Are we Indians actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race? Is there any proof of it?

Question

Are we Indians actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race? Is there any proof of it?

Answer 1

The great Aryan theory given by Max Muller is wrong. The Max Muller organization itself accepted that and took the theory back. Though they did it in a very silent way and never made any efforts to publish the new findings that simply falsified the concept of whole Aryan invasion.

Answer 2

No. It was a british imperialist and evangelicals created myth. The only reason its still alive at all, is that it is still usefull for political and proselytiser's agenda.



Aryans were the original Indians. The civilisation was Indian to start with.



An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct. And the great epic Ramayana has a singularly eloquent expression describing Rama as:



arya sarva samascaiva sadaiva priyadarsanah - Arya, who worked for the equality of all and was dear to everyone . The Rig Veda also uses the word Arya something like thirty six times, but never to mean a race.



Thus, the modern notion of an Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is contradicted by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold. Interestingly, so were the Chinese.



Race never had anything to do with it until the Europeans adopted the ancient word to give expression to their nationalistic and other aspirations. They also popularized in a racial sense, the term Dravidian which had earlier had only a linguistic connotation.





The Ayran Invasion Theory - AIT specifically justified the presence of the British among their “Aryan cousins” in India, being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself. It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview:



(1) the dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives;

(2) being superior, the whites established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives;

(3) being race-conscious, they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness;

(4) but being insufficiently fanatical about their race purity, some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent and less dynamic;

(5) hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.





The Fiction of Aryan Invasion Theory



The preplanned scheme of Jones to introduce the idea that Sanskrit was an outside language gave birth to the speculation of the imagined existence of some Central Asian (Aryan) race who spoke Sanskrit and who brought Sanskrit language to India when they forcefully entered the country. In this way, the fiction of the Aryan Invasion was created much later, sometime in the 1800’s by the same group of people and was extensively promoted by Max Muller.



It is a well known fact that India is called Aryavart. Manu Smriti (2/21,22) describes the exact location of Aryavart which lies from the south of the Himalayas and all the way up to the Indian Ocean. Its inhabitants are called the Arya. But it is not a locally spoken name. But it is not a locally spoken name. Commonly, we write Bharatvarsh for India in general and scriptural writings. The territory of India (or Bharatvarsh for Aryavart) during the Mahabharat war (3139 BC) was up to Iran. So the ancient Iranian people also used to call themselves the Aryans.



People of the British regime using this information, fabricated a story that some unknown race of Central Asia who came and settled in Iran were called the Aryans and they were Sanskrit speaking people. They invaded India, established themselves permanently, and wrote the Vedas. Those who introduced this ideology never cared to produce any evidence in support of their statement because it never existed, and furthermore, fiction stories don’t need evidences as they are self-created dogmas.



In the Bharatiya history there are descriptions of Shak and Hun invasions and also of the Muslim invasions but never an Aryan invasion.



Max Muller promoted this invasion story and formulated his dates of Vedic origin accordingly.



To add insult to an injury Hitler declared himself an Aryan and used Hindu Swastik to be his symbol.



The Western experts concluded, somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BE, the primitive barbarians who composed the Veda invaded northern India, driving the helpless Dravidians into the southern part of the subcontinent where they live today. There are two difficulties with this popular theory:



Today’s northern Hindus have absolutely no memory of having ever driven the Dravidians out of north India. None of their ancient manuscripts mentions any such thing.



Today’s Dravidians have absolutely no memory of ever having lived in North India. In fact, their ancient traditions suggest that their forebears came from the south, not from the north.



Minor problems like these did not discourage the Europeans and American scholars of the time. Thousands of pages of the Hindu’s own historical records were simply dismissed as fiction.



Over and over the Vedas mention a mighty river called the Saraswati where Aryan communities flourished and Vedic priests sang hymns of glorious gods, like Indra. Western scholars speculated that the Saraswati might have been one of the rivers to the east of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia. Perhaps, some even speculated, it had never been anything but a figment of the ancient poet's imaginations!



In the early 1980's proponents of the Aryan Invasion Theory, got a terrible shock. Satellite imaging was revolutionzing our knowledge of Earth's geography. It allowed scientists to get a look at the planet from low orbit out in space. Satellite photos of the dry bed of an enormous river, so huge it may have been five miles across at one site. While that river was in business, it may been the largest in the world, bigger even than than the Amazon today. The geologists quickly established the river had dried up around 1900 BCE. Yet according to our friend Max Muller the Veda hadn't been composed till at the very least 700 years after the river disappeared. What was this? Poets pretending they still lived alongside a river that vanished centuries before? Not darn likely!



source: Hinduism - By Linda Johnsen



It was also in the 19th century that appeared the myth of the Indo-Europeans being at the source of all Western civilization and for this we have to thank British authors who were taken up with evolutionist theory. Indian historians trained in Europe have fallen victim to this myth but that does not make it any more authentic. Later on, at the beginning of the 20th century, it became fashionable to support the Marxist theory which replaced race with class, though its premises were just as shaky.



source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman



While this theory provided an explanation within the framework of the then emerging filed of archaeology, it suffered from serious flaws. Also the context in which the word Aryan was used was wrong because this word in the earliest Indian literature refers to culture and not any specific race or linguistic background. A major flaw of the invasion theory was that it had no explanation for why the Vedic literature that was assumed to go back into the second millennium had no reference to any region outside of northwest India. Furthermore, the astronomical references in the Vedic literature allude to events in the third millennium B.C.D. and earlier. Then there was the fact that the earliest Indian sciences and literature and philosophy were very advanced indicating a very long tradition of scholarship which the invasion model did not posit. Most importantly, the discovery of the archaeological sites of the Indus-Saraswati tradition, which go back to at least 6500 B.C.E. and which show cultural continuity with the later Indian civilization, created a fundamental contradiction for the model. If one could explain the cultural continuity by arguing that the invading Aryans eventually adopted the culture of the original inhabitants then how was one to explain the fact that they were able to impose their language on the same people.



Once the theory of this horse riding invaders, took root, any evidence that went against this view was ignored or simply brushed aside as being ambiguous. But the main reason that the Aryan invasion theory survived so long is because questions about the process supporting the hypothesis were not asked.



Another reason for the popularity of the invasion theory was that parallels were seen with the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans. The fundamental differences between the two situations were ignored. Europe of five hundred years ago was densely populated unlike the steppes of Central Asia thirty five hundred years ago. European expansion was imperial in design impelled in part by capitalism and by the exclusionary world-view of Christianity in contrast to the Indo-Aryans with their Old Religion that saw the world to be interconnected.



Sri Aurobindo's study of Tamil led him to discover that the original connection between the Sanskrit and Tamil languages was “far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed.” These languages are “two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue.” And, “My first study of Tamil words had brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue.”



Hindus collectively have no memory of an Aryan invasion of India that supposedly took place around 1,500 B.C. Hindu epics do not mention any such invasion. Surely, the extensive Hindu literature would describe the Aryan invasion if such had indeed taken place.





This theory, which posits the invasion of ancient India by a white-skinned race (the "Aryans") who conquer an indigenous, dark-skinned population, therefore worked ingeniously with the British divide-and-conquer strategy for rule in India. The theory and its variants continue to be used today by the Vatican and other Christian enterprises in their campaign to "harvest" tribals and other vulnerable communities of Hindus. For these spiritual imperialists, spurious racial theories still hold their divide-and-conquer appeal.



The early excavations showed well established flourishing cities of Harrappa and Mohanjodaro.



Since then much more excavation has been done. The early coivilisation was noit limited to west part of India. there is clear continuity and its Spread was a very large part of India. Aryan invasion theory flopped because Aryans did not not seem to clash with locals anywhere. And civilisations are much older than most early indologists were ready to accept.



It was simply too much for them as accepting that India has such developed civilisation refutes bible theory of creation to start with. If anything civilisation was already developed when they were writing old Testament.



West has still some problem accepting that world is way older than bible makes them believe. They even tried to undermine acheivement of Egyptians. Some even coined the idea that Egyptian pyramids were designed by aliens!



You can put Aryan migration theory in this context.When no proof of invasion could be substantiated then Migration theory came up. It is just snatching away the acheivement of natives.



Many small tribes and groups really have been migrating in India like forever. They brought some of their customs along with them. And local Indian civilization let them be. The basic features of Hinduism have alwys been indigenous.



It was a country with rich resourses, well established cities and industries. Soil of rivers flowing here is rich and farming not that difficult.



Great civilisations and philosophers develope in a calm atmosphere. And ancient India provided that. These things are not developed in nomadic cowboy herds as suggested by some researchers.



Untill and unless locals are already content, they are not assimilative of newer migrants nor tolerant.



A detailed analysis of the Aryan invasuion theory can be read at the site given is source.





Sir Julian Sorell Huxley warned against the Aryan Invasion Theory long ago:

"In 1848 the young German scholar Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) settled in Oxford. ...About 1853, he introduced into English usage the unlucky term Aryan as applied to a large group of languages. ...Moreover, Max Muller threw another apple of discord. He introduced a proposition that is demonstrably false. He spoke not only of a definite Aryan language and its descendants, but also of a corresponding 'Aryan race'. The idea was rapidly taken up both in Germany and in England."

(source: Caste and Science: Hot Air and Cold Fusion - By N. S. Rajaram).



Writing as far back as 1939, Huxley observed:



"In England and America the phrase 'Aryan race' has quite ceased to be used by writers with scientific knowledge, though it appears occasionally in political and propagandist literature. In Germany, the idea of the 'Aryan' race received no more scientific support than in England. Nevertheless, it found able and very persistent literary advocates who made it appear very flattering to local vanity. It therefore steadily spread, fostered by special conditions."



(source: Origins Of The Aryan Dravidian Divide - By N. S. Rajaram).



Max Muller, one of its chief creators! In 1888, forty years after he had first hammered the concept of an Aryan race, he conceded that "the home of the Aryans" could not be pinpointed more precisely than "somewhere in Asia."

He flatly denied having ever spoken of an Aryan race:



"I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language...To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is a great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar."

Max Muller also disowned the short chronology he himself had arbitrarily fixed for Indian scriptures, a chronology still in vogue today among Western Indologists.

(source: The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel Danino and Sujata Nahar p



It is not that substantial evidence is totaly absent. It is just ignored. Or interpreted differently.



# Ramayana is an old epic. British while called it a myth, yet used the RAMA Ravan war to establish that north indian Rama defeated Dravidian Ravana.



# Aryan invasion theory said Saraswati is either a fictional river or they said it refers some river near russia! But recently satelite images proved that it was real and dried up. It shows that it was bigger than Amazon.

LANDSAT imageries provided by NASA and Indian satellites have also provided clinching evidence that there was nothing "mythical" about the Saraswati.

Relationship with Krishna’s Dwarka:



The discoveries at Gulf of Cambay by the National Institute of Ocean Technology established, using carbon-14 date of 7,500 years for the wood samples excavated from under the sea, the existence of a civilization dating to that period.



Krishna’s Dwarka existed some 4,000 years ago.



Harivamsha describes the submerging of Dwarka saying Krishna instructed Arjuna, who was then visiting Dwarka; to evacuate the residents of the city as the sea was going to engulf the city. “On the seventh day (of Krishna saying this), as the last of the citizens were leaving the city, the sea entered the streets of Dwarka.” [in ‘Search on Krishna´s Dwarka comes to a standstill’, By Vaidehi Nathan; Organiser, 2004, June20]



Ruins of Dwarka also show a very advanced civilization of at least 4000 years old, which could not be formed by semi-nomadic Aryans coming down from central Asia in 1500BC. The city originally itself could be about 6000 years old.



These time lines prove that Aryan invasion theory as fake.



The philosophical ideas of Hinduism are not of a primitive nomadic race. Cowboys are not known for writing Darshan. These ideas originate in a stable civilization where people are well educated and have free time to think and argue over philosophies.



Western world is reaching somewhat towards free thinking and challanging bible now. Vedas were challanged by Lokayats(atheist) and buddhists before christ. Vedas must have remained unchallanged for some thousand years to give time to develope complicated rituals like vedic people.



Editted:



Someone presented DNa tests as a proof. It goes both ways. In India we have mixed population for thousands of years now. Any DNA test of Northern India is bound to give Foreign ' Caucassian DNA too. As we have had enough invaders from west , Greeks, Kushans, Huns , and others. North Indians in Western India can be confused with europians at times. But It does not mean that The Aryans were an outside race. On The contrary , The pattern shows it may have as well migrated westwards. Thats how western civilisation is younger.

Answer 3

We are Aryan which means virtuous and virtue can be taught through an Acharya or a teacher who himself is an example worth emulating. Dravida is not inferior to Arya, it means a person who is conditioned to the environment. Arya is a person who remains uninfluenced by the surroundings and is guided by the inner spirit. Neither it is true that Aryans had come from outside India who invaded and drove out the Dravidians to the south, nor the fact that these two are different races.



Projecting these two as two different races, one of whom was the invader and the other the vanquished; was part of a British ploy to perpetuate their rule over Indians by dividing them and also develop mutual hatred among them to facilitate easy conversion of the South Indians to Christianity. They did succeed in erstwhile Trivancore and Madras and Mysore where we have the first crop of Missionary proselytizers of Indian origin.

Answer 4

yes! there are many ways to prove this.



The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna).



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. You don't get to read about these kind of races in India or elsewhere.



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?



This says it all. And to conclude, its very clear from the points discussed above that Indians are descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 5

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.

Answer 6

NO

Answer 7

we indians are actually the descendents of dravidian and our historians have already proved it.

Answer 8

NO, we are not.

Answer 9

yes, we are descendents of aryans and dravidians . various scripts provides proof.

Answer 10

There is no real evidence that the Indians are actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race - whether archeological, literary or linguistic - and no scholar working in the field, even those who still accept some outside origin for the Vedic people (the so-called Aryans), accepts the theory in its classical form of the violent invasion and destruction of the Harappan cities by the incoming Aryans.



The following 4 points will prove the above statement,



1. The main center of Harappan civilization is the newly

rediscovered Sarasvati river of Vedic fame. While the Indus river has about three dozen important Harappan sites, the Sarasvati has over five hundred. The drying up of the Sarasvati brought about the end of the Harappan civilization around 1900 BC. As the Vedas know of this river they cannot be later than the terminal point for the

river or different than the Harappans who flourished on its banks. Harappan culture should be renamed "the Sarasvati culture" and the Vedic culture must have been in India long before 2000 BC.



2. No evidence of any significant invading populations have been found in ancient India, nor have any destroyed cities or massacred peoples been unearthed. The so-called massacre of Mohenjodaro that Wheeler, an early excavator of the site claimed to find, has been found to be only a case of imagination gone wild. The sites were abandoned along with the ecological changes that resulted in the drying up of the Sarasvati.



3. So-called Aryan cultural traits like horses, iron, cattle-rearing or fire worship have been found to be either

indigenous developments (like iron) or to have existed in Harappan and pre-Harappan sites (like horses and fire worship). No special Aryan culture in ancient India can be differentiated apart from the indigenous culture.



4. A more critical reading of Vedic texts reveals that Harappan civilization, the largest of the ancient world, finds itself reflected in Vedic literature, the largest literature of the ancient world. Vedic literature was previously not related to any significant civilization but merely to "the destruction of Harappa." How the largest literature of the ancient world was produced by illiterate nomadic peoples as they destroyed one of the great civilizations of the ancient world is one of the absurdities that the Aryan invasion leads to, particularly when the urban literate Harappans are not given any literature of their own remaining.



Putting these points together we now see that the Vedas show the same development of culture, agriculture and arts and crafts as Harappan and pre-Harappan culture. Vedic culture is located in the same region as the Harappan, north India centered on the Sarasvati river. The abandonment of the invasion theory solves the literary riddle. Putting together Vedic literature, the largest of the ancient world, with the Harappan civilization, the largest of the ancient world, a picture emerges of ancient India as the largest civilization of the ancient world with the largest and best preserved literature, a far more logical view, and one that shows India as a consistent center from which civilization has spread over the last five thousand years.

Answer 11

dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south of India is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller.,...

In Sri lanka we all are the same race,..just think for a while if we are of two races & if north Indians are aryans & sinhalese are also aryans & tamils are dravidian race,..then there should be a big difference between sinhalese & tamils appearance,... think as an example chandrika is more simillar to north indian writhik roshan or to our own sri lankan arumuam thondaman. W

Answer 12

This was followed by the Vedic Civilization. The origin of the Indo-Aryans is under some dispute. Most scholars today believe in some form of the Indo-Aryan migration hypothesis, which proposes that the Aryans, a semi-nomadic people, possibly from Central Asia or northern Iran, migrated into the north-west regions of the Indian subcontinent between 2000 and 1500 BCE, although recent genetic evidence says the opposite occurred[citation needed]. The nature of this migration, the place of origin of the Aryans, and sometimes even the very existence of the Aryans as a separate people are hotly debated. The merger of the Vedic culture with the earlier Dravidian cultures (presumably of the descendants of the Indus Valley Civilization) apparently resulted in classical Indian culture, though the exact details of this process are controversial.

Answer 13

There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller

Answer 14

The origin of the Indo-Aryans is under some dispute. Most scholars today believe in some form of the Indo-Aryan migration hypothesis, which proposes that the Aryans, a semi-nomadic people, possibly from Central Asia or northern Iran, migrated into the north-west regions of the Indian subcontinent between 2000 and 1500 BCE, although recent genetic evidence says the opposite occurred[citation needed]. The nature of this migration, the place of origin of the Aryans, and sometimes even the very existence of the Aryans as a separate people are hotly debated. The merger of the Vedic culture with the earlier Dravidian cultures (presumably of the descendants of the Indus Valley Civilization) apparently resulted in classical Indian culture, though the exact details of this process are controversial.

