Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the
conviction
In law, a conviction is the verdict reached by a court of law finding a defendant guilty of a crime. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland, there can also be a verdict of " not proven", which is cons ...
that the
Aryans are indigenous to the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
, and that the
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. It is a "
religio-nationalistic" view on Indian history, and propagated as an
alternative
Alternative or alternate may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* Alternative (''Kamen Rider''), a character in the Japanese TV series ''Kamen Rider Ryuki''
* ''The Alternative'' (film), a 1978 Australian television film
* ''The Alternative ...
to the established
migration model,
which considers the
Pontic–Caspian steppe
The Pontic–Caspian steppe, formed by the Caspian steppe and the Pontic steppe, is the steppeland stretching from the northern shores of the Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus of antiquity) to the northern area around the Caspian Sea. It extend ...
to be the area of origin of the Indo-European languages.
Reflecting traditional Indian views based on the
Puranic chronology,
indigenists propose an older date than is generally accepted for the
Vedic period
The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (ca. 1300–900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, betwe ...
, and argue that the
Indus Valley civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900& ...
was a Vedic civilization. In this view, "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the
Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BCE)."
Support for the IAT mostly exists among a subset of Indian scholars of
Hindu religion
Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global po ...
and the
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
and
archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...
of India,
and plays a significant role in
Hindutva
Hindutva () is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. The term was formulated as a political ideology by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the ...
politics.
It has no relevance, let alone support, in mainstream scholarship.
Historical background
The standard view on the origins of the Indo-Aryans is the Indo-Aryan migration theory, which states that they entered north-western India at about 1500 BCE. The
Puranic chronology, the timeline of events in ancient Indian history as narrated in the
Mahabaratha
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the '' Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kuru ...
, the
Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...
, and the
Puranas, envisions a much older chronology for the Vedic culture. In this view, the Vedas were received thousands of years ago, and the start of the reign of
Manu Vaivasvate, the
Manu
Manu may refer to:
Geography
* Manú Province, a province of Peru, in the Madre de Dios Region
**Manú National Park, Peru
** Manú River, in southeastern Peru
* Manu River (Tripura), which originates in India and flows into Bangladesh
*Manu Tem ...
of the current
kalpa
Kalevan Pallo (KalPa) is a professional ice hockey team which competes in the Finnish Liiga. They play in Kuopio, Finland at the Olvi Areena.
Team history
Established in 1929 as ''Sortavalan Palloseura'' in Sortavala, the club relocated to Kuop ...
(aeon) and the progenitor of humanity, may be dated as far back 7350 BCE. The
Kurukshetra War, the background-scene of the
Bhagavad Gita, which may relate historical events taking place ca. 1000 BCE at the heartland of
Aryavarta, is dated in this chronology at ca. 3100 BCE.
Indigenists, reflecting traditional Indian views on history and religion, argue that the Aryans are indigenous to India, which challenges the standard view. In the 1980s and 1990s, the indigenous position has come to the foreground of the public debate.
Indian homeland and Aryan Invasion theory
In 19th century
Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical pro ...
, the language of the
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts ('' śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one ...
was the most archaic Indo-European language known to scholars, indeed the only records of Indo-European that could reasonably claim to date to the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
. This primacy of Sanskrit inspired scholars such as
Friedrich Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel (; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figure ...
, to assume that the locus of the
proto-Indo-European homeland
The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities o ...
had been in India, with the other dialects spread to the west by historical migration. With the 20th-century discovery of Bronze-Age attestations of Indo-European (
Anatolian
Anatolian or anatolica may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the region Anatolia
* Anatolians, ancient Indo-European peoples who spoke the Anatolian languages
* Anatolian High School, a type of Turkish educational institution
* Anatol ...
,
Mycenaean Greek
Mycenaean Greek is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, on the Greek mainland and Crete in Mycenaean Greece (16th to 12th centuries BC), before the hypothesised Dorian invasion, often cited as the '' terminus ad quem'' for th ...
),
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...
lost its special status as the most archaic Indo-European language known.
In the 1850s,
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of Indian ...
introduced the notion of two Aryan races, a western and an eastern one, which migrated from the Caucasus into Europe and India respectively. Müller dichotomized the two groups, ascribing greater prominence and value to the western branch. Nevertheless, this "eastern branch of the Aryan race was more powerful than the indigenous eastern natives, who were easy to conquer." By the 1880s, his ideas had been adapted by racist
ethnologists
Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...
. For example, as an exponent of
race science, colonial administrator
Herbert Hope Risley (1851 – 1911) used the ratio of nose width to height to divide
Indian people
Indians or Indian people are the Indian nationality law, citizens and nationals of India. In 2022, the population of India stood at over 1.4 billion people, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most p ...
into Aryan and Dravidian races, as well as seven castes.
The idea of an Aryan "invasion" was fueled by the discovery of the
Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilisation, which
declined around the period of the Indo-Aryan migration, suggesting a destructive invasion. This argument was developed by the mid-20th century archaeologist
Mortimer Wheeler
Sir Robert Eric Mortimer Wheeler CH CIE MC TD (10 September 1890 – 22 July 1976) was a British archaeologist and officer in the British Army. Over the course of his career, he served as Director of both the National Museum of Wales an ...
