ART-1001 The Aryan Invasion Debate

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The Aryan Invasion Debate
by Ravi M. Gupta (Radhika Ramana dasa)

There are few issues in Indology which cause as much emotional excitement as the Aryan Invasion Theory. This theory about the roots of Hinduism is embroiled in a debate that spans many areas of study—linguistics, archeology, anthropology, history and religious studies—and includes everyone from professors to politicians. What is it about this theory which causes such heated argument, and where does the debate stand now?

The Aryan Invasion Theory says that around 1500 BC, northwestern India was invaded by a light-skinned, horse-riding race called Aryans. They brought with them the Sanskrit language, the Rigveda, and other key elements of ancient Hinduism. When the Aryan hordes encountered the native, dark-skinned residents, they destroyed the natives’ cities and civilization, and imposed their own culture. These natives were the residents of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, two great cities found in the Indus valley by archeologists in the last century. These cities, which flourished for nearly two thousand years, displayed a level of agricultural and urban sophistication that was foreign to the nomadic, war-like Aryans.

This theory was first propounded by the early Indologists in the nineteenth-century, during the time of the British rule in India. They believed in a Biblical worldview, which held that the world was only about 6000 years old, and human civilization could be no older than 4500 years. Thus they traced the source of ancient Indian civilization to Europe and Western Asia.

A new generation of Indian scholars claims that the Aryan Invasion is a “colonial-missionary” theory created by the British to establish their superiority, spread Christianity and divide Indian society. It is true that the intentions of the early proponents were often less than noble. Max Muller, who was largely responsible for developing the theory, wrote in a letter in 1886, “[The Veda] is the root of their religion, and to show them [the Indians] what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.” (Klostermaier).

On the other hand, supporters of the theory claim that its opponents have a hidden Hindu-nationalist agenda. They feel that ancient Indian history is being rewritten to suit the needs of a Hindutva-driven political regime. One website debunking the Aryan Invasion Theory states, “This subject must especially and urgently interest all those people who are committed to the ideology of Hindutva, . . . If such a false theory is allowed to perpetuate and give credence without any tenable and reliable basis, the very raison d’être of Hindutva is endangered” (Agrawal).

Nevertheless, the Aryan Invasion Theory lies at the heart of a serious academic debate—one which is changing the way we view ancient India. In fact, most scholars have now rejected the old invasion theory, at least in the form described above. The story has some serious flaws. First, there is no strong evidence for the view that the Indus civilization was destroyed by invasion. The American archeologist George F. Dales found that there were no signs of mass annihilation—no “destruction level”—in the ruins of Mohenjo-daro (Keay 23). Secondly, the existence of a distinct race of people called Aryans has been seriously questioned. In Sanskrit literature, the word arya usually means “noble,” “respectable,” or “pure,” and is never used as a generic title for a particular race of people. The Vedas themselves never emphasize the ethnic background of individual personalities.

The Aryan Invasion Theory, in its original form, was based on a paradigm that is now discredited. Burton Stein states this paradigm succinctly in A History of India:

  1. Urban culture, or civilization, emerged suddenly in the middle of the third millennium BC, . . . [and was] thought to be a plantation of colonists from Mesopotamia or elsewhere in western Asia.
  2. This urban culture remained static and uniform over much of the Indus River basin.
  3. It then collapsed suddenly and uniformly.
  4. The collapse came in the face of the onslaught of Indo-Aryans from the central Asia steppe. (Chapter 2).

It is now recognized that the rise and fall of the Indus Valley civilization was an indigenous and much more gradual process. It arose as a result of a very long development dating back to 7000 BC, and it ended when the settlements were gradually abandoned, perhaps due to environmental devastation. The collapse hit certain areas first, while other remained alive for centuries afterward.

But even with this major shift in scholarship, the controversy surrounding the origins of Hinduism is hardly dead. Although the Aryan Invasion Theory is mostly rejected, a softer, Aryan Migration Theory has been proposed. It is still widely held that the speakers of an Indo-European language (Sanskrit) began infiltrating India in 500 BC, bringing with them Vedic culture. “It is the language particularly that sets ‘Aryans’ apart from other peoples, not race, as long assumed” (Stein Ch. 2).

The arguments go back and forth. The evidence in support of Aryan migration is mainly linguistic and philological. The Vedic language shows that the Aryans were very familiar with horses (which are typically central Asian) but not so familiar with elephants (which are typically Indian). Similarly, the word for ‘plough’ is said to be non-Sanskritic. “If the arya, when they arrived in India, did not have a word for a plough—and so had to borrow someone else’s—it is safe to assume that they did not have a plough. The Harappans, however, did.” (Keay 24). Thus the Aryans were originally nomadic pastoralists, whereas the Harappans were urban agriculturists. The Vedic texts are closely related to ancient Zoroastrian texts from Iran. The Rigveda speaks of a conflict between the Aryans and another group of people, the dasas. The writing found on Harappa seals is not Indo-European. All these reasons seem to show that the Aryans brought a foreign culture and language to India.

On the other hand, there is mounting evidence against the Aryan theory from a variety of disciplines. The Vedas themselves provide no hint of a mass migration from a foreign country, nor is their any reference in Buddhist, Jain, or Tamil writings. The fauna and flora described in the Rigveda are all of north India. In fact, the dried riverbed of the Saraswati, the most important river of the Rigveda, has been found by satellite imaging. Historical geographers have concluded that it dried out no later that than 1900 BC, 400 years before the Aryans supposedly came to India. In the field of astronomy, there are references to constellations in Vedic texts whose time frames can be calculated. The oldest observation goes as far back as 4500 BC. In the field of mathematics, A. Seidenberg has come to the conclusion that the Harappan cities, Egyptian pyramids and Mesopotamian citadels all reflect a geometry that was derived from the Vedic Shulvasutras (Klostermaier). Finally, archeological evidence for horses has been found in Harappan and pre-Harappan sites. Arguments such as these seem to support the view that the Aryan culture was pre-Harappan and indigenous to Ancient India.

The debate goes on, and time will tell whether one side will prevail, or another compromise will emerge. In any case, the outcome will have immense consequences, not just for the study of Indian history, but for the history of the ancient world as a whole. India has been home to human communities for hundreds of thousands of years. The place it is accorded in ancient history will play an important role in the self-consciousness of Indians today.

Ultimately, however, the physical origin of the Vedas is irrelevant to their spiritual greatness. The Vedas call themselves apauruseya, which means that they are not created by any human being. The Vedas arise from the breathing of the Supreme Lord Vishnu, and thus they are eternal like the Lord Himself. They appear and disappear in human society by the will of the Lord, but they are neither created nor destroyed. Their teachings, language, and mantras—as well as the culture they enshrine—are perfect and supremely beneficial regardless of where and when they appear on Earth.

Bibliography

Agrawal, Dinesh. Demise of Aryan Invasion Theory. www.tamilnation.org/heritage/aryan.html

Houben, J.M. Indo-Aryan Debate.

http://sarasvati.simplenet.com/resources/Indoaryanproblem.htm

Keay, John. India: A History. London: HarperCollins, 2000.

Klostermaier, Klaus. “Questioning the Aryan Invasion Theory and Revising Ancient Indian

History.” ISKCON Communications Journal. Vol. 6, No. 1.

www.iskcon.com/ICJ/6_1/6_1klostermaier.htm

Prabhupada, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. Srimad Bhagavatam. Los Angeles: Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1978.

Stein, Burton. A History of India. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.