Answer 15

The Indus Valley Civilization, one of the oldest in the world, dates back to 3300 BCE. This was followed by the Vedic Civilization. The origin of the Indo-Aryans is under some dispute. Most scholars today believe in some form of the Indo-Aryan migration hypothesis, which proposes that the Aryans, a semi-nomadic people, possibly from Central Asia or northern Iran, migrated into the north-west regions of the Indian subcontinent between 2000 and 1500 BCE, although recent genetic evidence says the opposite occurred[citation needed]. The nature of this migration, the place of origin of the Aryans, and sometimes even the very existence of the Aryans as a separate people are hotly debated. The merger of the Vedic culture with the earlier Dravidian cultures (presumably of the descendants of the Indus Valley Civilization) apparently resulted in classical Indian culture, though the exact details of this process are controversial.

Answer 16

Most scholars today believe in some form of the Indo-Aryan migration hypothesis, which proposes that the Aryans, a semi-nomadic people, possibly from Central Asia or northern Iran, migrated into the north-west regions of the Indian subcontinent between 2000 and 1500 BCE, although recent genetic evidence says the opposite occurred[citation needed]. The nature of this migration, the place of origin of the Aryans, and sometimes even the very existence of the Aryans as a separate people are hotly debated. The merger of the Vedic culture with the earlier Dravidian cultures (presumably of the descendants of the Indus Valley Civilization) apparently resulted in classical Indian culture, though the exact details of this process are controversial.

Answer 17

, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller

Answer 18

First of all I must tell you that the Aryans (from the Sanskrit term 'arya', meaning "noble" or "lord") were originally a group of nomadic tribes, who were part of a great migratory movement that spread in successive waves from Southern Russia and Turkmenistan during the 2d millennium BC and penetrated India, Iran and finally Europe throughout Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.



Later, in modern times, i.e. in the 19th century , they were named Indo-Europeans as from the Indo-European(Indo-Aryan) tribes derived almost all of languages in Europe (Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Rumanian, Gaelic, German, English, etc.) as well as those of India and Iran.

We need however point out that the term “Aryan" has been subject to racialist distortions, only in 19th and 20th century Western culture.



This usage tends to blur the Sanskrit meaning of 'noble' or 'elevated' with the idea of distinctive ancestral ethnicity marked by language distribution and then in this interpretation, the Aryan Race is both the highest representative of humanity and the purest descendent of the Proto-Indo-European population.



peoples of which countries today come from the Aryans are: the Italians, the Greeks, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the English, the Irish, the Scots, the Germans, the Austrians, the Swiss, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Danes, the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Russians, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Poles, the Croatians, the Slovenians, the Serbians, the Czechoslovaks, the Albanians, the Montenegrins. In short all the peoples of Europe except the Hungarians and the Finns.



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New Evidence on the Indus Culture



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.



The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.



This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion thoery or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.

Answer 19

The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller

Answer 20

We Indians are actually descendants of both the Aryan and Dravidian race.



India is a land of two races - the lighter skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians. The Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered

and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.

Answer 21

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 22

Yes we are descendant of the Aryan and Dravidian Race.

Some people contend that there was a race called dravidans who were the aborigines of Indian Subcontinent (while some say they too migrated into India) and the aryans migrated towards India from central Asia pushing the dravidans to the South. There are very many variations of this story. But in many of these dravidans are supposed to be of black complexion, short, acquainted with urban culture, worship Lord shiva shakti (pashupati). The aryans in contrast (the real contrast things are put forward, why !!) white in complexion, well built, rural inhabitants and worship the nature. There were fights between dravidans and aryans in which aryans pushed down the dravidans living in the banks of river sindhu Southwards and settled in the Northern plains of India.



There are lots of problems with the above said visualizations. The latest findings on the Indus valley civilization show that it is actually Saraswati valley civilization and the river saraswati which was the lifeline of the people living in those areas dried up, which would have caused them to move out of that area to the more fertile East and South. Also if the epics like rAmAyanam are the victory of aryans over dravidans, how will one justify a black rAmA to be an aryan and a brahmin rAvaNa to be a dravidan (dravidans by the theory put forward did not have castes and only aryans had it) ! So is KrishNa the hero of the other epic is black ! Further Lord shiva is depicted in the flame like color who was worshiped by dravidans. The vEdas which were supposed to be written by aryans by this theory hails the God as pashupati, which is the name of the God of dravidans !!



Then what could have been the truth ? Both these words are found in the scriptures. Then who are they ? The word aarya is used as a respectable title than a word to indicate the race. If people call in English the kings and the royal family with respect as sir, could one say long time later in future that there was a race of "sirs" who ruled over the race called peasant race and other races ? And the word dravida is a term used to indicate the land, which is the southern part of the Indian subcontinent than any race. The word aryAvarta thus means the place where noble thoughts rose than the place of settlement of a race. (Obvious as here is where the pioneer university of nAlanda stood, this is the place where the Himalayan rivers flow throughout the year making peaceful places for the sages to stay - even today). So what appears is a complete misinterpretation of the Hindu scriptures. Whatever it is, this theory has been used in the past to divide and corrupt the minds of the people especially the Hindus and to make them feel faulty of the history of their religion while in reality they have to be proud of a real glorius ancient origin and history.



If the purANas which were compiled very many centuries ago when there was no controversies of Aryan or dravidan present, to be taken into account they describe that the Hindu discipline and the worship of Lord shiva, Lord viShNu and other devas were present throughout this globe in all the seven Continents (sapta dvIpAni).(1) If this is the case then there is no question of which people introduced this Hinduism onto others as all were practicing the same. While in the other parts of the world the roots have got lost in a later period in bharata varSham (India) it stood strong in the spirit of the people.

Answer 23

NO we indians are not the actual descendents of the Aryan and Dravidian race.the proof is the vedas and other ancient litretures of indiaThe idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it.

Answer 24

This is a open-ended question and there is not any answer who supported it. Peoples who belives in old traditional values still believe this but they are also helpless to proof it. There is no solid proof which says that Indians are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race.



Actually The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.

Answer 25

darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller.,...

In Sri lanka we all are the same race,..just think for a while if we are of two races & if north Indians are aryans & sinhalese are also aryans & tamils are dravidian race,..then there should be a big difference between sinhalese & tamils appearance,... think as an example chandrika is more simillar to north indian writhik roshan or to our own sri lankan arumuam thondaman. We sinhalese & tamils in sri lanka belonged to one community from the past,..well some who had south indian origin spoke tamil & some spoke sinhalese,.that was the only difference,...but this fake Aryan Dravidian controvesy was created by the british in our south asian countries to break our unity so they can rule it easily when we are not united.

Answer 26

Because of favourable climatic conditions and fertile lands, it is quite likely that human race evolved here first or may be in parallel with Africa and/or China. But the aboriginals or original inhabitants of India were not so advanced and remained 'junglee' as per many western historians. People of more civilised and advanced race came to India as invaders from west who defeated the original inhabitants. The western historians called the invadors from west as Aryans and the original inhabitants as 'dravidians'. However there are lots of flaws in this theory. Latest studies have proved that Aryan invador theory is wrong and the so called Aryan race evolved here itself. There have been enough inter-mingling of the people from north and south since very begining. Hence we are both, Aryans and Dravidians at the same time.

Answer 27

Because of favourable climatic conditions and fertile lands, it is quite likely that human race evolved here first or may be in parallel with Africa and/or China. But the aboriginals or original inhabitants of India were not so advanced and remained 'junglee' as per many western historians. People of more civilised and advanced race came to India as invaders from west who defeated the original inhabitants. The western historians called the invadors from west as Aryans and the original inhabitants as 'dravidians'. However there are lots of flaws in this theory. Latest studies have proved that Aryan invador theory is wrong and the so called Aryan race evolved here itself. There have been enough inter-mingling of the people from north and south since very begining. Hence we are both, Aryans and Dravidians at the same

Answer 28

Dravidian Race

Answer 29

Indian Aryans

Answer 30

The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.

Answer 31

e are lots of problems with the above said visualizations. The latest findings on the Indus valley civilization show that it is actually Saraswati valley civilization and the river saraswati which was the lifeline of the people living in those areas dried up, which would have caused them to move out of that area to the more fertile East and South. Also if the epics like rAmAyanam are the victory of aryans over dravidans, how will one justify a black rAmA to be an aryan and a brahmin rAvaNa to be a dravidan (dravidans by the theory put forward did not have castes and only aryans had it) ! So is KrishNa the hero of the other epic is black ! Further Lord shiva is depicted in the flame like color who was worshiped by dravidans. The vEdas which were supposed to be written by aryans by this theory hails the G

Answer 32

We are taught in schools that king vijaya was an aryan,..& thus now we sinhalese are aryans,.& the tamils are dravidians.

But this is a very controvercial false statement which was stuffed into our heads by the british to break our unity in sri lanka,.. Before they came we didnt have any such controversies in sri lanka as Aryan & dravidians races.Well this was first created in India by the british saying the north indians are aryans & the south indians are dravidians & they are two different races. But the truth which is uncovering now is that these aryans & dravidians story is a complete scrap created by the british,....The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.

Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south of India is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller.,...

In Sri lanka we all are the same race,..just think for a while if we are of two races & if north Indians are aryans & sinhalese are also aryans & tamils are dravidian race,..then there should be a big difference between sinhalese & tamils appearance,... think as an example chandrika is more simillar to north indian writhik roshan or to our own sri lankan arumuam thondaman. We sinhalese & tamils in sri lanka belonged to one community from the past,..well some who had south indian origin spoke tamil & some spoke sinhalese,.that was the only difference,...but this fake Aryan Dravidian controvesy was created by the british in our south asian countries to break our unity so they can rule it easily when we are not united.

Answer 33

The history of India can be traced in fragments to as far back as 9500 years ago. Human civilizations in India are some of the earliest recorded, and were contemporaries of civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. India's history essentially includes the entire Indian subcontinent, including the more recent nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh. India is also inalienably linked with the history and heritage of the other South Asian nations like Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.



The Indus Valley Civilization, one of the oldest in the world, dates back to 3300 BCE. This was followed by the Vedic Civilization. The origin of the Indo-Aryans is under some dispute. Most scholars today believe in some form of the Indo-Aryan migration hypothesis, which proposes that the Aryans, a semi-nomadic people, possibly from Central Asia or northern Iran, migrated into the north-west regions of the Indian subcontinent between 2000 and 1500 BCE, although recent genetic evidence says the opposite occurred[citation needed]. The nature of this migration, the place of origin of the Aryans, and sometimes even the very existence of the Aryans as a separate people are hotly debated. The merger of the Vedic culture with the earlier Dravidian cultures (presumably of the descendants of the Indus Valley Civilization) apparently resulted in classical Indian culture, though the exact details of this process are controversial.



Note: Still no clear evidence

Answer 34

Aryan and Dravidian race - whether archeological, literary or linguistic - and no scholar working in the field, even those who still accept some outside origin for the Vedic people (the so-called Aryans), accepts the theory in its classical form of the violent invasion and destruction of the Harappan cities by the incoming Aryans.

Answer 35

By 2500 B.C. the civilizations of Mohenjodaro & Harappa flourished in India along the banks of the river Indus.The people living in such civilizations along the Indus river were farmers & were simple people.These people were called as Dravidians.At the advent of 1500 B.C. these civilizations were coming to an end, reasons for which are still unknown.Around this time the Aryans invaded India & set up their civilization along the banks of river Ganga.



Aryans were warriors who came after conquering civilization in Russia & Iran.They disregarded the local cultures of the existing Indus Valley civilization.Theybegan to conquer & take control over the north indian regions,driving the Dravidians southwards or further northwards into the jungles & mountains & some Dravidians stayed back to serve the Aryans.



Before the Aryans came Mongolian& few other foreign communities also existed in India.Today, to put it loosely approximately72 % Indians are Aryans & 28 % are Dravidians.



There is enough evidence as shown by remains of Indus Valley civilizations to show that Dravidians lived in India. Aryans were fair skinned while Dravidians were comparitively darker skinned.However they did have contact with Dravidians.



Hinduism which succeeded the Vedic religion followed in Indus Valley & caste system came into existence due to the meeting between Dravidians who were the original residents of India & the intruding Aryans.Since Aryans settled in northern part of India,many of the north Indians are fair skinned.Decendants also came from the union of the two communities.



Thus the remains of the Indus Valley prove the existence of Dravidians.Although there isn't much proof of settlement of Aryans, the Hindu scriptures & literature give a great deal of information on the activities of Aryans in India.Hence we Indians are actually descendants of Aryans & Dravidians.

Answer 36

Aryan or Dravidian should not be the question to be delved deeper into in these present days. The questions of race and purity are always left to the conjecture after some amount of study goes underway before facing dead-end somewhere down the line. I wish we should have been going to the periods before Dravidians in the Indian history and when we can do that, we are a fully developed society in the historical research areas, when the improvement of science and technology helped us find real answers by some genetic reading of archives or from the atomic imprint variations. May be, we can get our history hitherto unknown to us handed by some extraterrestrial knowledge resources. If that happens we may know very well the prehistoric cultures before Dravidians, where there might be civilizations more advanced than the present and eventually destroyed.



Anything that is in print or sculpted or painted is an exaggeration; see our newspapers and news features on TVs. If we see red color in the picture/visual, the commentator/new reporter will be describing the same as thick red and the convener/analyst in the studio will be saying extra thick red. History should be taken with a pinch of salt, if you ask historians they would advise you to take it in buckets of salt, having been used historically to talk in extremes.I have quoted the sources that may not reflect the above sentiments, but they have inspired me to write the above answer.

Answer 37

The Myth of Aryans and Non-Aryans

By Swami Vivekananda



"The mind jumps back several thousand years, and fancies that the same things happened here, and our archaeologist dreams of India being full of dark eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryan came from - the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet, others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that they were all black haired. If the write happens to be a black haired man, then the Aryans were all black haired.



Of late there have been attempts to prove that the Aryans lived on the Swiss lakes. I should not be sorry if they had been all drowned there, theory and all. Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations. As for as the truth in these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afganistan. There it ends.



All the theory that the Shudras caste were all non-Aryans and they were a multitude, is equally illogical and equally irrational. It could not have been possible in those days that a few hundred Aryans settled and lived there with a few hundred thousand slaves at their command. These slaves would have eaten them up, made "chutney" of them in five minutes.



The only explanation can be found in the Mahabharatha, which says, that in the beginning of Satya Yuga there was only one caste, the Brahmanas, and then by difference of occupation they went on dividing themselves into castes, and that is the only true and rational explanation that has been given. And in the coming of the Satya Yuga all the other castes will have to go back to the same condition. The solution to the caste problem in India, therefore, assumes this form, not to degrade the higher castes, not to crush out the Brahmana."

___________________



a lot of studies have been conducted & lots of theories

>> unfortunately NO HARD FACTS

noyhing has been proven and accepted



hence i would regard swami vivekananda, himself a great scholar

to have put it in the right perspective



lots of tools like carbon dating, soil sampling & geo-strata have evolved ... but unfortunately no co-ordinated & systematic study conducted in matter !

Answer 38

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.



Thus there is no proof that we are descendents of aryan and dravidian race

Answer 39

Because of favourable climatic conditions and fertile lands, it is quite likely that human race evolved here first or may be in parallel with Africa and/or China. But the aboriginals or original inhabitants of India were not so advanced and remained 'junglee' as per many western historians. People of more civilised and advanced race came to India as invaders from west who defeated the original inhabitants. The western historians called the invadors from west as Aryans and the original inhabitants as 'dravidians'. However there are lots of flaws in this theory. Latest studies have

Answer 40

The first point to note is that the idea of the Aryans as foreigners who invaded India and destroyed the existing Harappan Civilization is a modern European invention; it receives no support whatsoever from Indian records - literary or archaeological.



The same is true of the notion of the Aryans as a race; it finds no support in Indian literature or tradition. (And genetics demolishes it.) The word 'Arya' in Sanskrit means noble and never a race. In fact, the authoritative Sanskrit lexicon (c. 450 AD), the famous Amarakosha gives the following definition:



mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavah .

An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct. And the great epic Ramayana has a singularly eloquent expression describing Rama as:



arya sarva samascaiva sadaiva priyadarsanah - Arya, who worked for the equality of all and was dear to everyone . The Rig Veda also uses the word Arya something like thirty six times, but never to mean a race. The nearest to a definition that one can find in the Rigveda is probably:



praja arya jyotiragrah ...



Children of Arya are led by light - Rig Veda, VII. 33.17.



Thus, the modern notion of an Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is contradicted by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold. Interestingly, so were the Chinese. Race never had anything to do with it until the Europeans adopted the ancient word to give expression to their nationalistic and other aspirations.



The fact seems to be that the so-called Dravidians and the so-called Aryans were indigenous people in India and that the theory of their immigration and incursion into India is a figment of occidental scholarship.



In Tamil words Dravida is said to be the name of the Southern portion of India from Tiruvenkatam (Tirupati) to Kumari (Cape Comorin). The ancient Tamil works speak of a flood which destroyed the land south of the Kumari. The term Pancha Dravidas include the Tamils, the Telegus, the Karnatahas, the Maharastrians, and the Gurjaras, just as the term Pancha Gowdas include the people of the north of the Vindhyas. Thus the term Dravidas relates to a tract of land and not to a race.



The theory of the Aryan immigration into India from somewhere has been so often repeated by the western savants that it has become an article of faith even with the Indian scholars! But the Vedas refer to the Himalayas as the Uttara Giri i.e. the northern border and and contain no hints of an Aryan immigration into India from abroad.