, who interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro as the victims of conquests. He famously stated that the Vedic god "
Indra stands accused" of the destruction of the Indus Civilisation. Scholarly critics have since argued that Wheeler misinterpreted his evidence and that the skeletons were better explained as hasty interments, not unburied victims of a massacre.
Indo-Aryan migration theory
Migrations
![Indo-Iranian origins](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Indo-Iranian_origins.png)
The idea of an "invasion" has been discarded in mainstream scholarship since the 1980s, and replaced by more sophisticated models, referred to as the
Indo-Aryan migration theory
The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...
. It posits the introduction of
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily ...
into South Asia through migrations of
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
-speaking people from their ''Urheimat'' (original homeland) in the
Pontic Steppes
Pontic, from the Greek ''pontos'' (, ), or "sea", may refer to:
The Black Sea Places
* The Pontic colonies, on its northern shores
* Pontus (region), a region on its southern shores
* The Pontic–Caspian steppe, steppelands stretching from no ...
via the Central European Corded ware culture, and Eastern European/Central Asian Sintashta culture, through Central Asia into the Levant (
Mitanni
Mitanni (; Hittite cuneiform ; ''Mittani'' '), c. 1550–1260 BC, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat (''Hanikalbat'', ''Khanigalbat'', cuneiform ') in Assyrian records, or ''Naharin'' in ...
), south Asia, and Inner Asia (
Wusun
The Wusun (; Eastern Han Chinese *''ʔɑ-suən'' < (140 BCE < 436 BCE): *''Ɂâ-sûn'') were an ancient semi- and
Yuezhi
The Yuezhi (;) were an ancient people first described in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat ...
). It is part of the
Kurgan-hypothesis/Revised Steppe Theory, which further describes the spread of Indo-European languages into western Europe via migrations of Indo-European speaking people.
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
provides the main basis for the theory, analysing the development and changes of languages, and establishing relations between the various Indo-European languages, including the time frame of their development. It also provides information about shared words, and the corresponding area of the origin of Indo-European, and the specific vocabulary which is to be ascribed to specific regions. The linguistic analyses and data are supplemented with archaeological and genetical data and anthropological arguments, which together provide a coherent model that is widely accepted.
In the model, the first archaeological remains of the Indo-Europeans is the
Yamnaya culture
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture (russian: Ямная культура, ua, Ямна культура lit. 'culture of pits'), also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archa ...
, from which emerged the Central European Corded Ware culture, which spread eastward creating the
Proto-Indo-Iranian Sintashta culture
The Sintashta culture (russian: Синташтинская культура, Sintashtinskaya kul'tura), around 2050–1900 BCE, is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka culture. or Sintashta–Arkaim culture,. and is a late Middle Bronze Ag ...
(2100–1800 BCE), from which developed the
Andronovo culture (1800–1400 BCE). Around 1800 BCE Indo-Aryan people split-off from the Iranian branches, and migrated to the
BMAC (2300–1700 BCE), and further to the Levant, northern India, and possibly Inner Asia.
Cultural continuity and adaptation
The migration into northern India was not necessarily of a large population, but may have consisted of small groups, who introduced their language and social system into the new territory when looking for pasture for their herds. These were then emulated by larger groups, who adopted the new language and culture. Witzel also notes that "small-scale semi-annual
transhumance movements between the Indus plains and the Afghan and Baluchi highlands continue to this day."
Indigenous Aryanism
According to Bryant, Indigenists
The "Indigenist position" started to take shape after the discovery of the
Harappan civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900&n ...
, which predates the Vedas. According to this alternative view, the Aryans are indigenous to India, the Indus Civilisation is the Vedic Civilisation, the Vedas are older than the second millennium BCE, there is no discontinuity between the (northern) Indo-European part of India and the (southern) Dravidian part, and the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. According to Bresnan, it is a natural response to the 19th century narrative of a superior Aryan race subjecting the native Indians, implicitly confirming the ethnocentric superiority of the European invaders of colonial times, instead supporting "a theory of indigenous development that led to the creation of the Vedas."
Main arguments of the Indigenists
The idea of "Indigenous Aryans" is supported with specific interpretations of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic data, and on literal interpretations of the
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts ('' śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one ...
.
Standard arguments, both in support of the "Indigenous Aryans" theory and in opposition the mainstream Indo-Aryan Migration theory, are:
* Questioning the Indo-Aryan Migration theory:
** Presenting the Indo-Aryan Migration theory as an "Indo-Aryan Invasion theory", which was invented by 19th century colonialists to suppress the Indian people.
** Questioning the methodology of linguistics;
** Arguing for an indigenous cultural continuity, arguing there is a lack of
archaeological remains of the Indo-Aryans in north-west India;
** Questioning the
genetic evidence[Dinsa Sachan (4 July 2015)]
'' Aryan invasion debunked. Genetic study shows South Asians have a diverse ancestry''
/ref>[A.L. Chavda (05-05-2017)]
''Aryan Invasion Myth: How 21st Century Science Debunks 19th Century Indology''
/ref>
** Contesting the possibility that small groups can change culture and languages in a major way;
* Re-dating India's history by postulating a Vedic-Puranic chronology:
** Arguing for ancient, indigenous origins of Sanskrit, dating the Rigveda and the Vedic people to the 3rd millennium BCE or earlier; This includes:
*** Identifying the Sarasvati River
The Sarasvati River () is a deified river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Vedic religion, appearing in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda.
As a physical river, i ...
