25 Issues in the Protohistory of India and Pakistan I:The Aryans

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Introduction

 

The theory of an invasion of the Indian subcontinent by Aryans was born early in the early 19th century from comparative philology: it provided a convenient explanation of the kinship between Sanskrit and Europe’s languages noticed by a few Jesuits and eloquently expressed by William Jones in the late 18th century. It received a fresh impetus with F. Max Müller’s historical reading of the Rig-Veda, who saw in it the story of a prolonged conflict between invading Aryans and native Dasyus.

 

While the quest for linguistic origins was legitimate, the theory was from the start marred by various kinds of racial, racist, Victorian and Eurocentric prejudices. It turned the Aryans into an aggressive, conquering, superior “Aryan race”, which later became one of the pillars of the Nazi ideology. It was also used by the British colonial powers to divide Indian society into so-called Aryan and Dravidian “races” (among others) and to portray Vedic culture (and its later form of Hinduism) as “imposed” on the “natives”, the latter assumed to be the ancestors of today’s low castes, Dalits and tribals.

 

After World War II and the horrors of the Nazi ideology, proponents of the theory tried to shed its racial baggage and to turn the Aryans into pure linguistic entities. At the same time, since the 1960s, the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) has steadily retreated in the face of a growing body of evidence from archaeology, cultural studies, anthropology and genetics, and has sometimes adopted the milder form of Aryan Migration Theory (AMT). This module examines the various facets of the issue, which has too often been dealt with simplistically or with various ideological biases.

 

2. Evidence from the Texts

 

Mountstuart Elphinstone, a British historian and statesman, wrote in his 1841 History of India:

 

Neither in the Vedas, nor in any book … is there any allusion to a prior residence … out of India…. There is no reason whatever for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their present one.1

 

British archaeologist Colin Renfrew agreed:

 

As far as I can see, there is nothing in the Hymns of the Rigveda which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking populations were intrusive to the area….

 

Nothing implies that the Aryas were strangers there.2

 

These statements sum up the lack of evidence for an invasion or migration in India’s Vedic texts, an absence stressed by several Indian figures, such as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

 

Besides, all racial or colonial readings of the Rig-Veda, which, for instance, turned Dasyus into “dark-skinned”, “stub-nosed” aborigines, have been challenged in recent decades and discredited. Indologists now widely accept that the Veda makes no racial distinction, only a cultural one, between Ā ryas and Dasyus: the former are those who side with the gods, observe the right rituals, utter mantras correctly, and fight for the preservation of the cosmic order (ritam), while the latter oppose it, are of “garbled speech” and “wrapped in darkness”. Such themes are common to several ancient mythologies; reading races and historical conflicts in them is illegitimate.

 

3. Evidence from Geography

 

A study of the Rig-Vedic geography brings out four points opposed to the AIT/AMT scenario:

  • The text is familiar with the sea and navigation, which is not expected from a few nomadic tribes supposed to have recently entered the subcontinent.
  • The Saptasindhava, which covers much of the Northwest, appears too large a territory for a few Vedic clans.
  • The Rig-Veda lists rivers from east to west; arriving Aryans would have listed them from west to east.
  • The Sarasvati River, worshipped in the Rig-Veda, was dry by the time of their supposed arrival, 1500 BCE (see Module on the Sarasvati River).

4.  Evidence from Archaeology

 

Soon after the discovery in 1921-22 of the Indus or Harappan civilization (2600–1900 BCE for its Mature or urban phase), attempts were made to attribute its demise to the invading Aryans, for instance using the evidence of skeletons found in a few streets of Mohenjo-Daro. The evidence proved faulty and the civilization’s decline is now attributed mostly to environmental factors.