(source: Indian Culture and the Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K. S. Ramaswami Sastri Annamalai University. 1956 p. 46-51).



Several eminent personalities including Swami Vivekanand, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Shri Aurobindo firmly believed that Aryans were homegrown, born and brought up in India. Many chose to dismiss those views simply as irrational, inspirational or ultra-nationalistic. Yet, the archeological finds being uncovered presently, year after year, supported by continuing historical & scholarly research seem to prove that Swami Vivekanand, Rabindranath Tagore and Shri Aurobindo, and many learned personalities were correct to raise pointed questions against the Aryan Invasion Theory.

Answer 41

yes because first Indians lived in Indus planes which is now in Pakistan they were called Dravidian's. They were attacked by Aryans and they ran away to south India.This is given in many text books.The discovery was done during British rule while building a rail route when the workers came ac crows some ancient bricks. Then the excavation st rated and the whole city was found which was called mohinjodaro and Happra in ancient times.During the excavation they came ac crows many bodies when they were seen properly they found out that there were many cuts on the body so they concluded that there was great war between Aryans and Dravidian's.so Dravidian's ran away to south India

Answer 42

Shiva (and the cult of phallic worship )is a dravidian god prevalent in the pre aryan times.The aryans assimilated the shiva cult into its folds and thereby began the genesis of present day indians. Early aryans were of the same stock as the europeans. Racial intermixing with dravidians resulted in the present day indian people.

Answer 43

The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 44

The late history tells us that the original Indians are known as the primitive Indians and are found in only few regions of the country. They still follow the primitive methods of hunting and some even live on tree tops. They have not yet been fully civilised. Moreover India is very close to the Equator so the original complexion of Indian skin should be black but the complexion of present Indian skin ranges from black to wheetish to fair and very fair. this also prooves that the fairer dravidians have left their genetical effects on our country.

Answer 45

Originally Indians lived near the river valleys and in the caves and hills. Later the river valleys were invaded by the Aryans from the North West through the Himalayan passes. They settled near the rivers Ganges and Indus valley. The civilisation in the south was called Dravidian and they were mainly cultivators and traders with the countries in the south east, Greece, Rome, Egypt and their contacts brought the people from those countries to the South India. On the influence of the messages passed on the richness of the merchandise, on later days, there were people from Portugal, France, and Dutch, came to India. In north India there were invasions from Mohammedans, Mangoles, Khans, Greece, and there was trade between India and China, Burma, Afghanistan, Persia. Later the country was invaded by the British. Thus the civilisation of India is a multi - oriented civilisation but quite naturally, they are all descendants of the Aryans and Dravidians.

Answer 46

The word Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit word 'Dravida' which means Southern. Contrary to popular belief only dark skinned people are not Dravidians. Again its not only the South Indians who speak languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada but also people of North East India, Nepal, and Bangladesh who speak Malto and Kurukh, and people of South West Pakistan who speak Brahui who are included among the Dravidians. The Gond tribals also come under Dravidians.



The word Aryan does not come under any kind of race. Its a way of addressing a person (just like Sir or Jee in Hindi). Any viewer of mythologicals in our TV serials will remember how the men are addressed.



Incidentally there are only three main races in the world ie the Caucasians, the Mongloids and the Negroids. All Indians including Dravidians, come under the Caucasian race.

Answer 47

Well its historically believed that the Aryans migrated into India through its western borders. Later to maintain their pure race they started the varna system or present day caste system and started treating the original people of the country as the out caste. The South Indians are the Dravidians and they belong to this race from the historical time. As far as the proof is concerned this is mentioned in all renowned historical books.

Answer 48

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of colour. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidian's are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidian's of the south is not a racial division.

Answer 49

As per historical records Dravidians were the native of the southern India and Aryans were residing somewhere in Central Asia around present Russia the Aryans were tall,fair,blue eyed who brought horse in India ,Aryans were said to be fighiting tribes who invade the most flourishing civilization of India at that time The Harappan Civilization it is said that the invasion of Aryans brought about the end of Harappan civilization,on the other hand the Dravidians were short in height,robust structure and dark in structure .After Aryans invaded India they mingled with the native Dravidians which gave birth to a New Race which are now the present Indians .There are many facts in support of this answer ,the vedic literature,various theories of historians .

Answer 50

Of course yes. There is not only ethical but also scientific proofs available that we Indians are descendents of the Arayans & the Dravidians.



A recent genetic study conducted by the national geographic society(I had seen that episode) on number of people in India, involving there D.N.A. test. It showed remarkable results.



Consider first of all the Dravidians, who are believed to be the ancient inhibiters of India. When the Human race evolved @ Africa after certain time they tended to discover the world. It got Partitioned into 3 major Sources

1. African

2. European

3. Middle East & India



And it is believed ( after the study & research conducted by NGC)

that the initial human stream to India was a part of that stream whom we call dravidians as of now. I can say this 'cause in the report they showed significant genetic similarity between African & Indian race. Hence they concluded that there was no human life in India until the source came from africa, later which migrated to Sri Lanka, Australia, Indonasia etc.



Now let us talk about the Arayans. It is believed that they are the inhibits of the Mesopotamia civilization, what I initially had called as the Middle East Race ( though there is not a great deal of study supporting this thought). But somewhere I believe in 2500 B.C. they came to India through the golden path pf Mohenjodaro & Inhibited India.



As the report of the NGC suggests that there were no burst of Life

in India & who ever we are, we might be the descendents of either the Dravidians or the Aryan

Answer 51

The preplanned scheme of Jones to introduce the idea that Sanskrit was an outside language gave birth to the speculation of the imagined existence of some Central Asian (Aryan) race who spoke Sanskrit and who brought Sanskrit language to India when they forcefully entered the country. In this way, the fiction of the Aryan Invasion was created much later, sometime in the 1800’s by the same group of people and was extensively promoted by Max Muller.

Answer 52

Thus, the modern notion of an Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is contradicted by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold. Interestingly, so were the Chinese.

Answer 53

Yes,sure.The northern Indian languages are distinctly related to other indo european languages.e.g father(Anglo-germanic) and pitri(Sanskrit) and pitr(Russian ) comes form the same origins.Dwar is door in russian and sanskrit.Tritiya(sanskrit) and three(english) has the same origin.Apart from linguistic similarities and etymological nearness,there is a sloka in the Rig vedas that say : 6 months went befor the sun rose again. This proves that that the early aryans in India lived in the polar areas.There was a definite migration form the extreme northern parts of the globe to the europe and asian areas.

Answer 54

I would retaliate with a back fire question, and my question is:

Leave apart the Aryans and the Dravidian race, just try to go 4-5 generations back. How many have a proof saying to which fore fathers their families belong to. I think its really difficult to recollect who were are grand-grand parents. now the straight forward answer to todays quetion is:

If its not possible to proof our race continuing from just 4 generations back, then it is highly highly impossible to say that we are actually descendents of Aryan and Dravidian. Even if there are some evidences it can become difficult to follow the chain of generations. God knows whether Aryans had children or moreover generations after them.

Answer 55

The most basic division of the Indian society is of Aryans and Dravidians. According to this division, nearly 72% of Indians are Aryans and 28% are Dravidians. The north Indians are the descendants of Aryans and the south Indians are Dravidians. The languages spoken in five states of south India are considered Dravidian languages and most of the languages spoken in the north are considered Aryan languages. The general script of the Aryan languages is different from the general script of Dravidian languages. The Indians also distinguish themselves by the general north Indian accent and general south Indian accent.According to general Indian legend, the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 BC. Before the Aryans, the Dravidian people resided in India

Many Indians immigrated from one part of India to other parts of India and not all local people of north India were pushed southwards by the Aryans. Some stayed and served the Aryans and others moved to live in the forests and the jungles of north India. Before the arrival of the Aryans there were also other communities in India like Sino-Mongoloids and Austroloids. There were also other foreign immigrations and invaders who arrived in India, from time to time.

According to this Hindu experts the word Aryan is a misinterpretation of the original Sanskrit word, Arya. Arya means pure or good in Sanskrit. In the holy Vedas the good people were called Arya. Some of the European scholars of Indian culture in the 19th century were Germans. These German scholars who found that Swastika was also a holy symbol among the Hindus distorted, the word Arya to Aryan.

Answer 56

The fact that Sanskrit has been our language of communication since the old times and this language,belonging to the Indo-European group of languages,has a lot in common with the European languages shows and confirms our origin in the Aryans

who belonged to the region and some of whom migrated to Bharat.Still there is a striking similarity in the grammar, words,social and religious practices, and customs which were being followed in Bharat and the countries where the languages of Indo-European group are in use.This is a vast subject and a long list of such examples can be drawn.Similarly Indians living in the southern part of the country speak languages of the Dravidian origin which testifies and traces their origin to the Dravidian people who inhabited India before the arrival of the Aryans.The word ARYA was commonly used for a gentleman as is clearly evident from our old literature.

Answer 57

The basic fact is that the proposed theory of Aryan and Dravidian was made up by the English and Maxmueller.Our pathetic Indian Politicians and like minded scoundrels were just eating out of their hands.It is not our own history rather the history as propounded by the Foreigners.No Body in the present world has the guts to accept the Indian History and culture for its richness.

The DNA fingerprinting and human genone project proves that the DNA types of the Hindu Brahmin male from any where in India matches very closely to the European males.Indians from the times of Mohenjodaro culture were moving in and out of the ports of Rome greece and the Sumerian Civilization.It is therefore easy to conclude that the Aryan race spread out to the other parts of the world from here in India.The South Indians have a mixed gene sequence in which African genes has been discovered.Since the early African migration happened through the coastal areas of each country they crossed so the DNA fingerprins are evident in ther skin color and hair types.Otherwise the language is a offshoot of the Sanskrit language.Surgery and Bone reconstruction of facial nose etc were prevalent in ancient india even before the western civilization knew about human anatomy.Zinc Smelting was known to us Powder metallurgy was known and described in indian vedas even before the western civilization knew about it.Astronomy was so well known that the colors of the planets Mars jupiter Saturn were known to Indians even before the advent of Telescope.

Answer 58

Reading the answers already posted it seems we have great historians publishing their thesis on this field... i am not so qualified but according to the Indian mythology (Hindu predominantly) and the architectural schemes used while building ancient monuments it clearly make a marked difference of the northern part of India being similar to the architecture in mid Asia... it clearly defines that Aryans practised their form of architecture in that part of India where as down south there is a totally different form of architecture, language, life style and mythology which is supposed to confirm that Dravidian's walked on this land and over time both these races mingled and the mixture is what we have of India today...

Answer 59

Yes,sure.The northern Indian languages are distinctly related to other indo european languages.e.g father(Anglo-germanic) and pitri(Sanskrit) and pitr(Russian ) comes form the same origins.Dwar is door in russian and sanskrit.Tritiya(sanskrit) and three(english) has the same origin.Apart from linguistic similarities and etymological nearness,there is a sloka in the Rig vedas that say : 6 months went befor the sun rose again. This proves that that the early aryans in India lived in the polar areas.There was a definite migration form the extreme northern parts of the globe to the europe and asian areas.

Shiva (and the cult of phallic worship )is a dravidian god prevalent in the pre aryan times.The aryans assimilated the shiva cult into its folds and thereby began the genesis of present day indians. Early aryans were of the same stock as the europeans. Racial intermixing with dravidians resulted in the present day indian people.

Answer 60

Yes we Indians are descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian races and there is a proof for it. we Indians have the same culture and the same languages they spoke.The style of food we eat is same as that of the Dravidian's.The culture of wearing Saree's and the ritual mantra's that we perform for different Gods are from the knowledge of theirs . As though due to the modern living conditions of the world many of the cultures and other things have been erased from the memory of the Indians after the invasion of the English people in India

Answer 61

A few eminent historians have claimed that Dravidians were the original inhabitants of Ancient India and the proof cited by them are the cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro.



It is claimed by these Eminent Historians that these cities are remains of Ancient people living in Indian before Indo-Iranians (The Progenitors of the Aryans)came from West Asia and defeated the indigenous people and also sacked these cities. The Aryans were a farming community. They developed the sacred Hindu Scriptures as we know as Vedas.



Over thousands of years these two distinct cultures and races overlapped with each other through interracial marraiges and thus todays body of population in India is a mix of both Aryans and Dravidians. This is amplified again by the colour of the people. While those in north India are typically a paler lot, in the South Indian states, people are darker. Though as per the historians, so much mix has taken place amonst the two distinct races that it is difficult to categorize as person in India as a pure Aryan or Dravidian. Though if one were to go to the Extreme North and North-West of India one would find a homogeneous race of people who look like West Asians, while if you go to the Extreme South you would find a homogeneous group of people who are distinctively dark with curly hair. But by and large as per the historians acccounts, the great majority of the people are a mix of Aryans and Dravidians.



This debate of twin races was popular in the early 1950's and 1960's and spawned a few agitations in the south( A few writers such as V.S.Naipaul made their reputations by writing about these and other issues of India). But today the typical Indian is more concerned about Cross border terrorism, War of and on Naxals within the country, Sensex, FDI, China's rise, IT, Economic Liberalization, Shopping Malls, 24 hrs news channels, SRK, A.Bachchan, Sachin, Dhoni's Dhamaka, Sania, Musharraf getting unduly cosy with Bush, Hi Tech Cities, Mumbai resembling Beirut of 1970's in a bombed out sense, the tiresom flip flops of the UPA allies on, the unceasing monsoon rains,......... than about aryan supremacy and dravidian submissiveness...

Answer 62

Yes, what is the doubt in this?



Living in a place for hundreds and thousands of years will not make one of that region?



The matter of fact, for discussion sake, Aryans are not actually Indians. The are the people from Siberia (Caucasians) reached south India via Ghandaram (today's Afghanistan) and Nepalam (Nepal) for the sake tropical condition that was available in the southern parts of Bharatvarsh. As Dravidians invaded from Lanka (Sri Lanka - was considered to be a part of India) towards south India, existing Aryans settled towards Northern India. The very fact is that Dravidans are, supposed to be the original origin of India.

Answer 63

In India, under the British Empire, the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian caste system. It was widely claimed that the Aryans were white people who had invaded India in ancient times[3], subordinating the darker skinned native Dravidian peoples, who were pushed to the south. Thus the foundation of Hinduism was ascribed to white invaders who had established themselves as the dominant castes, and who were supposed to have created the sophisticated Vedic texts. Much of these theories were simply conjecture fuelled by European imperialism (see white man's burden). This styling of an "Aryan invasion" by British colonial fantasies of racial supremacy lies at the origin of the fact that all discussion of historical Indo-Aryan migrations or Aryan and Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, and does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, and supporters of the Dalit movement, most commonly Tamils, claim that the worship of Shiva is a distinct Dravidian religion, to be distinguished from Brahminical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist Hindutva movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, asserting that Vedic beliefs emerged from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which pre-dated the supposed advent of the Indo-Aryans in India, and is identified as a likely candidate for a Proto-Dravidian culture.

Answer 64

Indians are the descendants of Dravidian race.

The late history tells us that the original Indians are known as the primitive Indians and are found in only few regions of the country. They still follow the primitive methods of hunting and some even live on tree tops. They have not yet been fully civilised. Moreover India is very close to the Equator so the original complexion of Indian skin should be black but the complexion of present Indian skin ranges from black to wheetish to fair and very fair. this also prooves that the fairer dravidians have left their genetical effects on our country.

Answer 65

Yes. I have no document to prove. But the fact is Yadavas and Jats of north India who continued with Aryan tradition of cattle rearing and milk production are bearing clear Aryan features till today. Dravidian descendency is very clear in deep South and among tribals. Indians descends from both, mixing varying castewise and region wise.

Answer 66

India is a very vast and ancient land. Because of favourable climatic conditions and fertile lands, it is quite likely that human race evolved here first or may be in parallel with Africa and/or China. But the aboriginals or original inhabitants of India were not so advanced and remained 'junglee' as per many western historians. People of more civilised and advanced race came to India as invaders from west who defeated the original inhabitants. The western historians called the invadors from west as Aryans and the original inhabitants as 'dravidians'. However there are lots of flaws in this theory. Latest studies have proved that Aryan invador theory is wrong and the so called Aryan race evolved here itself. There have been enough inter-mingling of the people from north and south since very begining. Hence we are both, Aryans and Dravidians at the same time.

Answer 67

Putting these points together we now see that the Vedas show the same development of culture, agriculture and arts and crafts as Harappan and pre-Harappan culture. Vedic culture is located in the same region as the Harappan, north India centered on the Sarasvati river. The abandonment of the invasion theory solves the literary riddle. Putting together Vedic literature, the largest of the ancient world, with the Harappan civilization, the largest of the ancient world, a picture emerges of ancient India as the largest civilization of the ancient world with the largest and best preserved literature, a far more logical view, and one that shows India as a consistent center from which civilization has spread over the last five thousand years.

Answer 68

Most readers and researchers of Hindu Religion and South Asian cultures often mention about "Aryan" and "Dravidian" groups in India. Some scholars said all groups in the Northern part of India as Aryans and those in the South as Dravidians. Some mistakenly regarded all belonging to the Upper Castes as Aryans. There is no real dividing line separating the groups as only Aryans and Dravidians. In fact, there does not seem to be a Dravidian race in any research books, only a mention of Culture, Architecture and Language styles listed as Dravidian. Germans under Adolph Hitler and Persians and some Central Asians claimed themselves to be "Aryan" race, when they had no other ancient history of a civilization to adhere to. For the sake of simplicity of understanding these terms were used in this articles to separate two distinctive cultural and ethnic groups that existed in India from ancient times though they were well mixed all over the land.