, described in the Rig Veda as a mighty river, with the Ghaggar-Hakra River
The Ghaggar-Hakra River is an intermittent river in India and Pakistan that flows only during the monsoon season. The river is known as Ghaggar in India, before the Ottu barrage, and as the Hakra in Pakistan, downstream of the barrage, ending ...
, which had dried up c. 2000 BCE, arguing therefore for an earlier dating of the Rig Veda;
*** Arguing for the presence of horses and horse-drawn chariots before 2000 BCE;
** Identifying the Vedic people with the Harappan civilisation;
** Redating Indian history based on the Vedic-Puranic chronology.
Questioning the Aryan Migration model
Rhetorics of "Aryan invasion"
The outdated notion of an "Aryan invasion" has been used as a straw man
A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false o ...
to attack the Indo-Aryan Migration theory. According to Witzel, the invasion model was criticised by Indigenous Aryanists for being a justification for colonial rule:
While according to Koenraad Elst, a supporter of Indigenous Aryans:
Linguistic methodology
Indigenists question the methodology and results of linguistics. According to Bryant, OIT proponents tend to be linguistic dilettantes who either ignore the linguistic evidence completely, dismiss it as highly speculative and inconclusive, or attempt to tackle it with hopelessly inadequate qualifications; this attitude and neglect significantly minimises the value of most OIT publications.
Archaeological finds and cultural continuity
In the 1960s, archaeological explanations for cultural change shifted from migration-models to internal causes of change. Given the lack of archaeological remains of the Indo-Aryans, Jim G. Shaffer, writing in the 1980s and 1990s, has argued for an indigenous cultural continuity between Harappan and post-Harappan times. According to Shaffer, there is no archaeological indication of an Aryan migration into northwestern India during or after the decline of the Harappan city culture. Instead, Shaffer has argued for "a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural developments." According to Shaffer, linguistic change has mistakenly been attributed to migrations of people. Likewise, Erdosy also notes the absence of evidence for migrations, and states that "Indo-European languages may well have spread to South Asia through migration," but that the Rigvedic ''aryas'', as a specific ethno-linguistic tribe holding a specific set of ideas, may well have been indigenous people whose "set of ideas" soon spread over India.
Since the 1990s, attention has shifted back to migrations as an explanatory model. Pastoral societies are difficult to identify in the archaeological record, since they move around in small groups and leave little traces.[''Encyclopedia Britannica'']
''Emergence of the pastoral way of life''
/ref> In 1990, David Anthony published a defense of migratory models, and in his ''The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
''The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World'' is a 2007 book by the anthropologist David W. Anthony, in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the or ...
'' (2007), has provided an extensive overview of the archaeological trail of the Indo-European people across the Eurasian steppes and central Asia. The development and "revolutionary" improvement of genetic research since the early 2010s has reinforced this shift in focus, as it has unearthed previously unaccessible data, showing large-scale migrations in prehistoric times.
Genetic evidence
OIT-proponents have questioned the findings of genetic research, and some older DNA-research had questioned the Indo-Aryan migrations. Since 2015 however, genetic research has "revolutionarily" improved, and further confirmed the migration of Steppe pastoralists into Western Europe and South Asia, and "many scientists who were either sceptical or neutral about significant Bronze Age migrations into India have changed their opinions."
Cultural change
Indigenists contest the possibility that small groups can change culture and languages in a major way. Mainstream scholarship explains this by elite dominance and language shift
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...
. Small groups can change a larger cultural area, when an elite male group integrates in small indigenous groups which takes over the elite language, in this case leading to a language shift in northern India. Indo-Aryan languages were further disseminated with the spread of the Vedic-Brahmanical culture in the process of Sanskritisation
Sanskritisation (or Sanskritization) is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek 'upward' mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upper ...
. In this process, local traditions ("little traditions") became integrated into the "great tradition" of Brahmanical religion, disseminating Sanskrit texts and Brahmanical ideas throughout India, and abroad. This facilitated the development of the Hindu synthesis
The history of Hinduism covers a wide variety of related religious traditions native to the Indian subcontinent. It overlaps or coincides with the development of religion in the Indian subcontinent since the Iron Age, with some of its tradition ...
, in which the Brahmanical tradition absorbed "local popular traditions of ritual and ideology."
Redating Indian history
Redating the Rig Veda and the Rig Vedic people
=Sanskrit
=
According to the mainstream view, Sanskrit arose in South Asia after Indo-Aryan languages had been introduced by the Indo-Aryans in the first half of the second millennium BCE. The most archaic form of Sanskrit is Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...
found in the Rig Veda, composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE.
Taking recourse to "Hindu astronomical lore" Indigenists argue for ancient, indigenous origins of Sanskrit, dating the Rigveda and the Vedic people to the 3rd millennium BCE or earlier. According to Subhash Kak
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal N ...
, situating the arrival of the Aryans in the seventh millnnium BCE, the hymns of the Rig Veda are organised in accordance with an astronomical code, supposedly showing "a tradition of sophisticated observational astronomy going back to events of 3000 or 4000 BCE." His ideas have been rejected by mainstream scholars.
=Horses and chariots
=
Several archaeological finds are interpreted as evidencing the presence of typical Indo-Aryan artefacts before 2000 BCE. Examples include the interpretation of animal bones from before 2000 BCE as horse-bones, and interpreting the Sinauli
Sinauli is an archaeological site in western Uttar Pradesh, India, at the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. The site gained attention for its Bronze Age solid-disk wheel carts, found in 2018, which were interpreted by some as horse-pulled "chariots".
