Indigenous Aryans

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. An alternative view is the idea that the Aryans are indigenous to India, which challenges the standard view. In recent times the indigenous position has come to the foreground of the public debate.

Indo-Aryan migration theory

The Indo-Aryan Migration theory posits a migration of Indo-European-speaking people from the Pontic Steppes into Europe, the Levant, south Asia and east Asia. It is part of the Kurgan-hypothesis/Revvised Steppe Theory. Historical linguistics provides the main basis for the theory, analysing the development and changes of languages, and establishing relations between the various Indo-European languages, and the time frame wherein these languages developed. 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 data and anthropological arguments, which together provide a coherent model that is widely accepted.

In the model, the Yamna culture is the "Urheimat" of the Indo-Europeans, east of which emerged the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BC), from which developed the Andronovo culture (1800–1400 BC). Andronovo culture interacted with the BMAC (2300–1700 BC) and, out of this interaction, developed the Indo-Iranians, which split into the Indo-Aryan and the Iranian branches around 1800 BC. The Indo-Aryans migrated to the Levant, northern India, and possibly east Asia.

The migration into northern India was not necessarily a large-scale immigration, but may have consisted of small groups, possibly of ethnically and genetically heterogeneous composition, who introduced their language and social system into the new territory. These are then emulated by larger groups of people, which become absorpted in the new language group. Witzel also notes that "small-scale semi-annual transhumance movements between the Indus plains and the Afghan and Baluchi highlands continue to this day."

"Aryan Invasion Theory"

The so-called "Aryan Invasion theory" is an outdated variant on this model. In the 1850s, Max Müller introduced the notion of two Aryan races, a western and an eastern one, who 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 "hijacked" by racist ethnologists. For example, as an exponent of race science, colonial administrator Herbert Hope Risley (1851 – 1911) used the ratio of the width of a nose to its height to divide Indian people into Aryan and Dravidian races, as well as seven castes.

The idea of an Aryan "invasion" was fueled after the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation, also called Harappan Civilisation. The Indus Valley Civilisation underwent decline at precisely the period at which the Indo-Aryan migration occurred. This led to the idea that this migration was actually an aggressive invasion which caused the decline of the Harappan Civilisation. This argument was developed by the mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, 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 the evidence he found, and that the skeletons were better explained as hasty interments, not victims of a massacre. The theory has been disgarded in mainstream scholarship since the 1980s, and replaced by much more sophisticated models.

Nevertheless, critics of the Indo-Aryan Migration theory use it to present the Indo-Aryan Migration theory as an "Aryan Invasion Theory". According to Witzel, the invasion model was criticised by Indigenous Aryanists for its allegedly racist and colonialist undertones:

The theory of an immigration of IA speaking Arya ("Aryan invasion") is simply seen as a means of British policy to justify their own intrusion into India and their subsequent colonial rule: in both cases, a "white race" was seen as subduing the local darker colored population.

According to Koenraad Elst,

"The theory of which we are about to discuss the linguistic evidence, is widely known as the "Aryan invasion theory" (AIT). I will retain this term even though some scholars object to it, preferring the term "immigration" to "invasion." […] North India’s linguistic landscape leaves open only two possible explanations: either Indo-Aryan was native, or it was imported in an invasion.

Indigenous Aryanism

The "Indigenist position" started to take shape after the discovery of the Harappan Civilisation, 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 difference between the (northern) Indo-European part and the (southern) Dravidian part, and the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations.

These ideas are based on the Puranas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, which contain lists of kings and genealogies, which are used for the traditional chronology of India's ancient history. "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 ca. 300 BCE, reported to have heard of a traditional list of 153 kings that covered 6042 years, beyond the traditional beginning of the Kaliyuga at 3102 BCE. The royal lists are based on Bardic traditions, and are derived from lists which were orally transmitted and constantly reshaped by the Sūta bards.

These lists are supplemented with astronomical interpretations, which are also used to reach an earlier dating for the Rg Veda. Along with this comes a redating of historical personages and events, in which the Buddha is dated to 1700 BCE or even 3139/8 BCE, and Chandragupta Maurya (c. 300 BCE) is replaced by Chandragupta, the Gupta king. Elst notes that

In August 1995, a gathering of 43 historians and archaeologists from South-Indian universities (at the initiative of Prof. K.M. Rao, Dr. N. Mahalingam and Dr. S.D. Kulkarni) passed a resolution fixing the date of the Bharata war at 3139-38 BC and declaring this date to be the true sheet anchor of Indian chronology.

The Vedic Foundation gives a chronology of ancient India (Bharata), which starts in 3228 BCE with the descension of Bhagwan Krishna. The Mahabharata War is dated at 3139 BCE, while various dynasties are dated more than a millennium earlier, Gautama Buddha is dated at 1894-1814 BCE, and Jagadguru Shankaracharya at 509-477 BCE. These ideas provide a continues chronology of India, in contrast to the discontinuity between the Harappan end Vedic period:

[T]he 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 BC).

