of light and darkness, a prevalent idea in ancient Aryan Vedic scriptures, was thus interpreted to refer to this war between light and dark skinned peoples. The Aryan invasion theory thus turned the "Vedas", the original scriptures of ancient India and the Indo-Aryans, into little more than primitive poems of uncivilized plunderers.
This idea totally foreign to the history of India, whether north or south has become almost an unquestioned truth in the interpretation of ancient history Today, after nearly all the reasons for its supposed validity have been refuted, even major Western scholars are at last beginning to call it in question.
These theories continue to be maintained by modern historians, where not only are "Indo-Europeans" still believed to be the ancestors of modern Europeans, but of Indian civilization as well. However, as David Frawley has pointed out in Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India, not a single item of evidence is available. The only shred of proof provided is an ambiguous reference in the Hindu Vedas, to a battle between the forces of "light" and the forces of "darkness." Nevertheless, according to the Columbia History of the World: "it is probable that as the Aryan invaders battled their way down from the northwest through the Ganges Valley, they conquered and enslaved local peoples most of whom were darker and smaller than their Aryan foes. The most archaic word for slave is dasa (dark), and the classical word for caste if varna (color). The principle became the basis for a further development."