The e ...
cart burials as chariots. While horse remains and related artifacts have been found in Late Harappan (1900-1300 BCE) sites, indicating that horses may have been present at Late Harappan times, horses did not play an essential role in the Harappan civilisation, in contrast to the Vedic period (1500-500 BCE). The earliest undisputed finds of horse remains in South Asia are from the Gandhara grave culture
The Gandhara grave culture, also called Swat culture, or Swat Protohistoric Graveyards Complex, emerged ''c.'' 1400 BCE and lasted until 800 BCE, as recent fieldwork, along with subsequent analyses, have shown there are no burials with these ...
, also known as the Swat culture (c. 1400-800 BCE), related to the Indo-Aryans
Horse remains from the Harappan site Surkotada (dated to 2400-1700 BC) have been identified by A.K. Sharma as ''Equus ferus caballus''. However, archaeologists like Meadow (1997) disagree, on the grounds that the remains of the ''Equus ferus caballus'' horse are difficult to distinguish from other equid species such as ''Equus asinus'' ( donkeys) or ''Equus hemionus'' (onager
The onager (; ''Equus hemionus'' ), A new species called the kiang (''E. kiang''), a Tibetan relative, was previously considered to be a subspecies of the onager as ''E. hemionus kiang'', but recent molecular studies indicate it to be a distinct ...
s).
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
solid-disk wheel carts were found at Sinauli
Sinauli is an archaeological site in western Uttar Pradesh, India, at the Ganga-Yamuna Doab. The site gained attention for its Bronze Age solid-disk wheel carts, found in 2018, which were interpreted by some as horse-pulled "chariots".
The e ...
in 2018. They were related to the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture
The Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP) is a Bronze Age culture of the Indo-Gangetic Plain "generally dated 2000–1500 BCE," extending from eastern Punjab to northeastern Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh.
Artefacts of this culture show ...
, and dated at ca. 2000-1800 BCE. They were interpreted by some as horse-pulled "chariots", predating the arrival of the horse-centered Indo-Aryans. According to Parpola, the carts were ox-pulled charts, and related to a first wave of Ino-Iraninan migrations into the Indian subcontinent, noting that the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture
The Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP) is a Bronze Age culture of the Indo-Gangetic Plain "generally dated 2000–1500 BCE," extending from eastern Punjab to northeastern Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh.
Artefacts of this culture show ...
(2000-1500 BCE) shows similarities with both the Late Harappan culture and steppe-cultures.
=Sarasvati river
=
In the Rig Veda, the goddess Sarasvati is described as a mighty river. Indigenists take these descriptions as references to a real river, the Sarasvati river
The Sarasvati River () is a deified river first mentioned in the Rigveda and later in Vedic and post-Vedic texts. It played an important role in the Vedic religion, appearing in all but the fourth book of the Rigveda.
As a physical river, i ...
, identified with the Ghaggar-Hakra, an eastern tributary to the Indus. Given the fact that the Ghaggar-Hakkra had dried-up at 2000 BCE, Indigenists argue that the Vedic people must therefore have been present much earlier.
Rig Vedic references to a physical river indicate that the Sarswati "had already lost its main source of water supply and must have ended in a terminal lake (samudra)," "depicting the present-day situation, with the Sarasvatī having lost most of its water." "Sarasvati" may also be identified with the Helmand
Helmand (Pashto/Dari: ; ), also known as Hillmand, in ancient times, as Hermand and Hethumand, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, in the south of the country. It is the largest province by area, covering area. The province contains 13 ...
or Haraxvati river in southern Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
,[ the name of which may have been reused in its Sanskrit form as the name of the Ghaggar-Hakra river, after the Vedic tribes moved to the ]Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
. ''Sarasvati'' of the Rig Veda may also refer to two distinct rivers, with the family books referring to the Helmand River, and the more recent 10th mandala referring to the Ghaggar-Hakra.[
]
Identifying the Vedic people with the Harappan civilisation
Indigenists claim a continuous cultural evolution of India, denying a discontinuity between the Harappan and Vedic periods, identifying the IVC with the Vedic people. According to Kak, "the Indian civilization must be viewed as an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BCE). This identification is incompatible with the archaeological, linguistic and genetic data, and rejected by mainstream scholarship.
Postulating a Puranic chronology
The idea of "Indigenous Aryanism" fits into traditional Hindu ideas of religious history, namely that Hinduism has timeless origins, with the Vedic Aryans inhabiting India since ancient times. The ideas Indigenist ideas are rooted in the chronology of the Puranas, the Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; sa, महाभारतम्, ', ) is one of the two major Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the s ...
and the Ramayana
The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...
, which contain lists of kings and genealogies used to construct the traditional chronology of ancient India. "Indigenists" follow a "Puranic agenda", emphasizing that these lists go back to the fourth millennium BCE. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the Maurya court at Patna at 300 BCE, reported to have heard of a traditional list of 153 kings that covered 6042 years, beyond the traditional beginning of the '' Kali Yuga'' in 3102 BCE. The royal lists are based on Sūta bardic traditions, and are derived from lists which were orally transmitted and constantly reshaped.
These lists are supplemented with astronomical interpretations, which are also used to reach an earlier dating for the Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts ('' śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one ...