The idea of "Indigenous Aryanism" fits into traditional Hindu ideas about their religion, namely that it has timeless origins, with the Vedic Aryans inhabiting India since ancient times. The Vedic Foundation states:

The history of Bharatvarsh (which is now called India) is the description of the timeless glory of the Divine dignitaries who not only Graced the soils of India with their presence and Divine intelligence, but they also showed and revealed the true path of peace, happiness and the Divine enlightenment for the souls of the world that still is the guideline for the true lovers of God who desire to taste the sweetness of His Divine love in an intimate style.

"Indigenous Aryans" scenarios

Michael Witzel 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; 2. The "out of India" school that posits India as the Proto-Indo-European homeland, originally proposed in the 18th century, revived by the Hindutva sympathiser Koenraad Elst (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.

Kazanas adds a fourth scenario:

4.The Aryans entered the Indus Valley before 4500 BC and got integrated with the Harappans, or might have been the Harappans.

Main arguments of the "Indigenists"

The idea of "Indigenous Aryans" is supported with specific interpretations of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic data, and on literary interpretations of the Rigveda. Standard arguments, both in support of the "Indigenous Aryans" theory, and in opposition the mainstream Indo-Aryan Migration theory, are:

Questioning the IAMt:

Presenting the Indo-Aryan Migration theory as an "Indo-Aryan Invasion theory";

Questioning the methodology of linguistics;

Reinterpretation of the linguistic data, arguing for the ancient, indigenous origins of Sanskrit;

Pointing to the supposed lack of genetic and archaeological evidence to support such an "invasion" into North West India;

Contesting the possibility that small groups can change culture and languages in a major way;

Re-dating India's chronology, re-establishing the Vedic-Puranic chronology:

Dating the Rigveda and the Vedic people to the 3rd millennium BC or earlier;

Identifying the Sarasvati River with the Ghaggar-Hakra River, which dried up c. 2000 BC;

Identifying the Vedic people with the Harappan Civilisation;

Equating the Harappan Civilisation, Vedic Culture and the Vedic-Puranic chronology.

Aurobindo's Aryan person

For Aurobindo, an "Aryan" was not a person who belonged to a particular race, but a person who "accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration." He wanted to revive India's strength by reviving the Aryan strength and character. Aurobindo 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 division of European historians between two types of cultural configurations.

The "emerging 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 originated in Northern India and spread to the remainder of the Indo-European region through a series of migrations. It implies that the people of the Harappan civilisation 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:

Personally, I don't think that either theory, of Aryan invasion and of Aryan indigenousness, can claim to have been proven by prevalent standards of proof; even though one of the contenders is getting closer. Indeed, while I have enjoyed pointing out the flaws in the AIT statements of the politicized Indian academic establishment and its American amplifiers, I cannot rule out the possibility that the theory which they are defending may still have its merits.

Edwin Bryant also notes that Elst's model is a "theoretical exercise:"

...a purely theoretical linguistic exercise […] as an experiment to determine whether India can definitively be excluded as a possible homeland. If it cannot, then this further problematizes the possibility of a homeland ever being established anywhere on linguistic grounds.

And in Indo-Aryan Controversy Bryant notes:

Elst, perhaps more in a mood of devil’s advocacy, toys with the evidence to show how it can be reconfigured, and to claim that no linguistic evidence has yet been produced to exclude India as a homeland that cannot be reconfigured to promote it as such.

"The emerging alternative"

Koenraad Elst summarises "the emerging alternative to the Aryan Invasion Theory" as follows.

During the 6th millennium BC Proto-Indo-Europeans lived in the Punjab region of northern India. As the result of demographic expansion, they spread into Bactria as the Kambojas. The Paradas moved further and inhabited the Caspian coast and much of central Asia while the Cinas moved northwards and inhabited the Tarim Basin in northwestern China, forming the Tocharian group of I-E speakers. These groups were Proto-Anatolian and inhabited that region by 2000 BC. 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. 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 BC, 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 and Persia, these possibly were the Pahlavas. 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 Mitanni kingdom by around 1500 BC (see Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni). Others travelled eastwards and inhabited the Gangetic basin while others travelled southwards and interacted with the Dravidian people.

David Frawley

In books such as The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India and In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Frawley criticises the 19th century racial interpretations of Indian prehistory, such as the theory of a conflict between invading Caucasoid Aryans and Dravidians. In the book In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (1995), Frawley along with Georg Feuerstein and Subhash Kak has rejected the Aryan Invasion Theory and supported the Out of India theory.

Bryant commented that Frawley's historical work is more successful in the popular arena, to which it is directed and where its impact "is by no means insignificant", rather than in academic study and that "(Frawley) is committed to channelling a symbolic spiritual paradigm through a critical empirico rational one".

Alternative archaeologist Graham Hancock (2002) quotes Frawley's historical work extensively for the proposal of highly evolved ancient civilisations prior to our current estimate of history, including in India. Kreisburg refers to Frawley's "The Vedic Literature and Its Many Secrets".