In the most ancient times, several thousands of years back, the Indian subcontinent was occupied and populated by an ancient group of aboriginal dark skinned people and traces of some of them are still said to be living in many remote areas of the land. They were the nomadic hunters belonging to the later stone age. After this period, there were agricultural groups using copper tools, domesticated animals and a distinctive cultural practice in groups with religious prayer and burial rituals noted among them. These were the original ancient "Indian Ethnic groups". There were the people with a mixture of Australoid racial features, similar to the Australian aboriginal and Indonesians, Caucasian ethnic groups like the Central Asians, Mongolians from the East and Negroid ethnic groups with African racial characters. There were also migrations from the Italian and other Mediterranean areas to the west coast, northwest and southern parts of India. The Sumerians, Greeks, Central Asians and Eastern Europeans from the West also came. They are all believed by some to be the origin of the so called "Aryan" and "Dravidian" groups

Answer 69

Yes, we have the Harappan & the Mohenjodaro civilizations. In the Ramayan the Aryans like Lord Rama & Laxmana fight the Dravidian like Ravana. The people from North I& West India are of of Aryan descendants and people from South India are of Dravidian race.

Answer 70

Yes,we are descendants of some race,let it be aryan and dravidian

we dont need any solid proof from history ,dna code etc. etc.



It is very clear from our looks ,colour of our hair and some other physical attributes that there exist at least two types of people. We can definitely find out some differences between people who lives in the souther part and those lives on the northen part. This striking difference of physical attributes shows that we are decendants of two races, namely Aryan and Dravidian.

In defending this opinion you may said that the role of weather etc are important.Then what is the reason for the striking change in the language that we spoke?

The difference in language is the next proof.

The so called Aryans speak Hindi while the Dravidian speak languages such as Malayalam .Tamil, Kannada,Thelungu which are derived from Sanskrit which said to be used by Dravidians .



If you are in a funny mood i would like to say that i never heard a man with name Rahul ' Dravid ' in the northen side.



__PROOF__

Our eyes and ears



If you are given a collection of photos of people from different part of the country , you can easily divide the people into two groups just by looking at the photos - people from South india and people from N.India. Our history says that the people of Aryan race came to india and started living in the northern parts.The Dravidians, due to the presence of this Aryans went to the southern parts.

We know that most of the North Indians speak Hindi while the south

indians speak languages derived from Sanskrit . We know that sanskrit is a dravidian language and Devnagiri is an aryan language.



SO all these shows that whatever may be the name of the race there exist at least two types of race.History and historian named it as aryan and Dravidian.

Answer 71

Indians are the original descendants of this ancient land called BHARAT with the world's greatest and oldest civilisation of HINDUISM..



This nonsense about Aryan and Dravidian races has been cooked up by the historians of the mischievous British Colonists whose main aim was to DIVIDE AND RULE, mainly by driving a wedge between HINDUS living in the North India and HINDUS living in South India, and spread this LIE through history books, educational publications and educational institutions, etc. as if it were the truth. The British Colonists did this to make sure that India stays DISUNITED.

Answer 72

Yes, we are their descendents.



Aryans are said to have migrated from Europe: many languages of Europe and Sanskrit, Pali and all other north Indian languages share similar sounds and near pronounciations.The complexion of their faces is almost similar.



Dravidians are said to have the natives of this country, mostly south India.The Aryan invasion made the Dravidians flee the northern part and they settled south.The darker complexion of the southern population may be attributed to the climatic conditions and similarity to an isolated SriLankan people;Ramayana has clues about the originality of this peninsula but no clarity.



Genetic studies and population science that are currently going on at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology(CCMB), Hyderabad can be of help in these kind of situations.



Whoever our ancestors are, we should never divide among ourselves and add to problems that are already worrying the country.



Jai Hind!

Answer 73

The idea of the 'Aryan race' arose when linguists identified Sanskrit and the Avestan (ancient languages of Northern India and Persia, respectively) as the oldest known relatives of all the major European languages, including Latin, Greek, and all Germanic and Celtic languages. They argued that the speakers of these languages originated from an ancient people who must have been the ancestors of all the European peoples.





These hypothetical ancestors were given the name Aryans, from the Sanskrit and Avestan word Arya, which means "noble person". From this point the term "Aryan" came to mean something similar to "white European" — excluding the Jewish and Arab peoples, because their ancestral languages (Hebrew and Arabic) do not belong to the Indo-European family. It is notable that in the Vedas, the word Arya is never used in a racial or ethnic sense. It is still used by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Zoroastrians, as to mean "noble" or "spiritual". It is similar to the Sanskrit and Hindi word Sri or Shri, an epithet of respect.



Since the mid 19th century it has been claimed that Aryans migrated into India, around 1800 BC-1500 BC, possibly waging war against the declining Harappan civilization. The Rig-Veda describes warfare and struggle for control of territory, but whether this resulted from a migration or not is unclear. However the archaeological and historical record can be interpreted to indicate a gradual migration around the end of the 2nd millennium BC of Indo-Aryan speakers to the east from the vicinity of Kurdistan. Nevertheless, the evidence is weak. It is also possible to argue that the Indo-Aryan speaking cultures had much older roots in the area. At any rate, modern India is divided into two main language families, one Indo-European, its speakers possibly linguistic descendants of Aryans, and the other Dravidian, its speakers possibly linguistic descendants of the Harappans.



Aryan and Dravidian Races



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the

Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and

under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between.

The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India.



Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.

Answer 74

The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus

Answer 75

Till recent time it was said Indians are descendents of Aryan and Dravidian Race. Recently a stone axe found in Tamil Nadu has indeed given evidence of Dravidians being the dominant race of India.The stone axe was found with Tamil and Brahami Inscriptions and belonged to the Harappan Civilization.

Answer 76

The Aryans are from the North india and Drividians are from the South India.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.

This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?

The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the same culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 77

I am very much confident that we Indians are descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race. However, it is true only when I look upon the the answer to the said question through the widow of history and myths. We are still accepting the same culture and phillosophy, which my ancestors taught to my forefathers. The vedic lores, which were chanted by saint and sages during the time of yore are still heard into the depth of our hearts. And we, the Indians are still singing the song of Vedas and Upanishad with our family and freinds. As there are sufficient historical evidences that enligtened saint and sages are responsible to raise a civilisation, from which mankind realised the difference between Good and Bad. The two great epics 'Ramayana. and 'Mahabharata' give us several instances, which have put on the lamp of judgement in our consciences till today. As we know that Rishis belonged to the Aryan race and there were definitely another race , which did not maintan the culture brought forward by them. As such, saint Balmiki had composed the story of a battle between Rama (the symbol of goodness in human form ) and the Ravana ( the symbol of bad elements in man ) as well as Vyasha composed 'Mahabharta', which is nothing but a conflict between 'Dharma' and 'Adharma'. Now, we can refer to the good and bad conducts of the aforesaid races and find out a reasonable link among all the three races Indian, Aryan and Dravidian.



However, it is not possible to make the above statement as final and last. I am always puzzled, when I go back to wilderness, where my forefathers failed to live in a particular place on the globe. As from the very birth they had to struggle for survival of the fittest and wandering into exile ( from one place to another place ) keeping their progeny in different suitable places. As it is a well known fact that man became civilised after passing the period of wild life , a question always raised itself; - who is the decendant of what race ? Is it possible to know whether Aryan and Dravidian are decedants of what race ? - And so, we , Indian too..........?

Answer 78

Actually The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.

Answer 79

Yes, We are actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.All of the historical books proved that we are descendants of the Aryans and the Dravidians.Dravidians were the more older residence of south india.The Aryans came from the north east asea and started to live here. Naturally they became to the Dravidians.

Answer 80

Aryan Invaision theory is actually the flawed and malicious theory brought forward by the British and white missionaries to prompte their rule (Justify it like the white man's burden) an also to demolish the pride the Indian (Hindu) had in his/her mind about their ancient heritage.

Also, to justify their rule (You have been a land of people occupying you, Aryans occupied you, muslims occupied you and now we are occupying you).

Also, thei rold policy of divide and rule.... divide on the basis of aryan/dravidian and dule longer... although it didnt click well, but we see some minor problems after independence esp. in the 'dravidian' parties.

It was a christian ploy to get more converts (Dravidians being 'imposed' with 'Arayan' Hinduism, so, convert to Christianity...etc.).



Many historians, scientists, archaeologists have rejected and demolished this theory.



But it still finds following among the 'eminent' read marxist meaning anti-Hindu, anti-Indian historians, because rejecting it would mean losing their bread and butter.



I am attaching some links and websites.

after going through them, decide which one would you follow.





And remember, history is written by the conquerers... so see who ruled us for 200 years and 60 years after idependence.



The aryan invaision theory also has influences from the bible, which says the world is 5000 years old and the 'scholars' decided that India could not be more than 3000 years old.



Jai Hind!

There are many many websites, but I am listing some...



These make extensive reading, spare some time...



http://www.hinduwisdom.info/aryan_invasion_theory.htm

http://www.hinduwisdom.info/aryan_invasion_theoryII.htm

Answer 81

India is very old multicultural country that was invaded by most at many a time who tried to establish their race and culture.And they all succeeded to some extent due to the vast expanse of this country.The Aryans came here from central Asia-Europe and mingled with the Indus valley civilisation of Harappa and Mohenjadaro.They thrived and expanded to the rest of the country,thereby integrating their beliefs,customs,rituals with the local system which gave rise to new civilisations suited to the place.

Unlike the Aryans,the Dravidian did not migrate from anywhere.They were always here and more concrete ,rather stone evidence lies in the form of temples present and were present,but for the test of time, in the south.The Devanagari inscriptions in these temples dates back to BC and are proven examples of Dravidian society.These inscriptions describe the state of affairs during a King's reign,about his forefathers,the welfare measures he undertook,the battles undergone and such.They also throw light on neighbouring states and their rulers.From these we can decipher that we are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race,but not direct,we are a nmixture of every race existing and existed in this country.

Ultimately we're Indians ,the most brainy,brawny,beautiful,powerful and craziest people on this earth,who will one day rule the entire planet and the space above.



Go Anand Satyanand*



*Anand Satyanand is the new Governor-General of New Zealand.His parents of Indian Origin .

Answer 82

From what I know this theory is B.S. I too belived that we Indians and Germans shared same ancestors. But after some ongoing research, I beg to differ. Just imagine this, the word 'Aryan' was invented in 19th century. How come we Indians who trace back their history to thousands of year can be identified witht the word which was a product of 19th century racisim?

We are not 'Aryans' but 'Arya'- meaning Noble/Superior in Sanskrit. These European, took the word Arya and profited on the fact that Indian culture is one of the oldest culture of the world, hence tried to somehow link us with them and IT WAS A SUCCESS!!!.



Need more information? check this websites out or just type Aryan Invasion Myth in yahoo or google and you will have pile of info. for your reading.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_%28history_and_controversies%29



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidians



need more info just type ARYAN INVASION MYTH on yahoo or google and you will have much more info on this topic.

I really do not care whether we share same ancestors with Germans or not but what eats me up is that we actually believe that we are Aryans and South Indians are Dravadians. And somehow we are superior than South Indians.

Do you know what is the basis of this weird theory? The only fact that North Indians have bright skin and south Indians have dark skin- Just a question, if these were actually scientists how come they did not take climate into consideration when looking for the cause of color difference?

Let me take back in history, 19th century was time when the brightest scientists of the world came up with the theory that 'Bigger the skull, the more intelligent the person is.' Weird theory right, ofcourse they relaized it. But not because this was stupid but as they were doing more reserach they relaized that African Americans have larger skull than anyone in the world especially Europeans. So the theory was abolised.

Also do not forget that till 1964 African Americans (Blacks) in USA were not treated equal like the whites.

So I am not surpirse that these White Europeans used the color thing to divide and rule us, but what is surprising is that even today we belive this.

Is the difference of Hindu/Muslim not enough for us to fight that now we are dividing people on the basis of color.

There were no Aryans hence no Dravidians. No Scriputres of ours tell us such. And even scientists now are disreagrding this theory which was put forth by the White Supremists.

There was is No Evidence that Aryans entred India and destroyed Indus Valley Civilization and archeologists are denying it to. Max Muller and others who put forth this theory were not sure either and they said that so, but that was not taken into consideration.



As I said even the archeologists, scientists and linguists are not able to come to agree or disagree on this. So maybe I have overlooked something. If so, please share it.

Let me know, what you thing- do you believe this theory or disagree with it?



I do not know whether we are Aryans or not, but I know this that we Indians are ARYA-meaning Noble/Superior. There is no doubt in that.

Answer 83

Yes,because of the nature of the people we can know about it.Examples of Aryans are the North Indians and the examples of the Dravidians are the South Indians.

Ramnath

Answer 84

Aryas & Dravidian are indian race ,We are Aryan which means virtuous and virtue can be taught through an Acharya or a teacher who himself is an example worth emulating. Dravida is not inferior to Arya, it means a person who is conditioned to the environment. Arya is a person who remains uninfluenced by the surroundings and is guided by the inner spirit. Neither it is true that Aryans had come from outside India who invaded and drove out the Dravidians to the south, nor the fact that these two are different races.



Projecting these two as two different races, one of whom was the invader and the other the vanquished; was part of a British ploy to perpetuate their rule over Indians by dividing them and also develop mutual hatred among them to facilitate easy conversion of the South Indians to Christianity. They did succeed in erstwhile Trivancore and Madras and Mysore where we have the first crop of Missionary proselytizers of Indian origin.

2 days ago

Answer 85

Most Indians, other than those from South, are descendents of Aryans. However, if we are talking of who were orginal habitants of India, then it is the Dravidians. beacuse if you look at the ramayana, these are the people who probably had been referred to as rakshasas. They have been there from the date of creation. They had no means to reach places like Sri Lanka. But Aryans had all the land mass to migrate to India.

Answer 86

The actual inhabitants of India are the dravidians, the north indians are the decendents or thr aryans. The aryans had actually defeated the dravidians in some wars so they had to flee from north India.

Answer 87

PROOF:



DRAVIDANS



LANGUAGE

* Dravidian languages are spoken in India (mainly in its southern, eastern, and central parts), in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and in diaspora communities in S.E. Asia, Pacific Islands, eastern Africa, and elsewhere.

* The Tamil people are an ethnic group from South Asia with a recorded history going back almost two millennia. The oldest Tamil communities are those of southern India and north-eastern Sri Lanka. In addition, there are also a number of Tamil emigrant communities scattered around the world, especially in Malaysia, Singapore, Fiji, Mauritius, and South Africa, with more recent emigrants also found in Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe.Unlike many ethnic groups, the Tamils have at no point of time been under one political entity - Tamilakam, the traditional name for the Tamil lands, has always been under the rule of more than one kingdom or state. Despite this, the Tamil identity has always been strong. The identity has historically been primarily linguistic, with Tamils being those whose first language was Tamil. In recent times, however, the definition has been broadened to also include emigrants of Tamil descent who maintain Tamil traditions though they no longer speak the language.

Tamils are ethnically, linguistically and culturally related to the other Dravidian peoples of South Asia. There are an estimated 74 million Tamils around theworld.

Not with the Indo-European tongues, Mitanni, Basque, Sumerian, or Korean. othing definite is known about the origin of the Dravidian family



Origin:



Nothing definite is known about the origin of the Dravidian family.

No proof of Dravidian languages being related to any other language family



ARAYANS



People lived in Indus civilization were considered to be arayans & Dravidian

* The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been

generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence

of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus

era.

Answer 88

There is no hitorical evidence that anyone claiming a Òseparate,? Òpre-Aryan? or Òsecular? Dravidian culture has something toshow for it, except his own ignorance of archaeology, numismatics and ancient Tamil literature. Not only was there never such a culture, there is in fact no meaning in the word ÒDravidian? except either in the old geographical sense or in the modern linguistic sense ; racial and cultural meanings. Thus there is no proof to actually suggest that we I ndians are descendants of the Aryan or Dravidian race.

Answer 89

We Indians are a peculiar mixture of Aryans , Non Aryans , Dravidians, Mongloids, Africans . Through the days of history all these races have come down and settled in Indian and intermingling among the races had been a reality which we cannot discount . Possible the best example of true Indians are the Adivasis who still live in the forests amidst abject poverty and on the grants and doles of the government in the form of no education , no medical facility , no education , no proper drinking water , no sanitation and being labelled in the society as Tribals better as Scheduled Tribes .They are the proper Indians , rest of us are Invaders and descendants of them

Answer 90

related to other indo european languages.e.g father(Anglo-germanic) and pitri(Sanskrit) and pitr(Russian ) comes form the same origins.Dwar is door in russian and sanskrit.Tritiya(sanskrit) and three(english) has the same origin.Apart from linguistic similarities and etymological nearness,there is a sloka in the Rig vedas that say : 6 months went befor the sun rose again. This proves that that the early aryans in India lived in the polar areas.There was a definite migration form the extreme northern parts of the globe to the europe and asian areas.

Answer 91

The true aryan society actally refers to the Brahmins. The aryans are the early settlers of India. They migrated to India from central part of Asia. As for the Dravidians they are the original natives of the south India.

Answer 92

no my brothers and sisters you are not you are a direct descendant of the Ethiopians and you should already know this! The only difference is your language and your straight hair and the only link you have with these Dravidian and Aryan is because they felt and called you inferior to them and they wanted the darker Indians ousted out of there land! As for the all over the world with the darker skinned anything you were then misplaced to somewhere else oh but i being African/ Indian know you belong to me and I to you all

Allah Hafiz or Khuda Hafiz

Answer 93

I think the Question should be more specific.