. Along with this comes a redating of historical personages and events, in which the Buddha is dated to 1100 BCE or even 1700 BCE, and Chandragupta Maurya (c. 300 BCE) is replaced by Chandragupta, the Gupta king. The Bharata War is dated at 3139–38 BCE, the start of the kali Yuga.
Indigenous Aryans scenarios
Michael Witzel
Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50–80).
Witz ...
identifies three major types of "Indigenous Aryans" scenarios:
1. A "mild" version that insists on the indigeneity of the Rigvedic Aryans to the North-Western region of the Indian subcontinent in the tradition of Aurobindo and Dayananda
Dayanand Saraswati () (born Mool Shankar Tiwari; 2 February 1824 – 30 October 1883) also known as Maharshi Dayanand is an Indian philosopher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. His Magnum Opus is the book ...
;
2. The "out of India" school that posits India as the Proto-Indo-European homeland
The Proto-Indo-European homeland (or Indo-European homeland) was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities o ...
, originally proposed in the 18th century, revived by the Hindutva
Hindutva () is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. The term was formulated as a political ideology by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the ...
sympathiser Koenraad Elst
Koenraad Elst (; born 7 August 1959) is a Flemish right wing Hindutva author, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and the Hindutva movement. Schola ...
(1999), and further popularised within Hindu nationalism by Shrikant Talageri (2000);
3. The position that all the world's languages and civilisations derive from India, represented e.g. by David Frawley
David Frawley (born 1950) is an American author, astrologer, teacher (''acharya'') and a proponent of Hindutva.
He has written numerous books on topics spanning the Vedas, Hinduism, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology. His works have been popula ...
.
Kazanas adds a fourth scenario:
4.The Aryans entered the Indus Valley before 4500 BCE and got integrated with the Harappans, or might have been the Harappans.
Aurobindo's Aryan world-view
For Aurobindo, an "Aryan" was not a member of a particular race, but a person who "accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration." Aurobindo wanted to revive India's strength by reviving Aryan traditions of strength and character. He denied the historicity of a racial division in India between "Aryan invaders" and a native dark-skinned population. Nevertheless, he did accept two kinds of culture in ancient India, namely the Aryan culture of northern and central India and Afghanistan, and the un-Aryan culture of the east, south and west. Thus, he accepted the cultural aspects of the division suggested by European historians.
Out of India model
The "Out of India theory" (OIT), also known as the "Indian Urheimat theory," is the proposition that the Indo-European language family
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
originated in Northern India
North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...
and spread to the remainder of the Indo-European region through a series of migrations. It implies that the people of the Harappan civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900&n ...
were linguistically Indo-Aryans.
Theoretical overview
Koenraad Elst, in his ''Update in the Aryan Invasion Debate'', investigates "the developing arguments concerning the Aryan Invasion Theory". Elst notes:
Edwin Bryant also notes that Elst's model is a "theoretical exercise:"
And in ''Indo-Aryan Controversy'' Bryant notes:
"The emerging alternative"
Koenraad Elst summarises "the emerging alternative to the Aryan Invasion Theory" as follows.
During the 6th millennium BCE Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in the Punjab region
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
of northern India
North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...
. As the result of demographic expansion, they spread into Bactria as the Kambojas
Kamboja ( sa, कम्बोज) was a kingdom of Iron Age India that spanned parts of South and Central Asia, frequently mentioned in Sanskrit and Pali literature. Eponymous with the kingdom name, the Kambojas were an Indo-Iranian people o ...
. The Paradas
Pāradas (alternatively Varadas, Parita) was an Iron Age kingdom described in various ancient and classical Indian texts. The exact location of the kingdom is unknown. The Vayu Purana locates the tribe on the upper course of the Amu Darya (also ...
moved further and inhabited the Caspian Caspian can refer to:
*The Caspian Sea
*The Caspian Depression, surrounding the northern part of the Caspian Sea
*The Caspians, the ancient people living near the Caspian Sea
*Caspian languages, collection of languages and dialects of Caspian peopl ...
coast and much of central Asia while the Cinas
The Chinas, Cīna, or Chīnaḥ (Sanskrit चीनः (''cīna'')) are a people mentioned in ancient Indian literature from the first millennium BC and first millennium AD, such as the ''Mahabharata'', '' Laws of Manu'', and the Puranic litera ...
moved northwards and inhabited the Tarim Basin
The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydr ...
in northwestern China, forming the Tocharian group of I-E speakers. These groups were Proto-Anatolian
Proto-Anatolian is the proto-language from which the ancient Anatolian languages emerged (i.e. Hittite and its closest relatives). As with almost all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstruc ...
and inhabited that region by 2000 BCE. These people took the oldest form of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language with them and, while interacting with people of the Anatolian and Balkan region, transformed it into a separate dialect. While inhabiting central Asia they discovered the uses of the horse, which they later sent back to the Urheimat
In historical linguistics, the homeland or ''Urheimat'' (, from German '' ur-'' "original" and ''Heimat'', home) of a proto-language is the region in which it was spoken before splitting into different daughter languages. A proto-language is the r ...
. Later on during their history, they went on to occupy western Europe and thus spread the Indo-European languages to that region.