  1. Currently, archaeologists familiar with the archaeology of South Asia have reached a consensus that there is, on the ground, no evidence for an invasion by Aryans at any time between 2000 and 1200 BCE. A few Indian voices:
  2. S.R. Rao, an Indian archaeologist who excavated at Lothal (Gujarat): “There is no indication of any invasion of Indus towns nor is any artefact attributable to the so-called ‘invaders’.”
  3. B.B. Lal, a former director general of the Archaeological Survey of India who directed excavations at Kalibangan (Rajasthan) among other sites: “The supporters of the Aryan-invasion theory have not been able to cite even a single example where there is evidence of ‘invaders,’ represented either by weapons of warfare or even of cultural remains left by them.”
  4.  M.K. Dhavalikar, an Indian archaeologist known for his excavations at several sites of the Deccan: “The theory of large-scale invasion by Aryans is now discounted as there is no evidence to support it.”
  5. Indian archaeology today rarely if ever mentions the Aryans, as they are neither visible nor required: “A purely archaeological history of the subcontinent can be written without reference to the idea of Aryan invasions,” wrote Dilip K. Chakrabarti.6

The picture is the same outside India. The migrating Aryans would have crossed central Asia, yet there is no consensus on the cultures there that could be associated with them. According to the French archaeologist Henri -Paul Francfort, there is no archaeological evidence of Aryan migrations through Margiana and Bactria (BMAC or Oxus civilization):

 

… No trace of invasion is noticed on the ground, no cultural transformation is marked by the presence of archaeological material whose origin could be attributed to peripheral regions. Expressions like “elite dominance” or “infiltration,” despite their great evocative power, are nothing but rhetorical devices. They do not manage to mask our present inability to account for a supposed historical phenomenon. […] In neither of the two regions, steppes and oases, do we find an archaeological material that could be indisputably attributed to Indo-Iranians, Indo-Aryans, or Iranians.7

 

5. Cultural Break or Continuum

 

The possibility still remains of small groups of Aryans entering India more or less peacefully, a version of AMT often favours currently. In this scenario, they will eventually create the Ganga-Vindhya civilization of the 1st millennium BCE , rooted in Vedic culture; the Harappan civilization is seen as pre-Vedic, separated from it by a “Dark Age” or “Vedic Night”.

 

A deep cultural break is thus implied, yet in recent decades, Harappan archaeology has documented a rich Harappan legacy, both tangible and intangible, transmitted eventually to classical India. As the Indian archaeologist D.P. Agrawal puts it:

 

It is strange but true that the type and style of bangles that women wear in Rajasthan today, or the vermilion that they apply on the parting of the hair on the head, the practice of Yoga, the binary system of weights and measures, the basic architecture of the houses etc can all be traced back to the Indus Civilisation. The cultural and religious traditions of the Harappans provide the substratum for the latter-day Indian Civilisation.8

 

6. Bioanthropology and Genetics

 

The Aryan scenario in India announces the arrival of Indo-Aryan speakers. Most proponents of the theory used to portray them (and sometimes still do so) as ethnically different from the indigenous people — taller, of fair complexion, etc. This was reflected in the British censuses of the colonial era and still often is in our textbooks.

 

However, bioanthropological as well as genetic studies have failed to identify any demographic disruption in the 2nd millennium BCE, when the Aryans are supposed to have arrived. The U.S. bioanthropologist K.A.R. Kennedy, for instance, noted a “biological continuum [… with] the modern populations of Punjab and Sind.”9

 

This positive verdict of these two disciplines completes the rejection of the misguided race theories in the Indian context.

 

7. Archaeoastronomy

 

Early and Late Vedic texts contain many references to astronomical situations, some of which have been tentatively dated by many scholars through the natural “clock” provided by the precession of the equinoxes. As it happens, almost all the dates thus obtained point to a period earlier than the supposed date of the Aryan migration. There is no satisfactory explanation for the presence of those astronomical references: Why should Vedic Aryans borrow astronomical references from earlier populations, which could have had no meaning for them? And why should they not depict astronomical events of their period, instead?

 

8. Linguistics

 

Linguistics is the last pillar of the Aryan paradigm, which most linguists regard as established by the evolution of the Indo-European family of languages. Yet, after over two centuries, there is still wide disagreement as regards (1) the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, (2) the date of their reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), and (3) the validity of PIE’s reconstruction and the tree model used to account for the evolution of the IE family. A few linguists, in fact, challenge PIE’s existence or the very concept of an IE family.

 

Even on issues such as a “linguistic substratum” (of non-IE words) in the Rig-Veda, there is no consensus. Moreover, the IE etymology of northwest India’s river names is puzzling, as hydronymy is normally conservative.