Coz in past Aryans entered India through Afganistan and Russian Side.For search of Pasture for cattle and due to increase in Population.Some went to Europe and whose Desendants are Germans.Other settled in Iran And Afganisthan.Then Slowly the Advanced in India which was then full of Dravidians.Due to lack of Technology(in weapons) they were pushed down South.And thus Aryans spread in India.South Indians are Basically Dravidians and Northern Indians are Aryans.

Answer 94

Indians are widely believed to be descendants of Aryans and Dravidian race. The Dravidian's are assumed to be original inhabitants of Indian subcontinent. these are now mostly localised to southern parts of modern India. Aryans came to India across Indus river from middle east. These were migrants from Europe and brought along them what is known as Indus culture. The present day Indian population is pretty much descendant's of the Dravidian and Aryans of the past. while mix of there culture and tradition is the Hindu culture. Actually in pre-historic India there was no religion named Hinduism but Indians used to follow rituals and tradition's of these race. Hindu religion got its name only during British regime and yes present day Indians (Hindu's and Muslim's) are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 95

we are partly decendents of the dravidians as well as the aryans......The aryans came to India in about 1500 B.C.. and before that the Dravidian did exist. but what we are today is a mixture of both these tribes. if you notice the People of Kashmir, you will see that their facial bone structure is very different from those of the lower regions of India. they are taller and got a better built. the aryans came to India firstly through Kashmir.. and so they have the features of the aryan tribe. The Dravidians were of a dark complexion but the aryans are fair skinned.... and so we Indians have a range of skin colours which are in between fair to dark. mind you, drak is not the african dark.. rather its much lighter. also in India the main occupation is agriculture. the aryans' occupations were agriculture and cattle-raising... both of which continue today in India. another aspect is the language. when the aryans came to india, they spoke Sanskrit which is one of the oldest languages in India.

All these facts support the notion that we Indians are actually decendents of both the Dravidians and the Aryans.

Answer 96

general Indian history different kingdoms were established in different parts of India, some by foreign invaders. The first known invaders of India were Aryans (also mentioned sometimes as Indo-Aryans). It is believed that the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 B. C. The Aryans fought and pushed the local people called Dravidians southwards. The Aryans are referred to in Indian history as fair skinned people who pushed the dark skinned Dravidians southwards



The north Indians are considered to be the descendants of the Aryans and the south Indians are considered descendants of the Dravidians. Even today the most basic division of the Indian society is of north Indian Aryans and south Indian Dravidians. But this division isn’t proper. Many Indians emigrated from one part of India to other parts of India and not all local people of north India were pushed southwards by the Aryans. Some stayed and served the Aryans and others moved to live in the forests and the jungles of north India. There were also other foreign immigrations and invaders who arrived mainly in north India. Many Dravidians consider themselves as original Indians and their culture as the original culture of India. They also feel that their culture is discriminated by the north Indians

Answer 97

If we refer to our religious books then there are clear indication that we Indians are descendants of Aryan,secondly,we regard sun as god which is a strong sign of being descendants of Aryans.Before Aryans came to India in search of food and easy living the Dravidians were spread over the region.This itself establishes the fact that we are the descendants of both race.

Answer 98

yes there is a proof that today's race is a descendent of aryans cuz these races are also found in eastern and western parts of asia which gives us an idea that aryans ditributed from central asia in all directions. these aryans came in diff groups and the later groups defeated the earlier ones to gain power. The similarity in beliefs of aryans in india(continuing till now) and in other parts of asia, also indicate similarities.

With respect to dravidians there is a conflict. some historians think that these dravidians belong to indus valley civilisation and other local indian tribes which were pushed southwards by aryans . some historians believe that they were the group of aryans who had come early to india and were pushed southwards by the later groups. there is also an evidence that aryans only started moving southwards after the iron age and thus the aryans of south india were called dravidians.



Today the indians are comprised of a mixed race cuz even many foreigners from central india and europe came here and thus their offsprings also lived here. the interbreeding has also led to a population of mixe raced people.

Answer 99

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically both the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharashtra, and a third from Tamil Nadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.

Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominant Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millennium BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaeological evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speak so eloquently of this river must predate this period.

The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.

This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion theory or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.

The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seeking). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 100

Indo-Aryans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The Indo-Aryans are the ethno-linguistic descendents of the Indic branch of the Indo-Iranians. The earliest records of Indo-Aryans are in the Rigveda, and in Hittite and Assyrian references to the Mitanni rulers. The Indo-Aryans tribes who engendered the Vedic civilization are sometimes referred to as Vedic Aryans, their Vedic religion being the precursor of modern Hinduism.



The compound term Indo-Aryan specifies the "Indic" branch of Indo-Iranian which was formerly known as "Aryan" in linguistic terminology, "Aryan" deriving in turn from the Sanskrit word arya.



Today, there are close to a billion native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, mostly on the Indian Subcontinent, but with minorities on all continents.



Read more at the link provided below.

Answer 101

Actually Indian are descendents of the both Aryan and Dravidian civilizations.Aryan descendents are mostly from the North- Western side and Dravidian descendents are from the South .

Answer 102

People of the British regime using this information, fabricated a story that some unknown race of Central Asia who came and settled in Iran were called the Aryans and they were Sanskrit speaking people. They invaded India, established themselves permanently, and wrote the Vedas. Those who introduced this ideology never cared to produce any evidence in support of their statement because it never existed, and furthermore, fiction stories don’t need evidences as they are self-created dogmas.

Answer 103

Yes we Indians are actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race. Yes there is proof of it.

Chandan Talgeri

Answer 104

Yes, Indians actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Yes, There are proofs

Answer 105

yes we are descendants of Aryans and Dravidian race. the truth is Aryans had settled in north of India and Dravidian's have settled in south of India. The north Indians have got the fair skin from north Asians and Europeans. Dravidian's are dark skinned people and they got these features from the Mediterranean regions.

Answer 106

Overtime, India has witnessed the influx of people of different races. They have become integrated with the extant population of india and have contributed to the genetic mix of the indian population. Dravidian races are long beleived to be the original inhabitants of india who were displaced by the aryans as they arrived in India and settled along the fertile river valley plains in the north. The features of Aryan and Dravidan races are preserved, albiet to a small extent, in the modern day inhabitants of north and south india. Several researchers have conducted experiments and surveys to determine the ancestors of modern day indians. According to the latest DNA findings, the population of northwest india most closely resembles that of the aryans (subclassified as Indo-aryans), and the population of south india comprises of people of the dravidian stock.

Answer 107

Yes Ofcourse we are. How means the name of our nation is India which has been derived from the word Sindhu, which is a river's name across the border of our country. We can say that the Aryans and the Dravidans crossed this river to reach our present land, and thus now, we the present Indians are the descendants of them.

Answer 108

i don'tknow about the proof but accordingthe history, dravidians were the original indians staying here. aryans hadtheir native in central asia. duethe lack of food and over population,they migrated towards the southern asia. dravidians were peace loving people sothey could with stand the warwith aryans andfinally dravidians mirated to south and aryans started living in northern india. india not only consist if aryansand dravidians but also the hans, goths and vandles who warlike community and had migrated from different places.

Answer 109

Does this really matter if are descendants of aryan and dravidian race? What change will it have on our lives? I say nothing.

As for the question there is no proof to prove that.

This can only be proved if someone makes a time machine & decides to unravel the mystry. And it aen't happening in our lifetime.

Answer 110

Yes,

The terms Dravidians and Dravidian Race are sometimes given to the people of southern and central India and Sri Lanka who speak Dravidian languages, the best known of which are Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), Malayalam (മലയാളം), Tamil (தமிழ்), Telugu (తెలుగు), and Tulu (ತುಳು). Notably one Dravidian language, Brahui, is spoken in Pakistan, perhaps hinting at the language family's wider distribution prior to the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages.





The identification of the Dravidian people as a separate race arose from the realization by 19th-century Western scholars that there existed a group of languages spoken by people in the south of India, which were completely unrelated to the Indo-Aryan languages prevalent in the north of the country. Because of this, it was supposed that the generally darker-skinned Dravidian speakers constituted a genetically distinct race. This notion corresponded to European belief of the time, according to which darker-skinned people were more "primitive" than the light-skinned whites. Accordingly, Dravidians were envisaged as primitive early inhabitants of India who had been partially displaced and subordinated by Aryans. The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit "drāvida", meaning "Southern". It was adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages (1856); a publication which established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world.

Answer 111

Yes .Indians are descendants from Aryans and Dravidian's because they come to India and settled here in the shore of Rivers

Answer 112

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.

The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mongolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically both the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.

For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharashtra, and a third from Tamil Nadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominant Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millennium BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaeological evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speak so eloquently of this river must predate this period.

The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.

This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion theory or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seeking). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 113

I had prefer to be called an Indian without being labelled either of Aryan or dravidian race. This division is for politician and suits their evil designs.



We have serious problem like poverty, fundamentalism, power, road, lack of development etc to tackle.



In any case these topics have become only for discussions by historians with common man being preoccupied with meeting his day to day requirement of life. Both Aryan and Dravidian are facing the same common problem without race barrier.

Answer 114

Yes, the book of TR Trautmann - Historiographia Linguistica, 2004 intimate the race of Indians are Aryan or Dravidian in different part of India. SUMMARYBritish India was an especially fruitful site for the development of historical linguistics. Four major, unanticipated discoveries were especially associated with the East India Company: those of Indo-European, Dravidian, Malayo-Polynesian and the Indo-Aryan nature of Romani. It is argued that they came about in British India because the European tradition of language analysis met and combined with aspects of the highly sophisticated Indian language analysis. The discoveries of Indo-European and Dravidian, the subject of this article, were connected with the British-Indian cities of Calcutta and Madras, respectively, and the conditions under which they came about are examined. The production of new knowledge in British India is generally viewed through the lens of post-colonial theory, and is seen as having been driven by the needs of colonial governance. This essay sketches out a different way of looking at aspects of colonial knowledge that fall outside the colonial utility framework. It views these discoveries and their consequences as emergent products of two distinct traditions of language study which the British and the Indians brought to the colonial connection. If this is so, it follows that some aspects of modernism tacitly absorb Indian knowledge, specifically Indian language analysis.

Answer 115

There is no scientifical proof that Aryan and Dravidian are two different races.The so called Aryan and Dravidian races are members of the same mediterranean branch of the causcasean race which prevailed in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria North Africa and Middle East.

Answer 116

Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominant Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.

Answer 117

we have learnt that we were all first the Dravidian as per the linguistic history goes, and when we had the invasions from the Arian lands right back in the 15th. century the genes of the Arians were mixed with marriage to Dravidians... which has happened in almost all civilisations across the world .

But still when we take Prakrit as our dialect before the Puranas and Sanskrit as our latest history there are enough mentions of the Dravid land when seen from the Deccan plateau and the Arians and Persians modified Sanskrit into Hindi and Urdu.

when you make a comparable study of scripts of all north Indian languages you will see a commonality of Devanagari script in all including Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi Gujarati and when you compare the same below the Aravali ranges i.e. the southern India you will see that it is predominantly the Dravidian .



There is also a study that shows that due to a sever famine in the 15-16 century in the northern belt lot of Sanyasys and their followers migrated to the south ... this may also be due to the Mogul invasions and there strict religious rulers.. these are the Aiyers and Iyengars and Shetty and Raos of the south who brought with them the Arian genes long passed on to them to the south.

We have not heard of any northern emigrates from the south.

Any conclusion can be drawn only with the available proof which can only be in the way of language for before language the communication was by pictures and actions and may be by mouth stories which commonly cannot be relied upon.

Our education in English and stories in its literature have narrowed down our thinking of our own land and it's history so much so that we even doubt our own clan and it's past.

But i strongly believe in the process of evolution and logically the argument of Dravidian and Arian is correct.

we can even rely on medical biotechnology and research on the DNA samples ......

Answer 118

Aryans came to india from west asia and settled here and thus we are descendants of aryans while south indians are descendants of dravidians also ram was an aryan while ravana a dravidian hence we are desendants of these tribes. We also find mention of these tribes in the vedas. Hence we indians are descendants of aryans and dravidians.

Answer 119

i dont have any doubt about it that we are actually their decendents. the proof remains that our culture, traditions and way of thinking still remains somewhat similar to the past. Although right now our country is actually a mix of the various races after the invasions that our motherland has gone through id say that there still is a large element of those races in us. The use of the swastik by the aryans is actually something holy to the hindus. That to me is the most vital and important proof that could be put forward.

Answer 120

yes indian are descendants of aryans & dravidian race becuse

aryans are inhabitant of india.they have given india the languea sanskrit&vedic culture.The Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people, living chiefly in S and central India and N Sri Lanka. The four major Dravidian languages are Kannada, having over 40 million speakers; Malayalam, having about 35 million speakers; Tamil, with almost 70 million speakers; and Telugu, with over 70 million speakert

Answer 121

Yes,as per my knowledge,aryans came from middle asia and settled on the banks of river Sindhu,it was before the birth of Christ and dravidians were also from the group of people relating Hadappan civilisation,which were in India at that time.

Answer 122

created a fundamental contradiction for the model. If one could explain the cultural continuity by arguing that the invading Aryans eventually adopted the culture of the original inhabitants then how was one to explain the fact that they were able to impose their language on the same people.

Answer 123

No Proof. Just because someone said it.History shows it. But it does not have supporting evidence.Like dna tests.Of course today Indians are much more civlised than aryans or the dravidians. We would prefer to call us children of our parents or grandchildren of our grand parents and so on. And in today's advanced wold who cares about Aryans or the Dravaidians.

Answer 124

No its just a false statement given by English men to spread Christianity in India.But our history says we came from south to north. The place where first two Tamil sangams held were noe uder Indian Ocean and we came upwards to live. This is what our own history says.



Further as per the Ariyan scheme aryans are white and dravidians are black. But our history says Rama, Veda Vyasar,Krishna were all black who by place of birth can be called as aryans .Amazingly the so called dravidian Ravana is a man of beauty ,white in colour.



Nothing will happen by asking this question for a prize. but with Indian Spirit try to analyse and understand our own culture & history return by our own people.



Just for sake of spreading calonialism the cunning english people hided indian cultures .

Answer 125

Yes. Indians are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 126

The Dravidians are assuredly not "pure" Indo-Europeans, though there was results claiming negro blood for them to be dubious. According to Cavalli-Sforza, who did the definitive work on the genetics of human racial differences, Dravidians are most closely related to Mongols and Tibetans, and the next closest group are the "Aryan" Indians.

Answer 127

Yes almost all native original Indians are the descendants of the two tribes descirbed above but there is no direct proof of it except the history records & the archeological remains of the relevant races' constuctions & the writings/ residues of the things of life usage items found from the corresponding areas of India.

Answer 128

We Indians are descendants of both Aryan and Dravidian race...The proof is already given by most of the people.. And why would this question of race trouble an Indian, a citizen of country that is a residence of love and life.

Answer 129

We Indians are actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race, since there is enough evidence in history that people Dravidian's are from Indian origin (south Indians) black in colour, Aryans invaded and conquered Dravidian's and adapted their culture and Aryans later settled down in Northern part of India and they we White people.

Answer 130

Just by saying that X were living in india long long ago. we can not say that we are the descedent of X. X and Y may have the same property or suppose X is older than Y. It may be possible that after some time Y may bheave as X. This logic also valid for group of people. So there must be some scientific reason to accept the this statement. These days only using DNA properties we are able to say who belongs to whom group. so it is very very difficult to prove .

Answer 131

There are no texts produced by pre-literate humans. Thus, its not possible to get the proof of it.

Present History Books says that we are descendants of Aryans. However in the mordern history books, you will find many un-answered questions too. However still, we need to believe the Books which says that we are descentants of Aryans.

Answer 132

One of the most hotly controversial theories about Indian history in the modern ages has been the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT). According to this theory, India was invaded about 1500 B.C, by a tribe of European origins called the Aryans who composed the Rig Vedas. At first they were thought to be the creators of Hindu civilization. Later discoveries were made of a highly sophisticated urban civilization in Mohen-jo-daro and Harappa, which are definitely older than the 'Aryan invasion'. The Orientalist scholars came up with the theory that these people were Dravidians (i.e., dark, as opposed to the the fair skinned blue eyed Aryans) and their civilization was destroyed by invading Aryans and they themselves reduced to the status of shudras (the lowest category in the caste-hierarchy) while the Aryans formed the master-race of three upper castes. Various different homelands were suggested for these 'Aryans' / Indo-Europeans: central Asia, Scandinavia, North Germany, Hungary and Ukraine. They were pictured as primitive nomads who knew nothing of civilization and had no connection with the 'dravidians'. At first this theory was accepted by the Indians. However this theory soon produced political ramifications (the British declaring that as whites they themselves are the legitimate heirs to Aryan culture and therefore entitled to colonize India, cleavage between North and South Indians with the South Indian politicians insisting that they were Dravidians who had been brutally imposed on by North Indian Brahmanical Aryans, Christian missionaries spreading the propaganda that the lower castes as original rulers should rise up and convert from Hinduism to Christianity) which led many Indian scholars to re-examine the issue. Many Westerners also opposed the theory of invaders. Thanks to recent archaeological developments and intellectual freedom from the belief that the white man is always right, there has been intense discussions on this issue and AIT has become more and more untenable. However instead of taking into account the new theories many AIT academics prefer to ignore it altogether and instead say that any objections to their theory is driven by Hindu fascism. For many Indians it has become a matter of pride to establish that their civilization is indigenous and their civilization did not come from the West; some also insist that Aryans travelled from India to Europe carrying civilization with them. The main contention of anti-AIT theorists is that the race that composed Rigveda is native to India and is responsible for Mohenjodaro civilization and it was not white.



Proof:

Dravidians

(Encyclopedia) Dravidians , name sometimes given to the

people of S and central India and N Sri Lanka who speak

more or less similarly.