During the 4th millennium BCE, civilisation in India started evolving into what became the urban Indus Valley civilization. During this time, the PIE languages evolved to Proto-Indo-Iranian. Some time during this period, the Indo-Iranians began to separate as the result of internal rivalry and conflict, with the Iranians expanding westwards towards Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
and Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, these possibly were the Pahlava
The Pahlavas are a people mentioned in ancient Indian texts like the Manu Smriti, various Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Brihat Samhita. According to P. Carnegy, In the 4th century BCE, Vartika of Katyayana mentions the ''Sakah ...
s. They also expanded into parts of central Asia. By the end of this migration, India was left with the Proto-Indo-Aryans. At the end of the Mature Harappan period, the Sarasvati river began drying up and the remainder of the Indo-Aryans split into separate groups. Some travelled westwards and established themselves as rulers of the Hurrian
The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern ...
Mitanni
Mitanni (; Hittite cuneiform ; ''Mittani'' '), c. 1550–1260 BC, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat (''Hanikalbat'', ''Khanigalbat'', cuneiform ') in Assyrian records, or ''Naharin'' in ...
kingdom by around 1500 BCE (see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
Some loanwords in the variant of the Hurrian language spoken in the Mitanni kingdom, during the 2nd millennium BCE, are identifiable as originating in an Indo-Aryan language; these are considered to constitute an Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni ...
). Others travelled eastwards and inhabited the Gangetic basin
The Ganges Basin is a part of the Ganges-Brahmaputra- Meghna (GBM) basin draining 1,999,000 square kilometres in Tibet, Nepal, India and Bangladesh. To the north, the Himalaya or lower parallel ranges beyond form the Ganges-Brahmaputra divide. ...
while others travelled southwards and interacted with the Dravidian people
The Dravidian peoples, or Dravidians, are an ethnolinguistic and cultural group living in South Asia who predominantly speak any of the Dravidian languages. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian spe ...
.
David Frawley
In books such as ''The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India'' and ''In Search of the Cradle of Civilization
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharla ...
'' (1995), Frawley criticises the 19th century racial interpretations of Indian prehistory, such as the theory of conflict between invading Caucasoid Aryans and Dravidians. In the latter book, Frawley, Georg Feuerstein
Georg Feuerstein (27 May 1947 – 25 August 2012) was a German Indologist specializing in the philosophy and practice of Yoga. Feuerstein authored over 30 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism. He translated, among other traditional texts ...
, and Subhash Kak
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal N ...
reject the Aryan Invasion theory and support Out of India.
Bryant commented that Frawley's historical work is more successful as a popular work, where its impact "is by no means insignificant", rather than as an academic study,
and that Frawley "is committed to channelling a symbolic spiritual paradigm through a critical empirico rational one".
Pseudo-historian Graham Hancock
Graham Bruce Hancock (born 2 August 1950) is a British writer who promotes pseudoscientific theories involving ancient civilizations and lost lands. Hancock speculates that an advanced ice age civilization was destroyed in a cataclysm, but t ...
(2002) quotes Frawley's historical work extensively for the proposal of highly evolved ancient civilisations prior to the end of the last glacial period. including in India. Kreisburg refers to Frawley's "The Vedic Literature and Its Many Secrets".
Significance for colonial rule and Hindu politics
The Aryan Invasion theory plays an important role in Hindu nationalism, which favors Indigenous Aryanism. It has to be understood against the background of colonialism and the subsequent task of nation-building in India.
Colonial India
Curiosity and the colonial requirements of knowledge about their subject people led the officials of the East India Company to explore the history and culture of India in the late 18th century. When similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin were discovered by William Jones, a suggestion of "monogenesis" (single origin) was formulated for these languages as well as their speakers. In the latter part of the 19th century, it was thought that language, culture and race were inter-related, and the notion of biological race came to the forefront The presumed "Aryan race" which originated the Indo-European languages was prominent among such races, and was deduced to be further subdivided into "European Aryans" and "Asian Aryans," each with their own homelands.
Max Mueller, who translated the Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts ('' śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one ...
during 1849–1874, postulated an original homeland for all Aryans in central Asia, from which a northern branch migrated to Europe and a southern branch to India and Iran. The Aryans were presumed to be fair-complexioned Indo-European speakers who conquered the dark-skinned ''dasas'' of India. The upper castes, particularly the Brahmins, were thought to be of Aryan descent whereas the lower castes and Dalits ("untouchables") were thought to be the descendants of ''dasas''.
The Aryan theory served politically to suggest a common ancestry and dignity between the Indians and the British. Keshab Chunder Sen spoke of British rule in India
The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent;
*
* it is also called Crown rule in India,
*
*
*
*
or Direct rule in India,
* Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...
as a "reunion of parted cousins." Indian nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak endorsed the antiquity of ''Rigveda'', dating it to 4500 BCE. He placed the homeland of the Aryans somewhere close to the North Pole. From there, Aryans were believed to have migrated south in the post-glacial age, branching into a European branch that relapsed into barbarism and an Indian branch that retained the original, superior civilisation.
However, Christian missionaries such as John Muir and John Wilson drew attention to the plight of lower castes, who they said were oppressed by the upper castes since the Aryan invasions. Jyotiba Phule
Jyotirao Govindrao Phule, also known as Mahatma Jyotiba Phule (11 April 1827 – 28 November 1890) was an Indian social activist, thinker, anti-caste social reformer and writer from Maharashtra. His work extended to many fields, including era ...
argued that the ''dasas'' and ''sudras'' were indigenous people and the rightful inheritors of the land, whereas Brahmins were Aryan and alien.