Political significance

The "Aryan Invasion Theory" plays an important role in Hindu nationalism, which favors the idea of "Indigenous Aryanism". It has to be understood to the background of colonialism, and the task of nation-building in India.

Colonial India

Curiosity and the colonial requirements of knowledge about the 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 "Aryan race," the presumed identity of Indo-European language speakers was prominent among such races, which was seen to be further subdivided into "European Aryans" and "Asian Aryans," each with their own homelands.

Max Mueller, who translated the Rigveda during 1849–1874, postulated an original homeland for all Aryans in central Asia, from where a northern branch was believed to have migrated to Europe and a southern branch came to India and Iran. The Aryans were 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 descendents of dasas.

The Aryan theory served to provide the colonised Indians with status and self-esteem, making them believe that they are of the same stock as the colonisers, linguistically and racially. 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 argued that the dasas and sudras were indigenous people and the rightful inheritors of the land, whereas Brahmins were Aryan and alien.

The upper castes had their own uses for the Aryan theory. Keshab Chunder Sen saw the English rule in India as a "reunion of parted cousins." The nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak endorsed the antiquity of Rigveda, dating it to 4500 BC. 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.

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 that were revealed to the Aryans. The first man (an Aryan) was created in Tibet and, after living there for some time, the Aryans came down and inhabited India, which was devoid of any people earlier.

The Theosophical Society 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.

The Hindu nationalists, led by Savarkar and Golwalkar, 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.

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.

Witzel traces the "indigenous Aryan" idea to the writings of Savarkar and Golwalkar. 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 as the instrument of its rise to notability:

The Aryan migration theory at first played no particular argumentative role in Hindu nationalism. […] This impression of indifference changed, however, with Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906–1973), who from 1940 until his death was leader of the extremist paramilitary organization the Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh (RSS). […] In contrast to many other of their openly offensive teachings, the Hindu nationalists did not seek to keep the question of the Aryan migration out of public discourses or to modify it; rather, efforts were made to help the theory of the indigenousness of the Hindus achieve public recognition. For this the initiative of the publisher Sita Ram Goel (b. 1921) was decisive. Goel may be considered one of the most radical, but at the same time also one of the most intellectual, of the Hindu nationalist ideologues. […] Since 1981 Goel has run a publishing house named ‘Voice of India’ that is one of the few which publishes Hindu nationalist literature in English which at the same time makes a 'scientific' claim. Although no official connections exist, the books of 'Voice of India' — which are of outstanding typographical quality and are sold at a subsidized price — are widespread among the ranks of the leaders of the Sangh Parivar. […] The increasing political influence of Hindu nationalism in the 1990s resulted in attempts to revise the Aryan migration theory also becoming known to the academic public.

Repercussions of the disagreements about Aryan origins have reached Californian courts with the Californian Hindu textbook case, where according to the Times of India historian and president of the Indian History Congress, Dwijendra Narayan Jha in a "crucial affidavit" to the Superior Court of California,

...[g]iving a hint of the Aryan origin debate in India, […] asked the court not to fall for the 'indigenous Aryan' claim since it has led to 'demonisation of Muslims and Christians as foreigners and to the near denial of the contributions of non-Hindus to Indian culture'.

Criticism

Michael Witzel has severely criticised the "Indigenous Aryans" position:

The 'revisionist project' certainly is not guided by the principles of critical theory but takes, time and again, recourse to pre-enlightenment beliefs in the authority of traditional religious texts such as the Purånas. In the end, it belongs, as has been pointed out earlier, to a different 'discourse' than that of historical and critical scholarship. In other words, it continues the writing of religious literature, under a contemporary, outwardly 'scientific' guise […] The revisionist and autochthonous project, then, should not be regarded as scholarly in the usual post-enlightenment sense of the word, but as an apologetic, ultimately religious undertaking aiming at proving the 'truth' of traditional texts and beliefs. Worse, it is, in many cases, not even scholastic scholarship at all but a political undertaking aiming at 'rewriting' history out of national pride or for the purpose of 'nation building'.

In her review of Bryant's "The Indo-Aryan Controversy", which includes chapters by Elst and other "indigenists", Stephanie Jamison comments:

...the parallels between the Intelligent Design issue and the Indo-Aryan "controversy" are distressingly close. The Indo-Aryan controversy is a manufactured one with a non-scholarly agenda, and the tactics of its manufacturers are very close to those of the ID proponents mentioned above. However unwittingly and however high their aims, the two editors have sought to put a gloss of intellectual legitimacy, with a sense that real scientific questions are being debated, on what is essentially a religio-nationalistic attack on a scholarly consensus.

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:

Bryant's call for accepting "the valid problems that are pointed out on both sides" (p. 500), holds intellectual value only if distinctions are strictly maintained between research that promotes scholarship, and that which does not. Bryant and Patton gloss over the relevance of such distinctions for sustaining the academic nature of the Indo-Aryan debate, although the importance of distinguishing the scholarly from the unscholarly is rather well enunciated through the essays of Michael Witzel and Lars Martin Fosse.

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."