Aryan

(Encyclopedia) Aryan , [Sanskrit,=noble], term formerly used

to designate the Indo-European race or language .

Dravidian languages



(Encyclopedia) proof, in mathematics, finite sequence of propositions each of which is either an axiom or follows .

Answer 133

We Indians are decendants of both Aryans and Dravidian race. The dravidians were the original inhabatiants of the plains of North India (5 Rivers as well the Ganga and Yamuna plains). When the Aryans from Indo-Iranian region came into india (belived to have invaded), the Dravidians were pushed south. The aryans have bigger build than the Dravidians, who are smaller people as they were farmers unlike the Aryans who were nomadic hunters. The proof is the differnce in physical features of the people from North and South India. The Dravidian descendants (South Indians) are smaller people with dark skin, where as the Aryan descendants ( North Indians) are people with bigger built and fairer skin colour.

Answer 134

yes, I really think that Indians are Aryans.Well we all have heard about maharishi Bishwamitra . He was a King, renounced everything and adopted the path of devotion. He worked for the upliftment of Dravids.Actully the aryans were the Kshatriyas whose work was to protect those who were poor regarded as Kshatriyas.If we are living in Bharat then we are surely the descendants of A ryans because the name of our nation is named after Chakrvati Samrat Bharat as stated in Mahabharata. He was the son of Devi Shakuntla who was daughter of Bishwamitra and Menka. so, if the name of our nation is standing after King Bharta so we are their descendants.And rember our nation is also known as Aryabrata

Answer 135

A more critical reading of Vedic texts reveals that Harappan civilization, the largest of the ancient world, finds itself reflected in Vedic literature, the largest literature of the ancient world. Vedic literature was previously not related to any significant civilization but merely to "the destruction of Harappa." How the largest literature of the ancient world was produced by illiterate nomadic peoples as they destroyed one of the great civilizations of the ancient world is one of the absurdities that the Aryan invasion leads to, particularly when the urban literate Harappans are not given any literature of their own remaining.

Answer 136

Today’s northern Hindus have absolutely no memory of having ever driven the Dravidians out of north India. None of their ancient manuscripts mentions any such thing.

Answer 137

No we are actually not descendants of the Aryan or Dravidian race.The proofs the excavations of harappa and mohenjodaro and the excavations in areas surrounding them.These findings are a proof the Indus had a great civilisation along its banks.The

Answer 138

actually the physical characterstics of the people of india living in different parts of country resembles to the Aryan and Dravidian race like the physical appearence of south indians are more or less similar to the Dravidian, it shows that we indians actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 139

We are not actually descendants of the Aryan. Aryan background belongs to Brahmin community. They came to India and settled in India. Only Brahmin community belong to Aryan descendants. All other Indians are from different races and different backgrounds and also Dravidian race.

Answer 140

We Indians are descendents of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 141

Aryans are a race migrated to the east asian region via the the northwest frontier area of India. The were previously settle in euroasian region and were very famous for their holy activities. Essentially worshippers of Sun God, Water and Nature. They found God in all these things. Dasavathara prescribes first avathar as Fish That means when God took this avathar He had only one way--the living object in this world was a creature in the water. Water was the only thing first eminated then vayu etc. That is why Aryans with this culture religeous faith started moving to asian reagion to escape the onslought of other races and religious faith.The prevelance of such faiths in aryan race itself is a proof of decendancy. No doubt we the so called aryans are really Aryans only. We should be proud of it.

Answer 142

It is a mis conception. We visualise India as of today with clear cut boundary(mostly). During ancient days there were many tribes inhabiting india. such as Nagas(mahabharat) vanaras(ramayan) and many. the people in north were fairer with straight nose et.c compared to the middle india and south. Also there was a lot of migration and sea traffic. People settled down from all over the world and moved from india to other countries. Aryans and dravidians are extreams of a broad spectrum.

Answer 143

We are mixed people.We are a mixed descendants of Mediterraneans,Aryans,Dravids,Greeks,Shakas, Kushans, Huns, Mongols,Turks,Mughals,Persians and have some Anglo-Indians too. We are a subcontinent and are a mixed descendants of all the major human races of the world including Europoids,Mongoloids and Negroids etc;in spite of having a rigid cast system.However, degree of mix-up between different groups varies from region to region.



Thanks

C.P.Singh

Answer 144

yes, we are in that race. Still the controversy is going on that, the north part of India are proving them as Aryan's and the south part is Dravidian's. But what is the reality lets see and discuss.

Answer 145

One of the main ideas used to interpret - and generally devalue - the ancient history of India is the theory of the Aryan invasion. According to this account, India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500-100 BC, who overthrew an earlier and more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization from which they took most of what later became Hindu culture. This so-called pre-Aryan civilization is said to be evidenced by the large urban ruins of what has been called the “Indus Valley culture” (as most of its initial sites were on the Indus river). The war between the powers of light and darkness, a prevalent idea in ancient Aryan Vedic scriptures, was thus interpreted to refer to this war between light and dark- skinned peoples. The Aryan invasion theory thus turned the “Vedas”, the original scriptures of ancient India and the Indo-Aryans, into little more than primitive poems of uncivilized plunderers.



Hence we are decedends of Dravidian race

Answer 146

The earliest inhabitants of India were Austro-Asiatic hunter-gatherer tribes dating from 50,000 years ago, and spoke languages of the Austro-Asiatic family. In fact, languages from that family survive to this day in scattered pockets all over South Asia - Sora in Tamil Nadu; Nihali, a language isolate in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and Burushaski (another language isolate) in Pakistan. The descendants of these people are known today as Adivasis or as Adi-Dravidas. The animist worship practices of the Adivasis are often wrongly subsumed under Hinduism.

The Dravidian Influx

Dravidians inflexed into India starting 9,000 years ago from a point of origin believed to be in modern-day Iraq. They spread all over modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh Unlike the hunter-gatherer Adivasis, the Dravidians were agriculturists. Since agriculture can support populations up to 50 times the size of hunter-gatherers, the Dravidians soon had bigger populations relative to the Adivasis.

To this day Dravidian language speaking communities exist all over India and even in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact, the biggest Dravidian language in Pakistan is Brahui - it is also spoken in parts of Afghanistan. The language uses the Nastaliq script and has a good body of literature in it.

Many of Hinduism's beliefs - especially the life-after-life cycles - as well as gods and goddesses originated among Dravidian and pre- Dravidian communities.

Till 2,000 years ago, a Dravidian speaking community existed in Basra in modern-day Iraq. Referred in the Bible as the Elamites, they were among the last Dravidian languages to become extinct in that part of the world.

The Aryan Influx

Starting 3,500 years ago, pastoral nomadic Aryan tribes originating from the Russian Steppes swept into South Asia. Their influx, which lasted centuries, was gradual compared with the human lifetime, but was swift on a historical time scale. Most likely the influx was peaceful; skirmishes were likely isolated ones.

If the Mohenjo-Daro civilization dates from before the Aryan influx, then in all likelihood it was Dravidian. If, however it peaked during the Aryan influx, it must doubtless have had Aryan influences.

In all likelihood, the Aryan agriculture technology was superior in some respects to the Dravidian technology. Aryan agricultural practices may have permitted them to support bigger populations than the Dravidian ones, hence the Aryan migrations in search of arable land.

Answer 147

I have travelled Australia for the last ten years in a motorhome, ( now settled in Brisbane) and to be honest I love this country so much it is really hard to pick just one spot, but one that does stand out in my mind would be Tasmania, the west coast, it is so wild, accessable, but natural. (Even if it was sooo cold..). On the other extreme the Atherton Tablelands, off the tourist route, so green so hot and so beautiful. Can't wait to get back out there one day.

Answer 148

The original inhabitants of India were dravidians.The Aryans invaded and later made India their home.This article by Ninad Jog proves the point.It is self explanatory with representations of facts.

Answer 149

actually north indians are the decendendents of aryaans where as south indians are dravidians the culture is the direct proof of it

north follows the customs which were a part of aryaaans and dravidians are entirely different in day today culture which is unadulterated

Answer 150

yes,we indians are the descendants of the aryan and dravidian race.

the aryans were the first to develop the civilizations in harrapa and mohenjodaro.the prove of these can be found out in the those places and it is still inscribed there.the dravidians were theb other races who invaded harrrapa and mohenjodaro fter aryans.

Answer 151

Does it really matter?Who i am descended from?Is it not infinitely more important to spend time on grooming and teaching real good values to those who will be descended from me, as to make tomorrow a great tomorrow.Yes maybe i will read up on the issue but for now i want to be satisfied in knowing i am a world citizen with no race, caste, creed or boundaries to define me.

Answer 152

widely believed as true but what has been proved is that Dravidian race is truly Indian.so far as Aryans descendants is concerned no such biological or scientific proof has come to light. much of this Aryans descendant comes from scholastic work of lokmanya Baal gang dhar tilak.

Answer 153

People, north of Vindias, are of Aryan race, who have further Hindu Kush mountain range, in Afghan - Kasmir. People south of Vindias, are Dravidian, the original settlers. Now, it is all mixed-up.

Answer 154

WHAT WE BELIEVE :

In India, under the British Empire, the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian caste system. It was widely claimed that the Aryans were white people who had invaded India in ancient times, subordinating the darker skinned native Dravidian peoples, who were pushed to the south. Thus the foundation of Hinduism was ascribed to white invaders who had established themselves as the dominant castes, and who were supposed to have created the sophisticated Vedic texts. Much of these theories were simply conjecture fuelled by European imperialism (see white man's burden). This styling of an "Aryan invasion" by British colonial fantasies of racial supremacy lies at the origin of the fact that all discussion of historical Indo-Aryan migrations or Aryan and Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, and does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, and supporters of the Dalit movement, most commonly Tamils, claim that the worship of Shiva is a distinct Dravidian religion, to be distinguished from Brahminical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist Hindutva movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, asserting that Vedic beliefs emerged from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which pre-dated the supposed advent of the Indo-Aryans in India, and is identified as a likely candidate for a Proto-Dravidian culture.





THEOSOPHY:

These debates were addressed within the Theosophical movement founded by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott at the end of the nineteenth century. This was an early kind of New Age philosophy, that took inspiration from Indian culture, in particular from the Hindu reform movement the Arya Samaj founded by Swami Dayananda.



Blavatsky argued that humanity had descended from a series of "Root Races", naming the fifth root race (out of seven) the "Aryan" Race. She thought that the Aryans originally came from Atlantis and described the Aryan races with the following words:



"The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis" (The Secret Doctrine, Vol.II, p.249).

Blavatsky used "Root Race" as a technical term to describe human evolution over the large time periods in her cosmology. However, she also claimed that there were modern non-Aryan peoples who were inferior to Aryans.

Answer 155

why we ask this questions. why these questions are not asked in arab countries where black arab and white arabs do existin the same family. The truth is we inidians are of the same species of homasaphiens who appeared in africa and migrated to other parts of the globe. The most surprising thing came out when the genes of the

africans and british proved to be same. The morphological dissimilarities are the product of environment and gene mutations. If we attach biased theories we land in nowhere except hatred among us. The most important aspect is when we answer this question we answer as aryan or dravidian. Let us see how facts differ. Aryans were nomads and strong warroirs and hunters. In contrast to this dravidians from harappa were peasansts and vegetarins lived highly cultured lfie. Today vegetarianism practised by both white and black. But there is no proof who are harappan people. The religious practice who adopted from whom nobody can say.

Some historians say the so called vedas believed to be aryans property does not say the existance of aryan race. similar to this nobody knows the language of dravidians who believed to live in sind river banks.They can be aryans also. The astonishing fact is that the mayas of the mexico ape drvidians by following idol worship says the migration of dravidans if we take the idol worship started with dravidians.But idol worship is whose religious practice is disputable.

Coming to colours the dark people of africa slowly migrated towards polar region. The dark colour is gene mutation to protect them form ultraviolet rays and the white colour occurred away from trophical by gene mutation to get more light to produce d vitamin.

morphology changed due to envirinment and food. So the aryans are the cousins of dravidans who went to north and reentered india. so we can say indians are dravidians or aryans or aryodravidians. I cannot say indo aryans because here indo means dravidians.

Coming to the superiority of the sanskrit it is a treasure. But it is not in practice and became extinct. It cannot live with time as tamil believed to be a dravidan language spoken and written and as old as sanskrit. But the tamilians are who ?disputable.

If we are believing black are drvidains and white are aryans then we are aryo dravidains. The proof is very simple the black sister of the white brother in a same fmily in india love each other. The black husband of the white wife loves her. The white father loves his black son. In inidan family black or white they are one not aryan or dravidan.

Answer 156

The fact is, works like the Vedas were created using such ancient Sanskrit, that even though the information is still intact in the Vedas, the loss of contextual information, and changes to the language over time, could lead to misinterpretation, and inaccurate translations. And for someone like Max Muller, who hardly knew Sanskrit, to have interpreted it correctly, needs to be taken with a jar full of salt, especially since he had an agenda, which is evident in a letter to his wife in 1886



The Aryan invasion theory basically states that the Indian civilization is a foreign creation, and that the entire culture is actually the invention of an invading race of blonde-haired, white-skinned foreigners from Europe. It is these primitive invaders, the theory says, that created an ancient civilization flourishing with advanced forms of technology and science, along with an enormous archive of transcendental wisdom, that is collectively known as India's Vedic empire. Proponents of the theory insist on building insidious and unproven arguments based on the Aryan invasion scheme, going as far as suggesting that the Indian natives were illiterate savages. Suspicion immediately arises when the monumental achievements of an ancient civilization are accredited to 'foreign white races' for which the scholars have no evidence of. Yes, the dubiousness of such bold claims becomes apparent to those who understand the mechanism of imperialist regimes and of those who follow in their footsteps. This form of postulation is consistent with the evangelistic mentality of perceiving indigenous peoples as being incapable of social evolution. This gives rise to notions of superiority, and this form of supremacy then attempts to validate the need for imperialism. So in effect, the Aryan invasion theory also makes the daring claim that all Indians of non-Dravidian background are essentially the descendents of this intrusive white race of barbaric marauders from Europe. The fallacies of this theory have been exposed and the truth continues to surface repeatedly, especially through the fields of archaeology and Vedic studies, yet it is ignored and rejected by those in positions of power. Even many of those who no longer believe in the Aryan invasion theory have been mislead into thinking that the whole project was due to honest mistakes in scholarship. However, the idea of an Aryan invasion is not the result of erroneous research or innocent misinterpretations of history.



No, on the contrary, the Aryan invasion theory is the product of clever premeditation, a deliberate plot devised by numerous parties for political reasons, with racism centered at its core. Aside from being a tool used to maintain political ownership over India, the Aryan invasion theory ultimately promotes the racist notion that white-skinned Europeans are an inherently superior race of human beings, a superhuman species of some sort which, under the guidance of an apparent manifest destiny, colonized the natives of India to eradicate 'barbarianism' and establish 'civilization.'



so all this proves that we Indians actually descendants of the both Aryan and Dravidian race .thanks

Answer 157

No, we Indians are not a decendents of Aryan & Dravidian race.

there is no proof of it.Aryan people came in our India but before this we were here. So we cannot say that we are decendents of India.

Answer 158

we indians are now a mix breed.The original people who inhibited the peninsula were Dravidians,what actually is today's south India. Aryans came from north and invaded Indian peninsula.

Answer 159

Historical places and stories say so.

Aryans language still spoken by many regions in our country.

Same way dravidian languages spoken by people of many states of India.

Answer 160

yes, indians are descendants of aryans and dravadians. vedas of aryan confirm it. aryans mysteriously came in india many of thousands of years from now. surprisingly they had their own culture and language and texts. all this are present in the books of vedas and puranas.

another group of aryans settled in parts of europe, germany is one such country. there are two proof for it

1. During the world war- II, germany had a nazi emblem over its flag... the same sign as that of "swastika" of the aryans.

2. scientist have found it through DNA test.

Answer 161

Aryan

Answer 162

The name of Indians are the undoubted proof of the amalgam of Aryan and Dravidian life style.the very term like Puja, Ganga and the sraddha system prove that we are the fusion of both that ancient culture.

Answer 163

Indians are descendents of the Aryan race. The proof traces back to resemblences in the Sanskrit and German languages.

Answer 164

There are sclputers which is prooving that indians are decendents of each races. There are mythic books which shows how the races is spread all over the india especially down the south.

Answer 165

Yes, We Indians are actually decendants of the Aryan & Dravidian Race, If we see our cultare in villages & in those cities, in which people are still living that style, in which Aryan & Dravidains were used to live, then we can find tht we indians are actually descendants of them... there is no doubt tht we are running fast in the 21st century bt look on those who still living in tht era of aryan & dravidian ...

Answer 166

In the Bharatiya history there are descriptions of Shak and Hun invasions and also of the Muslim invasions but never an Aryan invasion.

Answer 167

Yes, according to me, we are the actual descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race. It shows in our colour, genes, habits, dressing etc...

Answer 168

Yes, we are actually desendants of the Aryans and Dravidians race.the Proof is In Our gujarat region's Lothal which is the oldest place of Aryans where they are living.Gujarat govt. also gets the oldest things from Lothal which are being used by Aryans in their time.so it is the proof that we are actually descendants of the Aryans.

Answer 169

No Indians are not descendents of Aryan or Dravidian Race.See the ref.