Hindu revivalism and nationalism
In contrast to the mainstream views, the Hindu revivalist movements denied an external origin to Aryans. Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj (Society of Aryans), held that Vedas were the source of all knowledge and were revealed to the Aryans. The first man (an Aryan) was created in Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...
and, after living there for some time, the Aryans came down and inhabited India, which was previously empty.
The Theosophical Society
The Theosophical Society, founded in 1875, is a worldwide body with the aim to advance the ideas of Theosophy in continuation of previous Theosophists, especially the Greek and Alexandrian Neo-Platonic philosophers dating back to 3rd century CE ...
held that the Aryans were indigenous to India, but that they were also the progenitors of the European civilisation. The Society saw a dichotomy between the spiritualism of India and the materialism of Europe.
According to Romila Thapar, the Hindu nationalists, led by Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (), Marathi pronunciation: inaːjək saːʋəɾkəɾ also commonly known as Veer Savarkar (28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966), was an Indian politician, activist, and writer.
Savarkar developed the Hindu nationali ...
and Golwalkar
Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar (19 February 1906 – 5 June 1973), popularly known as Guruji was the second ''Sarsanghchalak'' ("Chief") of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Golwalkar is considered one of the most influential and prominent fi ...
, eager to construct a Hindu identity for the nation, held that the original Hindus were the Aryans and that they were indigenous to India. There was no Aryan invasion and no conflict among the people of India. The Aryans spoke Sanskrit and spread the Aryan civilization from India to the west.
Witzel traces the "indigenous Aryan" idea to the writings of Savarkar
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (), Marathi pronunciation: inaːjək saːʋəɾkəɾ also commonly known as Veer Savarkar (28 May 1883 – 26 February 1966), was an Indian politician, activist, and writer.
Savarkar developed the Hindu nationali ...
and Golwalkar
Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar (19 February 1906 – 5 June 1973), popularly known as Guruji was the second ''Sarsanghchalak'' ("Chief") of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Golwalkar is considered one of the most influential and prominent fi ...
. Golwalkar (1939) denied any immigration of "Aryans" to the subcontinent, stressing that all Hindus have always been "children of the soil", a notion which according to Witzel is reminiscent of the '' blood and soil'' of contemporary fascism. Since these ideas emerged on the brink of the internationalist and socially oriented Nehru-Gandhi government, they lay dormant for several decades, and only rose to prominence in the 1980s.
Bergunder likewise identifies Golwalkar as the originator of the "Indigenous Aryans" notion, and Goel's Voice of India
Voice of India (VOI) is a publishing house based in New Delhi, India, that specialises in Hindu nationalist books and serves as one of the most important tools in the development of Hindutva ideologies.
History
Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel tr ...
as the instrument of its rise to notability:
Present-day political significance
Lars Martin Fosse notes the political significance of "Indigenous Aryanism". He notes that "Indigenous Aryanism" has been adopted by Hindu nationalists as a part of their ideology, which makes it a ''political'' matter in addition to a scholarly problem. The proponents of Indigenous Aryanism necessarily engage in "moral disqualification" of Western Indology, which is a recurrent theme in much of the indigenist literature. The same rhetoric is being used in indigenist literature and the Hindu nationalist publications like the '' Organiser''.
According to Abhijith Ravinutala, the indigenist position is essential for Hindutva exclusive claims on India:
Repercussions of the disagreements about Aryan origins have reached California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
n courts with the Californian Hindu textbook case, where according to the Times of India
''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest se ...
historian and president of the Indian History Congress, Dwijendra Narayan Jha
Dwijendra Narayan Jha (19404 February 2021) was an Indian historian who studied and wrote on ancient and medieval India He was a professor of history at Delhi University and a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research. Some of his bo ...
in a "crucial affidavit" to the Superior Court of California:
According to Thapar, Modi's government and the BJP have "peddled myths and stereotypes," such as the insistence on "a single uniform culture of the Aryans, ancestral to the Hindu, as having prevailed in the subcontinent, subsuming all others," despite the scholarly evidence for migrations into India, which is "anathema to the Hindutva construction of early history."
Rejection by mainstream scholarship
The Indigenous Aryans theory has no relevance, let alone support, in mainstream scholarship. According to Michael Witzel, the "indigenous Aryans" position is not scholarship in the usual sense, but an "apologetic, ultimately religious undertaking":
In her review of Bryant's ''The Indo-Aryan Controversy'', which includes chapters by Elst and other "indigenists", Stephanie Jamison comments:
Sudeshna Guha, in her review of ''The Indo-Aryan Controversy'', notes that the book has serious methodological shortcomings, by not asking the question what exactly constitutes historical evidence. This makes the "fair and adequate representation of the differences of opinion" problematic, since it neglects "the extent to which unscholarly opportunism has motivated the rebirth of this genre of 'scholarship. Guha:
According to Bryant, OIT proponents tend to be linguistic dilettantes who either ignore the linguistic evidence completely, dismiss it as highly speculative and inconclusive, or attempt to tackle it with hopelessly inadequate qualifications; this attitude and neglect significantly minimises the value of most OIT publications.
Fosse notes crucial theoretical and methodological shortcomings in the indigenist literature. Analysing the works of Sethna, Bhagwan Singh, Navaratna and Talageri, he notes that they mostly quote English literature, which is not fully explored, and omitting German and French Indology. It makes their works in various degrees underinformed, resulting in a critique that is "largely neglected by Western scholars because it is regarded as incompetent".