 

Alternative models exist, although none so far has been able to seriously challenge the dominant view.

 

Conclusions

The question of numbers remains: how many Aryans, or how few?

  • If they entered massively, they could not have escaped detection by archaeology, bioanthropology or genetics.
  • If only a few tribes migrated or “trickled in”, they could hardly have populated the whole geography of the Northwest (the Rig-Veda lists about 30 clans); and why should the Late Harappans in the same region have abandoned their language or languages and culture to adopt those of a few newly arrived “nomadic tribes”?

No migrationist model has convincingly answered the many paradoxes involved in the Aryan issue.

 

Even if Indo -European speakers did enter India at some point, any racial association with the newcomers is wholly illegitimate and a throwback to the 19th century. Yet the colonial, divisive use of the Aryan paradigm has unfortunately persisted in Independent India. As U.S. anthropologist Peter G. Johansen put it in 2003:

 

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.10

 

Notes

  1.  Mountstuart Elphinstone, The History of India, 1, John Murray, London, 1841, pp. 97–98.
  2. Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins, Penguin Books, London, 1989, p. 182, 188.
  3.  R. Rao, Foreword to Shrikant G. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory: a Reappraisal, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1993, p. vi.
  4.  B. Lal, The Earliest Civilization of South Asia, Aryan Books International, New Delhi 1997, p. 283.
  5.  K. Dhavalikar, Indian Protohistory, Books & Books, New Delhi, 1997, p. 299.
  6.  Dilip K. Chakrabarti, The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology: The Archaeological Foundations of Ancient India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006, p. 202.
  7. Henri-Paul Francfort, “Oxus Civilization, or BMAC, Indo-Iranians and Indo-Aryans” in Gérard Fussman, Jean Kellens, Henri-Paul Francfort & Xavier Tremblay, (eds), Âryas, Aryens et Iraniens en Asie Centrale, Collège de France & Institut de civilisation indienne, Paris, 2005, p. 262.
  8. P. Agrawal, “An Indocentric Corrective to History of Science” (2002) p. 5, available online: http://www.infinityfoundation.com/indic_colloq/papers/paper_agrawal.pdf.
  9. Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, “Skulls, Aryans and Flowing Drains,” in G.L. Possehl, (ed.), Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, 1st , Oxford & IBH, New Delhi, 1982, p. 291.
  10. Peter G. Johansen, “Recasting the Foundations: New Approaches to Regional Understandings of South Asian Archaeology and the Problem of Culture History” in Asian Perspectives, University of Hawai‘i Press, vol. 42, No. 2, Fall 2003, p. 195.
you can view video on Issues in the Protohistory of India and Pakistan I:The Aryans

Web links

 

“Aryan Mythology as Science and Ideology”, Stefan Arvidsson

 

“The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: The Logic of the Response”, Edwin Bryant

“ ‘Somewhere in Asia and No More,’ Response to ‘Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda’ by Kazanas”, Edwin Bryant

 

“Was the Harappan Culture Vedic?”, R.S. Sharma

 

“Europe and western Asia: Indo-European linguistic history”, Paul Heggarty

“What is the Aryan Migration Theory?”, V. Agarwal

 

“’The Collapse of the AIT and the prevalence of Indigenism”, N. Kazanas

 

“Indo-European Linguistics and Indo-Aryan Indigenism”, N. Kazanas “The RV predates the Sindhu-Sarasvati Culture”, N. Kazanas

 

“The Aryan Question Revisited”, Romila Thapar

 

“The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics”, Romila Thapar

 

“The Home of the Aryans”, Michael Witzel

 

“Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts”, Michael Witzel

 

“Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate”, Koenraad Elst

 

“Astronomical data and the Aryan question”, Koenraad Elst

 

“The Horse and the Aryan Debate”, Michel Danino

 

“Genetics and the Aryan Issue”, Michel Danino

 

Indo-Aryan migration debate, Wikipedia

 

Aryan, Wikipedia

 

Indo-Aryan languages, Wikipedia

 

Proto-Indo-Europeans, Wikipedia

 

Rigveda, Wikipedia

 

Indigenous Aryans, Wikipedia

 

Indo-European studies, Wikipedia

 

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