Answer 170

The following races are mixed in our present Indian Population

Indian Races

Veddoid (Indian Pygmy) Races

Sudroid (Indian Negro) Race

Indo-Semitic Races

Mon-Khmer Races

Indo-Aryan Races

Scythic Races

Islami or Musulmani (Indo-Islamic) Race

Indo-Portuguese Race

Answer 171

The most basic division of the Indian society is of Aryans and Dravidians. According to this division, nearly 72% of Indians are Aryans and 28% are Dravidians. The north Indians are the descendants of Aryans and the south Indians are Dravidians. The languages spoken in five states of south India are considered Dravidian languages and most of the languages spoken in the north are considered Aryan languages. The general script of the Aryan languages is different from the general script of Dravidian languages. The Indians also distinguish themselves by the general north Indian accent and general south Indian accent.



According to general Indian legend, the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 BC. Before the Aryans, the Dravidian people resided in India. The Aryans disregarded the local cultures. They began conquering and taking control over regions in north India and at the same time pushed the local people southwards or towards the jungles and mountains in north India. According to this historical fact the general division of Indian society is made. North Indians are Aryans and south Indians are Dravidians. But this division isn’t proper because of many reasons.



Many Indians immigrated from one part of India to other parts of India and not all local people of north India were pushed southwards by the Aryans. Some stayed and served the Aryans and others moved to live in the forests and the jungles of north India. Before the arrival of the Aryans there were also other communities in India like Sino-Mongoloids and Austroloids. There were also other foreign immigrations and invaders who arrived in India, from time to time.



There are many that completely doubt that there was ever any Aryan invasion in India. This skepticism is based on the dating of the Aryan invasion of India and the fact that Hinduism and the caste system are believed to have been established as the result of the meetings between the intruding Aryans and original residents of India, the Dravidians.



The caste system is believed to have been established by the Aryans. The fair skinned Aryans who occupied parts of India established the caste system, which allowed only them to be the priests (Brahman), aristocracy (Kshatria) and the businessmen (Vaisia) of the society. Below them in hierarchy were the Sudras who consisted of two communities. One community was of the locals who were subdued by the Aryans and the other were the descendants of Aryans with locals. In Hindu religious stories there are many wars between the good Aryans and the dark skinned demons and devils. The different Gods also have dark skinned slaves. There are stories of demon women trying to seduce good Aryan men in deceptive ways. There were also marriages between Aryan heroes and demon women. Many believe that these incidences really occurred in which, the gods and the positive heroes were people of Aryan origin. And the demons, the devils and the dark skinned slaves were in fact the original residence of India whom the Aryans coined as monsters, devil, demons and slaves. Normally the date given to Aryan invasion is around 1500 BC. But according to Hinduism experts some of the events in Hinduism occurred much earlier. Some of the events like the great war in the Mahabharta epic is believed to have occurred (based on astronomical research) 7000 years ago.



According to this Hindu experts the word Aryan is a misinterpretation of the original Sanskrit word, Arya. Arya means pure or good in Sanskrit. In the holy Vedas the good people were called Arya. Some of the European scholars of Indian culture in the 19th century were Germans. These German scholars who found that Swastika was also a holy symbol among the Hindus distorted, the word Arya to Aryan.

Answer 172

Yes.South Indians are descendants of Dravidian and North indians descendants of Aryans.

Answer 173

north follows the customs which were a part of aryaaans and dravidians are entirely different in day today culture which is unadulterated

Answer 174

The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna).



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. You don't get to read about these kind of races in India or elsewhere.



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?



This says it all. And to conclude, its very clear from the points discussed above that Indians are descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 175

as it is claimed that aryans are white people who invaded india in ancient times and dravidian people are the darker skin people who were pushed to south. thus the foundation of hinduism was done by the white invaders who had established themselves as dominant caste, and who were supposed to have created the vedas also.aryan means noble and and it is apploed to hinduism. iran is called the land of aryans and india as abode of aryans so,we indians are not actually descendants of aryans and dravidian race but we were invaded by them.

Answer 176

Western world is reaching somewhat towards free thinking and challanging bible now. Vedas were challanged by Lokayats(atheist) and buddhists before christ. Vedas must have remained unchallanged for some thousand years to give time to develope complicated rituals like vedic people.

Answer 177

Yes, we Indians actually descendants of the Aryans and Dravidian race. All southern states pertain to the Dravidians and beyond vindyas, are of Aryans. This is in the history and every school has its text in the history and geography books. We have to believe the information in our school text books which are collection of actual data and published and taught in the schools. If this is doubtful then what is true and we have to doubt every matter in vedas and puranas will be under scanner of doubt. We should have good faith in these and trust to the core.

Answer 178

yes We Indians the descendants of the Aryan and Dravidians race.

Answer 179

Indians are descendants of both Aryan and Dravidian races.

Answer 180

yes. The oldest Hindus valley civilisation Harappa Mohanchadaro archaeological findings, the last Lemuria, the archaeological findings in down south confirms the ancestor link.

Answer 181

i had read that there is this south indian community that could be actual descendants of the aryan race.they all have this disorder wherein they cannot be given anasthesia as it could be fatal for them or cause harm.people with this disorder have been found in germany also which could be the reason why hitler claimed they were the decendants of the aryan race.well ultimately its what we believe that matters.

Answer 182

Indians are decendents of 2 races which is very evident from the visible features itself.

It can be easily proved with DNA tests if conducted. But due to the fact that India has already so much to fight with that one more issue is not required to kill hundreds in the name of race now, religion, cast...

Answer 183

Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians.

Answer 184

Yes

Answer 185

We are aryans since theory has it that the aryans came from the west and settilled in asia at the heart of the himalayas

Answer 186

Yes

Answer 187

Yes

Answer 188

aryans are said to be white in colour,

whereas dravidians are dark,therefore there is a difference in colour between northindians and southindians this shows that we indians are descendants of aryans and dravidian race

Answer 189

I think indians are actually descendents of Aryan&dravidian Race,becausehumpi is the bigger proof of it....

thank you

Answer 190

yeah, 100% we r the descendents of the aryan & dravidian race.coz of, the culture or the values we r getting that we r educated or we r very rich, that's because of our desdenders. We the values r getting now, is due to them.we've not forget to urs past,coz of, the past & future r interrelated to each others. if we forget the descenders, then we'll forget our the first day of existence & the day'll create that can't be imagined by any others persons. so, we the indians are actually descendants of the Aryan & Dravidian race.

Answer 191

The identification of the Dravidian people as a separate race arose from the realization by 19th-century Western scholars that there existed a group of languages spoken by people in the south of India, which were completely unrelated to the Indo-Aryan languages prevalent in the north of the country. Because of this, it was supposed that the generally darker-skinned Dravidian speakers constituted a genetically distinct race. This notion corresponded to European belief of the time, according to which darker-skinned people were more "primitive" than the light-skinned whites. Accordingly, Dravidians were envisaged as primitive early inhabitants of India who had been partially displaced and subordinated by Aryans. The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit "drāvida", meaning "Southern". It was adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages (1856); a publication which established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world.



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.



Classical anthropology viewed them as a distinct race, one of about the 40 human races in their system ("Weddid race"). Indeed, southern Indians differ from northern Indians in many respects, one of which is often darker skin. This is true only statistically; since one can come across any number of north Indian who are dark or who have Mongoloid features like those from Nagaland. Coversly one can have any number of south Indians who are of lighter skins. Most modern historians, however, reject the conception of a distinct Dravidian race, asserting that the high degree of admixture between distinct genetic populations during prehistory is far more significant than the somewhat superficial overlay of language distribution, as language frequently spreads between groups of genetically disparate people as cultures meet and clash. Some believe that the darker skins of the Dravidian-speaking people would be explained by their adaptation to the hotter and sunnier climate of South India. Dark skin is not an acid test dividing south and north Indians. According to population geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, all Indias are genetically Caucasian. He contends that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians. Genetically there are only three races: Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid. Indians, including Dravidians, fall under Caucasian.

Answer 192

No, we are not the descendants of the aryan or the dravidian race.

The proof lies in the fact that they only settled in india later.

Aryans came from central asia

Answer 193

hey guys...we all know that history is all about the past when we were not there....all most of the stories and facts in history are just based on assumptionsand myths!!! the proofs are less and the stories many....hence its not true that we are the descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race...

Answer 194

Yes we are actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race



we have the proof of Aryan civilization. in our history.

Answer 195

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Answer 196

There are prooves and there aren't too . Since we have opened our eyes , technology tremendously increasing every day , therefore more questions and more explanations and that's it is going on. We are aryans or anyone else , what i know we r only and purely "indians".

Answer 197

sanskrit which aryans spoke belongs to the Indo-European group of languages & is still spoken in India ,this provides an evidence that we are the descendents of aryans and dravidians.

Answer 198

Yes. We Indians are descendants of Aryan and Dravidins race and a mix of these.

Answer 199

yes the Aryans r our ancestors .They came 2 northwest India from Central Asia around 2000BC.

they destroyed the last of the harrappa civilisation.

later as time passed they spread eastwards & become more settled.

they were divided into four classes called varnas.

the highest was brahmins next kshatriyas then vaishyas and the lowest were shudras.

Answer 200

yes we are desendants of Aryans and Dravidians,

histroy books says that Aryans come from outside and dravidian are from india and when aryans come they gone towards south india,

But we listen in Mahabharat Arhun one name is also "Aryaa" and people say all "Shatariye" is also know as Aryans, so this prove that we are descendants of Aryans and Dravidians.

Answer 201

Yes. There are enough been written about it in our hystory Books as well as our mythological Books. Also no other claim have beed made or any eveidence to disprove tteh above has recovered by our Historians so far .

Answer 202

we are actually the descendants of dravidian race. aryans had migrated to india in before christ era and later on stayed in india.theres ample proof regarding the same.

Answer 203

bcause v r the descendants of the aryan and dravidian race this is the proof for ur ans

Answer 204

There is no infallible scientific proof as such.....but we got to believe it for otherwise the any other part of history can be false too....these assumptions( if you prefer it that way) dont happen to be fit of anybody's mind but rather result of deep and analytical studies of scholars and their conclusions.

By the way....aryans claim their origin to be in europe...and germans till date have the idea of being cent percent aryans....hope that leads you atleast somewhere.

Answer 205

Although there is little in the way of 'hard' proof, the most conclusive evidence, to my way of thinking are our great epics, the 'Ramayana' and the 'Mahabharata'. These two great works of literature are a cohesion of many sources, and the fact that they have survived through the ages and through the ravages of foreign, indeed alien, indoctrination, is proof positive of their authenticity as records of a past that seem to us almost mythological. But within their great store of legends are the seeds of history and the hard core of truth. The 'Ramayana', in fact, is nothing more or less than an account of the Aryan invasion of our country and the consolidation of their kingdoms. The 'Mahabharata' expands on the same theme, but at a later date. These two great books are the proofs of our ancestry.

Answer 206

Over and over the Vedas mention a mighty river called the Saraswati where Aryan communities flourished and Vedic priests sang hymns of glorious gods, like Indra. Western scholars speculated that the Saraswati might have been one of the rivers to the east of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia. Perhaps, some even speculated, it had never been anything but a figment of the ancient poet's imaginations!

Answer 207

Most Indian ethnic groups have Australoid,Caucasoid and Mongoloid ancestry

Answer 208

The Ayran Invasion Theory - AIT specifically justified the presence of the British among their “Aryan cousins” in India, being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity

Answer 209

The geologists quickly established the river had dried up around 1900 BCE. Yet according to our friend Max Muller the Veda hadn't been composed till at the very least 700 years after the river disappeared. What was this? Poets pretending they still lived alongside a river that vanished centuries before? Not darn likely!

Answer 210

Hindus collectively have no memory of an Aryan invasion of India that supposedly took place around 1,500 B.C. Hindu epics do not mention any such invasion. Surely, the extensive Hindu literature would describe the Aryan invasion if such had indeed taken place.

Answer 211

Aryans and Dravidians were the descendents of mankind. and Indians are the decendents of the mankind.

Answer 212

NO. We Indians are NOT part of the Aryan or Dravidian race. We belong to the "Indian" race, that's all.

Answer 213

According to all the holy books of the hindu community. we Indian are the descendants of the aryan and Dravidian race. like MAHABAHARAT, RAMAYAN.....so on.

Answer 214

Sorry rian30 and Amrit, but one can confuse racial theory with neither its political use, nor with its historical meaning.

There are not "races" within human being, but ethnies. In what concerns to aryan and dravidian basis of modern indian peoples, archeology proved it in 90's.

Answer 215

yes we are descendents of the aryan and dravidian race because they came first into this world and we came after them .their is no proof but it is not necessary that if their will be proof then only the avove statement is correct .

Answer 216

Present day indians are offsprings of a mixed race.A product of Aryan,Dravidian and other aboriginies.But percentage of racial content (racial mix )varies from one geographical block to another.North is more of Aryan less of Aboriginy.South is more of Dravidian less of Ab: East is more of Ab: less of Aryan And so on.

Answer 217

It is difficult to certainly say that we are aryans and dravidians. According to anthropologically analysis, the inhabitants of Northern India are, on an average in proximity to Aryans. The body texture, the shape of body and head, nose, eyes, etc. is supposed to resemble with other aryan locality in the european countries. The rituals and sacraments of Indian are in close concurrance with the aryans. It is believed that pure aryans are alive only in the groups of Gypsys, who are nomadic. Over passage of time, the Aryans intermixed with dravidians and other groups and hetro blood relations cleared the sharp and distinguishing characteristics of Aryans. Later on people from other civilizations and locality came and settled in India with passage of time and so on with social interlinkeage, the purity of aryans and dravidians was diluted to a great extent.

This could be better understood with the example of rivers. At the onset, the gangotri, the water in Holy river Ganga has a unique characteristic and very special medicinal qualities. As it goes further and many rivers and streams intermingle with it, the quality of water has less uniqueness. And at last at Gangasagar, just before merging in Sea, the quality and medicinal value of water of Ganga is at the least value of its starting water quality. And if you analyse the sea water you could not say whether this particular quantity of water is of river Ganga. Similiarly, India is an anthropological sea, with different streams of populations from various places coming and merging into it.

The traits of a group or society remains intact only in society with close blood relations, like the Adivasis. In India, the tribals in Andamans, Jharkhand and interior Madhya Pradesh and Southern India could only be said to be dravidians. Rest of population could be termed as diluted Aryans and dravidians.

Answer 218

Yes....we Indians are the descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race......

You need not produce any proof...All you need is some common sense and some knowledge of History

Answer 219

No every ones ancestors comes from Africa . This is fact an can be proved on a scientific level . All men an women are related check your DNA.

Answer 220

yes,we Indians actually decendantsof the aryan and dravidian race.

Answer 221

We are of course descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.Proof is we are still descending in the race.

Answer 222

no , there is no proof actually. but we all Indian's believe the story of past.as naturally we are listening the story that is we are Aryans & dravidian. and we believe that it is universal truth. so there is not any solide proof that we indianare dravidian or aryan.

Answer 223

WE INDIANS ARE THE DESCENDANTS OF THE ARYAN RACE BECAUSE ARYANS WERE INHABITANTS OF INDIA.INDIA IS SAID TO BE BIRTH PLACE OF MOST OF GODS AND WE ARE THE SON AND DAUGHTERS OF MANU AND ACCORDING TO INDIAN MYTHOLOGY MANU WAS THE ONLY PERSON TO SUSTAIN LIFE AND HIS SONS CAME TO BE KNOWN AS ARYANS.ARYANS WERE THE FIRST RACE OF PEOPLE IN INDIA AND AFTER THEM CAME OTHER RACES.HISTORY OF ARYANS HAVE BEEN MENTIONED IN SOME OF THE PURANS

Answer 224

There are two language families among the the languages spoken by people in India- the Aryan and the Dravidian. The credit goes to the linguists and scholars of Europe, especially Sir Jones and Max Muller who recognised the affinity between Sanskrit and other classical languages of Europe like Greek and Latin. Their pioneering studies led to the identifications of the Indo-European languages. However, they did not carry forward their study of the languages in India to the languages down south. It was not until Rev. Caldwel revealed the unique family of Dravidian languages to the world, that this family of languages was given a serious thought to. Till recently, it has been the popular belief among the linguists that these two are independent family of languages, are not connected to each other for their origin and development.



The discovery of the Indo European languages and the Dravidian language families have further accectuated the debate on the separateness of the two distinct races of people in India. At the out set, we must make one thing clear. It is foolish to say that some section of the people are Aryan descendants and the other are Dravidian descedants. Racial purity is a myth, as on day, when a lot a racial intermixing had taken place. The tall, fair complexioned with the distinguished aquiline face and other features attributed to the Aryans can as well be seen among the people in the South India. Similarly, the dark complexioned, short statured people with curly hair are distinguishable even among the people in the North.



All said and done, I am unable to subscribe to the conspiracy view of some who want to rubbish the theory that the Aryan had migrated from the Central Asia into India. According to these patriots, the Aryans are natives of this land and that they had migrated from outside the land is a theory concocted by the British scholars as part of their imperial policy to devide and rule us. We must bear in mind that the species called homo sapiens had all originated from the same genetic source. The recent genetic mapping of humans has proved clearly that the humans have all originalted from Africa and spread all over the world, from this parent stock. The study further says that all different races spread all over the continets do not reveal any genetic difference in their genes. Yet, the fact remains that the different physical differences, due to the difference in the climactic conditons of the regions, where they came to live over a period of time, led to differential races. Hence, the difference of races like Aryan and the Dravidian cannot ruled out. The patriotic therory which debunks the foreign origina of the people of India, the Aryans, takes exception to the assumptions that these people had migrated from Centra Asia into India. In the olden days, men were essentially migratory and the modern idea of a nation with definite boundaries is of a recent oritgin, in the human history. There must have been a some what common culture and social practices being observed by the people living in this part of the world. The land scape of the chracters in Ramayana and Mahabharata are definitely well beyond the moder day boundaries of the Indian Sub continent. The name Ram occurs in the names of the places now located in such far off places like Arab countries, Africa and Europe.The cultural affinity could very well be discerned in the similarity of themes and unity of treatment in the epics of Greek and Latin on the one hand and those in Sanskrit. No doubt, the people who came to settle down on the Gangetic planes developed a distiguised life style. The vedas of the Indans saw the consummation of the philosophical bent of these people, which laid the foundation for the Hindu religion and the Hindu society.



