Aryan debate

Aryan debate

• 1.
  Aryan Debate
• 2.
  Emergence • It wasinitially both curiosity and the colonial requirement of knowledge about their subject people. • Similarities between Greek, Latin and Sanskrit language. • Origins of European languages traced back to Iran and India. • Europe was on the age of oriental resistance. • The experience of imperialism where the European 'races' were viewed as advanced, and those of the colonised, as 'lesser breeds’. • Presence of word Arya in old Iranian text i.e. The Avesta and was a cognate of the Sanskrit.
• 3.
  Theory • Mainly twotypes of theory: 1. Aryans were habitant of central Asia and they invaded Indian lands. 2. Aryans were habitant of India afterwards they started moving west.
• 4.
  Theory 1 • MaxMueller maintained that there was an original Aryan homeland in central Asia. • He postulated a small Aryan clan on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a language which was not yet Sanskrit or Greek, a kind of proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages. • From here and over the course of some centuries, it branched off in two directions; one came towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran • Eventually splitting again with one segment invading north-western India.
• 5.
  Continued… • The northernAryans who are said to have migrated to Europe they developed the idea of a nation. • While the southern Aryans who migrated to Iran and to India were passive and meditative, concerned with religion and philosophy. • The Aryans, according to Max Mueller were fair-complexioned Indo- European speakers who conquered the dark-skinned dasas of India. • The Aryans and non- Aryans were segregated through caste system I.e. upper caste are Aryans and vice-versa.
• 6.
  Theory 1 Anti-Bhramanversion. • John Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, (1858-1863), and John Wilson's Indian Caste (1877) injustice behaviours of Brahmins on Dalits referring to Aryan theory. • Missionary views in the later half of the nineteenth century were familiar to many Indians. Among these, Jyotiba Phule’s was one of the prominent. • The argument ran that the golden age was prior to the invasion of the Aryans when King Bali ruled. • According to them Dalits were the indigenous people so, they should have more rights over upper caste. • Phule's radicalisation of the theory was popular among the lower castes and became central to many non-Brahmin movements in other parts of peninsular India .
• 7.
  Theory 1 BharamanVersion. • The upper-castes had their own use for the theory and it was again given a twist which suited their social aspirations and political needs. • The theory was used to argue the superiority of the upper castes and promote their self-esteem by maintaining that not only were the upper-castes the lineal descendants of the Aryans but that they were also racially related to the European Aryan. • Keshab Chunder Sen follows Max Mueller and John Wilson in his statement that,'... in the advent of the English nation in India we see a reunion of parted cousins, the descendants of two different families of the ancient Aryan race.
• 8.
  Theory 2 • Thetheosophical reading of the Aryan theory was echoed in the interpretation of the theory by Hindu nationalist opinion. A group of people, close to and involved with the founding of the R.S.S. (Rashtriya Svayamsevaka Sangha). • Since Hinduness in the past did not have a specific definition, the essentials of a Hindu identity had to be formulated. • The argument ran that the original Hindus were the Aryans, a distinctive people indigenous to India. There was no Aryan invasion since the Aryans were indigenous to India and therefore no confrontation among the people of India. The Aryans spoke Sanskrit and were responsible for the spread of Aryan civilisation from India to the west. Confrontations came with the arrival of foreigners such as the Muslims, the Christians and more recently, the Communists. These groups are alien because India is neither the pitribhumi-the land of their birth-the assumption being that all Muslims and Christians are from outside India, nor the punyabhumi-their holy land.
• 9.
  Continued… • Justifying thetreatment of the Jews in Germany, the threat of the same fate was held out to the Muslims in India. • Mainstream historians writing on ancient India did not accept the Hindutva version of the theory.
• 10.
  Theory After 1920’s •This varied exploitation of the theory received a jolt with the archaeological discovery of the Indus civilisation. • An extensive urban culture in the northern and western parts of the Indian subcontinent, created problems for the Aryan theory. • The archaeological evidence, more specific on data relating to the environment, technology and economy, covers a much wider area and goes further back in time. • The Rigveda has been approximately dated to about 1500 BC by when the Indus cities had declined. • Baluchistan suggest links with central Asia and Iran in the second millennium BC.
• 11.
  Continued… • Although theearlier notion of a systematic destruction of Harappan sites by Aryan invaders has been questioned from the evidence of archaeology. • Nor does the evidence support the identification of Vedic culture with the Indus/Harappan culture. • The cult of soma/haoma and the emphasis on the worship of fire were common in India and Iran. • There is also no evidence of a linguistic movement from India to Iran. • Archaeological evidence from the third millennium BC confirms wide-ranging, overland contacts between north-western India, southern and eastern Iran and the Oxus region, and maritime contacts with Oman and Mesopotamia. • There was no massive migration such as to overwhelm the existing cultures.
• 12.
  Thank you.