According to Erdosy, the indigenist position is part of a "lunatic fringe" against the mainstream migrationist model.
See also
* Dravidian culture
Indo-Aryans
* Indo-Iranians
Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Indo-Iranic peoples by scholars, and sometimes as Arya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European l ...
* Indo-Aryan migrations
The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...
Politics
* Historiography and nationalism
Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has been nationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy and cultural identity. Nationalism has provided a significant framework ...
* Saffronisation
* NCERT controversy
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is an apex resource organisation set up by the Government of India to assist and advise the central and state governments on academic matters related to school education.
The model ...
Indigenists
* Voice of Dharma
** N. S. Rajaram
** David Frawley
David Frawley (born 1950) is an American author, astrologer, teacher (''acharya'') and a proponent of Hindutva.
He has written numerous books on topics spanning the Vedas, Hinduism, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology. His works have been popula ...
* Subhash Kak
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal N ...
Books
* ''The Arctic Home in the Vedas
''The Arctic Home in the Vedas'' is a 1903 pseudohistorical book on the origin of the Indo-Aryan peoples by Indian nationalist, teacher and independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Based on his analysis of Vedic hymns, Avestic passages, Vedic ...
'' (1903)
* ''In Search of the Cradle of Civilization
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharla ...
''
* '' Aryan Invasion of India: The Myth and the Truth'' (1993)
* '' Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate'' (1999)
* '' The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis'' (2000)
Other
*Yamnaya culture
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture (russian: Ямная культура, ua, Ямна культура lit. 'culture of pits'), also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archa ...
Notes
References
Sources
;Printed sources
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;Web-sources
Further reading
;Overview
Edwin Bryant, a cultural historian, has given an overview of the various "Indigenist" positions in his PhD-thesis and two subsequent publications:
*
*
*
''The Indigenous Aryan Debate'' and ''The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture'' are reports of his fieldwork, primarily interviews with Indian researchers, on the reception of the Indo-Aryan migration theory in India. ''The Indo-Aryan Controversy'' is a bundle of papers by various "indigenists", including Koenraad Elst, but also a paper by Michael Witzel.
Another overview has been given by Thomas Trautmann
Thomas Roger Trautmann is an American historian, cultural anthropologist, and Professor Emeritus of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is considered a leading expert on the '' Arthashastra'', the ancient Hindu text on s ...
:
*
*
;Literature by "indigenous Aryans" proponents
*
*
* Georg Feuerstein
Georg Feuerstein (27 May 1947 – 25 August 2012) was a German Indologist specializing in the philosophy and practice of Yoga. Feuerstein authored over 30 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism. He translated, among other traditional texts ...
, Subhash Kak
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal N ...
, David Frawley
David Frawley (born 1950) is an American author, astrologer, teacher (''acharya'') and a proponent of Hindutva.
He has written numerous books on topics spanning the Vedas, Hinduism, Yoga, Ayurveda and Vedic astrology. His works have been popula ...
, ''In Search of the Cradle of Civilization
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharla ...
: New Light on Ancient India'' Quest Books (IL) (October, 1995)
* Lal, B. B. (2002), ''The Sarasvati flows on: The continuity of Indian culture'', Aryan Books International, .
* Lal, B. B. (2015), ''The Rigvedic People: Invaders? Immigrants? or Indigenous?''. See also Koenraad Elst
"Book Review: The Rig Vedic People Were Indigenous to India, Not Invaders"
*
* N. S. Rajaram, ''The Politics of History: Aryan Invasion Theory and the Subversion of Scholarship'' (New Delhi: Voice of India, 1995) .
* Talageri, S. G., '' The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis'', New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000
*
*
;Bharat
*
;Criticism
* Shereen Ratnagar
Shereen F. Ratnagar is an Indian archaeologist whose work has focused on the Indus Valley civilization. She is the author of several books and academic textbooks.
Career
Ratnagar was educated at Deccan College, University of Pune. She studied ...
(2008), ''The Aryan homeland debate in India'', in Philip L. Kohl, Mara Kozelsky, Nachman Ben-Yehuda "Selective remembrances: archaeology in the construction, commemoration, and consecration of national pasts", pp 349–378
* Suraj Bhan (2002), "Aryanization of the Indus Civilization" in Panikkar, KN, Byres, TJ and Patnaik, U (Eds), ''The Making of History'', pp 41–55.
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External links
Thapar, Romila: The Aryan question revisited (1999)
Witzel, Michael: The Home of the Aryans
Witzel, ''Horseplay at Harappa'', Harvard University
– Frontline
Front line refers to the forward-most forces on a battlefield.
Front line, front lines or variants may also refer to:
Books and publications
* ''Front Lines'' (novel), young adult historical novel by American author Michael Grant
* ''Frontlines ...
, 11–24 November 2000.
Linda Hess, ''The Indigenous Aryan Discussion on RISA-L: The Complete Text (to 10/28/96)''
Thomas Trautmann (2005), ''The Aryan Debate: Introduction''
{{Authority control
Politics of India
Indology
Vedic period
History of India
Sanskrit
Evolution of language
Aryans
Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ...
Indigenous Aryanism
Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the conviction that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homela ...
Indo-Aryan peoples