Recent studies have also revealed that the Dravidian language and the dravidian society are no myths. There indeed was a society, which was in place, who were dark complexioned, short and with curly hairs. The excavations of the Mohanjadora and Harappa show evidence of the existence of a well devloped society of city dewellers. Some of the recent excavations near Tirunelveli, in the State of Tamilnadu show the similarity between the people living in this part of the country and the evidence culled out from the Sind Valley. The Sumerian and the Egyptian civilizations have more in common with the civilizations of these people. These civilisations bear no resemblance to the Aryan civilisations. Further, the frequent references to the war between the devas and the asuras in the Hindu scriptures and the grand war between Ram and Ravana may perhaps point to the struggle between two civilisations. There are enough evidence in Ramayana for the racial intermingling and the cultural assimilation of the two groups of people living in the sub-continent. It is further recognized by the historians that in pre-historic period, Europe was populated by dark skinned people, called Druids, untill they were over whelmed by the fair complexioned Aryans.



Linguists have also revealed that there must have been a proto-dravidian language, from which the Indo European languages, including Sanskrit, Latin and Greek and other modern languages have branched out. The modern day dravidian languages like Tamil, Kannada , Telugu, Tulu, Malayalam and others are the direct descendants of the said proto-dravidian language. This linguistic superiority of the dravidian languages are not given their due recognition, for political reasons, and for the reason of inferioty complex and the lack of cohesion among the people speaking these languages.



All said and done, it must be recognised that no people, can be branded as purely Aryan or Dravidian, because the racial purity has long since been lost among the people of India, excepting among some of the tribal groups, who are living an isolated life in the far away forests, in India and Andaman and Nicobar islands. These tribal groups have more physical similarities with the tribes living in Australia, America and Africa. Hence, no group in India can be said to have descended from the Aryan race or the Dravidian race.

Answer 225

We do belong to the same family as of aryans and dravidians. We do follow such surnames today as well.



History has witmessed the truth of our ancestors who were aryans.

Answer 226

yes we indians actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race. i have no proof of it but i am sure about that.

Answer 227

actualy indians are dravidian because they are originally came from the bank of the sindhu river where now a days the remains of dravidian culture can be seen.

Answer 228

no we indians r not desenders of aryan and dravidian.its not neccesary to walk on there path to be successful.they used there way to be success in life. we can use our own way to be success in life. if any one shows the proof that we are the desenders of aryan and dravidian, than also i do not agree them.there is no proof for that.

Answer 229

Indians are actually descendants of the Aryan

Answer 230

yes we indians are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 231

Yes we are because we still have the historical profe like sanskrit epics like mahabharatham, ramayanam and also historical places like mahabalipuram, ayodhya, srilanka, rameswaram, chithanavasal diagrams which shows the diagrams of older races & religion which is followed by our ancesstors

Answer 232

Yes.There is a proof-Dravidian languages used till today and are used as provincial languages in most states in India.

Answer 233

Yes

Answer 234

there are many ways to prove this.



The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna).



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. You don't get to read about these kind of races in India or elsewhere.



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?



This says it all. And to conclude, its very clear from the points discussed above that Indians are descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race. i agree with this

Answer 235

Aryans-

Answer 236

I think so.The very fact that many of the people in our country have bluish grey eyes and pure white colour shows that somewhere we have something in our blood which may connect us to the Aryans & Dravidians.

Answer 237

We can not say that we are actual descendents of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Proof:---

INDIA is a multiculture socity . Many foreign countries invesened India in past and all carried their respective cultures and spread here.So it could be possible that we be descendent of those.

Answer 238

The Dawn of the second millennium after Christ saw Peninsular India divided politically, but united by a common culture that was the product of centuries of mixing and mingling between the Aryan and Dravida cultures.



The Arya-Dravida synthesis had resulted in the production of a splendid new culture in which the various castes and communities played a constructive role and led a harmonious life under Brahmin guidance. The progressive Aryanisation of the indigenous Dravida communities and the Dravidisation of the immigrant Aryan groups had reached a stage where a satisfactory equilibrium had been established.



Ths does not mean that it was a society enshrining the principle of equality and social justice. The basic principle of the caste system was inequality of hierarchy based on birth, as was the case in any human society in the pre-modern past. But this was accomplished in India with a minimum of conflict and maximum acceptance from all parties concerned. This equilibrium of the traditional South Indian society gave it the capacity to expand to enter into trade and cultural relations with Sri Lanka and South East Asia, and welcome and absorb Arab merchants from West Asis as well as Christian adventures from Europe. In fact, Peninsular India itself has to be viewed in two parts for a proper understanding of its past. The Deccan Plateau and its coastline, consisting of Andhra, Maharashtra and Karnataka regions, from a unit with close interaction between parts in culture and language. The Far South, known as Tamilakam, including present Tamilnad and Kerala, forms another unit in the same manner.



The Deccan Plateau had started registering the impact of Aryan migrations from the period of the Mauryan Empire. The Satavahana kingdom sprawling across the Vindhyan area and reaching down to Mysore had performed an Aryanising role the early centuries of the Christian era. Some of the rulers performed yagnas and granted land to Brahmin settlers on a large scale.



The Kadambas and Chalukyas followed the same tradition and we find the number of land grants to Brahmins and Brahminical temples increasing in the succeeding centuries. The entire court and administration were Brahminised, and the laws prescribed in Dharmasastras were applied to society, with the result that the Varna system that evolved in the Gangetic valley was sought to be duplicated in the Deccan region. The details of this process are not clear from contemporary sources which are mostly in the form of inscriptions recording legal transactions in a matter-of-fact way.



The same process is repeated in Tamilakam (Tamilnad and Kerala) at a later stage. It was the kingdom of the Pallavas of Kanchi, established on the east coast, that assumed the Aryanising role of the Satavahanas about a thousand years later though the initial penetration of the south zone by religious teachers- missionaries in modern parlance- had started in the Mauryan period itself, with the legendary migration of Bhadrabahu and Changradupta Maurya to Sravanabelagola in Karnataka. Prakrit inscriptions prove the Satavahana presence in the Tamil country also. In Tamilakam, the process of Aryanisation of the native society and the progressive Dravidisation of the incoming Aryan settlers - Brahmins, Buddhists and Jains - are recorded in a clearer manner. This is because we have a huge corpus of Tamil Sangam literatire, running into thousands of verses on different aspects of life and culture, beside the archaeological record consisting of coins, artefacts and herostones. As per the evidence of the Sangam works, the Aryan teachers first attached themselves to the courts of the Tamil chieftains, big and small, as courtiers. They tried successfully to step into the shoes of the Panas, native singers and custodians of ancestrial folk wisdom and history.



By the 9th Century we find the Chaturvarnya concept and the Jati system, first established in the Pallava kingdom in the north-east corner of Tamilakam, well-entrenched in the territory of the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas, the three great kings of the region. The temple movement and the allied Bhakti movement, both emanating from the cultural milieu of North India, also started from the Aryanised Tirupathi-Kanchi area, and spread to the West and South with royal patronage and popular support through art and literature.

Answer 239

yes , we r actual descendants of aryans & dravidians.

proof is the text book of forensic medicine -MODI & PARIKH.

Forensic Experts never accept anything which has not been substantiated & is not conclusive.

Answer 240

Seeing is believing. We can see ourselves and our personalites which are so different from other races. Just to the north of us is Nepal and China where the people belong to the mongoloid tribe. They are totally different from us. Why? This is because they are the decendants of their particular tribe.



As the history goes, man being a social animal lived in groups and had been divided into many tribes and one of them being the Aryans who lived in Central Asia. The Aryan were basically nature worshippers. They were pushed down by the more warrior like tribes. They in turn wandered into the present India to find new pastures and pushed the local tribes living in India still further. (Source - Mine)



The most basic division of the Indian society is of Aryans and Dravidians. According to this division, nearly 72% of Indians are Aryans and 28% are Dravidians. The north Indians are the descendants of Aryans and the south Indians are Dravidians. The languages spoken in five states of south India are considered Dravidian languages and most of the languages spoken in the north are considered Aryan languages. The general script of the Aryan languages is different from the general script of Dravidian languages. The Indians also distinguish themselves by the general north Indian accent and general south Indian accent.



According to general Indian legend, the Aryans arrived in north India somewhere from Iran and southern Russia at around 1500 BC. Before the Aryans, the Dravidian people resided in India. The Aryans disregarded the local cultures. They began conquering and taking control over regions in north India and at the same time pushed the local people southwards or towards the jungles and mountains in north India. According to this historical fact the general division of Indian society is made. North Indians are Aryans and south Indians are Dravidians. But this division isn’t proper because of many reasons.



Many Indians immigrated from one part of India to other parts of India and not all local people of north India were pushed southwards by the Aryans. Some stayed and served the Aryans and others moved to live in the forests and the jungles of north India. Before the arrival of the Aryans there were also other communities in India like Sino-Mongoloids and Austroloids. There were also other foreign immigrations and invaders who arrived in India, from time to time.



There are many that completely doubt that there was ever any Aryan invasion in India. This skepticism is based on the dating of the Aryan invasion of India and the fact that Hinduism and the caste system are believed to have been established as the result of the meetings between the intruding Aryans and original residents of India, the Dravidians.



The caste system is believed to have been established by the Aryans. The fair skinned Aryans who occupied parts of India established the caste system, which allowed only them to be the priests (Brahman), aristocracy (Kshatria) and the businessmen (Vaisia) of the society. Below them in hierarchy were the Sudras who consisted of two communities. One community was of the locals who were subdued by the Aryans and the other were the descendants of Aryans with locals. In Hindu religious stories there are many wars between the good Aryans and the dark skinned demons and devils. The different Gods also have dark skinned slaves. There are stories of demon women trying to seduce good Aryan men in deceptive ways. There were also marriages between Aryan heroes and demon women. Many believe that these incidences really occurred in which, the gods and the positive heroes were people of Aryan origin. And the demons, the devils and the dark skinned slaves were in fact the original residence of India whom the Aryans coined as monsters, devil, demons and slaves. Normally the date given to Aryan invasion is around 1500 BC. But according to Hinduism experts some of the events in Hinduism occurred much earlier. Some of the events like the great war in the Mahabharta epic is believed to have occurred (based on astronomical research) 7000 years ago.



According to this Hindu experts the word Aryan is a misinterpretation of the original Sanskrit word, Arya. Arya means pure or good in Sanskrit. In the holy Vedas the good people were called Arya. Some of the European scholars of Indian culture in the 19th century were Germans. These German scholars who found that Swastika was also a holy symbol among the Hindus distorted, the word Arya to Aryan. (Source -internet).



From the above it is quite clear that we are the descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Answer 241

We are the descedents of arians and dravidians only. No doubt in it,Read it in the history .Before the arians came by the kiber kanaway to India there were dravidians lived in India and they out of fear worshipped fire,sun,water, and everything they think superior to them, Then Arians came and they dominated them and taught them to worship idols and they themselves were the pujaries,

Answer 242

yes we indians are really descendants of the aryan and dravidian race.

Answer 243

No. It is a myth spread by Western Historians to devide and rule the country

Answer 244

We are descendants of Dravidian Race

Answer 245

yes. our Indian people are the descendants of Aryan and Dravidan race, because so many years before(B.C) aryan people came from central China and they entered into India through Kaiber and Polan paths of Himalayas. After their arrival Hinduism has started. The Researchers found some things at Mohanghataro about Aryan people things and we knew so many things about Aryan people. before entering to India they were living in the central Asia as the Shepherds, they were moving continiously for feeding to their sheeps at last they came to India. After that the 4 vedas Ric, yazur,Sama, Otherwa written.



They are the forefathers for Idol worship as like as Sumarians.They had spreaded allover the North India especially the Ganga River areas for pasture and Agriculture. And the culture started. they divided people according to their works as the four divisions. And Sanskirit became the capital language, then the other languages were born from that.





In south India Tamil Has a long age, and other languages like kanada, malayalam, telugu,have started from tamil. but for all that the capital language was Sanskirit. It was created by Aryas.we are generally mentioning including Tamil and regional south Indian languages as Dravidan languages. The Aryan people dominated only North India, the south India was dominated by Dravidan race. But Nowadays also the Hinduism has the traditional worship of Sanskirit.After these two big races the old and regional things couldnot get important.



besides the fake worships and beliefs were created by them to earn money through God name by some people. And the wrong things in society like untouchability, the wife burns after her husband death, a young widow should wear white saree and should wear flower in her hair, all of them created. those things mixed in society and those people frightened fellow people by God's Name. after some period the Buddhism had started from Hinduism to clear the fake and wrong beliefs. The Hinduism had so many Gods and traditions and the Puranas land the Mahabaradam and Ramayanam had written in this stages.People started to give their goat, Ox as their scapegoats to Gods.Besides in North India people found Ayurvedic treatments in south India Siddha treatments by plants and leafs.The all territories had joined after independence as India Republic and we have forefathers of Aryas and Dravidas. If whether India would have any races they were gone by time period. Sumarians Called Hinustan asIndia. our history says India had another name Bharath named by one popular King Bharathan who ruled this. Any way these two races dominated and we are the people of these two races, and the other religions and dialects, races had created from these two races and from Hinduism.

Answer 246

yes we are from long back an origin of aryans and dravidians it is revealed by our culture,policies, bravenessetc this is more than enough to show the proof

Answer 247

Well this website isn't big enough for the both of us you fat bastard. I know you get off on your cigarette lighter socket-powered dildo, sliding around on those sweaty leather seats in your late model german luxury barge. I'm giving you 24 hours to get your sorry a.hole out of Dodge.

Answer 248

yes; we are actually descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race. but i cant the proof.

Answer 249

i suppose we cant answer correctly for such a big question whose truth lies ages back.In todays world we even cant answer about question whose truth lies 100 years back as in todays world truth is that which is taught as truth to be believed at least in the case of history. if question would have been based on science or current affaris than facts could be given and checked.

Answer 250

According to the pofile of the Indians and historical evidences we are all mixed race.

Answer 251

Mohanjodro and Harappa civilisations are the proof.

Consult a good history book

Answer 252

Yes, we Indians are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian race. Yes.

Answer 253

Yes we are descendants of Aryan and Dravidian

Answer 254

yes indians are actually descendants of the aryan and dravidan race. According to the following passages it is evident to the previous statement.

"Archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Dravidians were the founders of the Harappan culture which extended from the Indus Valley through northeastern Afghanistan, on into Turkestan. The Harappan civilization existed from 2600-1700 BC. The Harappan civilization was twice the size the Old Kingdom of Egypt. In addition to trade relations with Mesopotamia and Iran, the Harappan city states also had active trade relations with the Central Asian peoples."



The aryan invasion theory sugest that

"According to this theory, northern India was invaded and conquered by nomadic, light-skinned RACE of a people called 'ARYANS' who descended from Central Asia (or some unknown land ?) around 1500 BC, and destroyed an earlier and more advanced civilization of the people habitated in the Indus Valley and imposed upon them their culture and language. These Indus Valley people were supposed to be either Dravidian, or AUSTRICS or now--days' Shudra class etc.



The main elements on which the entire structure of AIT has been built are: Arya is a racial group, their invasion, they were nomadic, light-skinned, their original home was outside India, their invasion occurred around 1500 BC, they destroyed an advanced civilization of Indus valley, etc. And what are the evidences AIT advocates present in support of all these wild conjectures:



Invasion: Mention of Conflicts in Vedic literature, findings of skeletons at the excavated sites of Mohanjodro and Harappa



Nomadic, Light-skinned: Pure conjecture and misinterpretation of Vedic hymns.



Non-Aryan/Dravidian Nature of Indus civilization: absence of horse, Shiva worshippers, chariots, Racial differences, etc.



Date of Invasion, 1500 BC: Arbitrary and speculative, in Mesopotamia and Iraq the presence of the people worshipping Vedic gods around 1700BC, Biblical chronology "



Chronology of the pre-historic period of India



"According to the invasionists, the Indian civilization or the Indus Valley civilization is only 4000-5000 years old. They place the end of this civilization around 1900BC, and invasion of Aryans around 1500BC. There is also no plausible explanation from these invasion advocates for a gap of 400 years between the end of the Indus Valley civilization (IVC) and the appearance of Aryans on the Indian scene if Aryans were responsible for the destruction of the IVC. They propose the period of 1400-1300 BC as the beginning of the Vedic age when the Vedas were composed and Aryans began to impose their culture and religion on the indigenous population of the northern India.



The Ramayana and Mahabharat, if considered as real events, must be according to them arbitrarily be dated in the period 1200-1000BC. And only after 1000BC, the historic accounts of empire building, Buddha's birth etc. have to be dated. This chronology first proposed by Max Muller was primarily based on his firm belief in the Biblical date of the creation of the world, i.e. October 23, 4004 BC. "



But what ever they say i folow swamy vivekanandha who said

Swami Vivekananda on Aryan Invasion Theory



"Our archaeologists' dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines, and the bright Aryans came from - the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet; others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red haired. Others, according to their idea, think that they were all black-haired. If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired. Of late, there was an attempt made to prove that the Aryans lived on Swiss lake. I should not be sorry if they had been all drowned there, theory and all. Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for as the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans came from anywhere outside of India, and in ancient India was included Afghanistan. There it ends..."



so at last we all are indians...

Answer 255

Nol. First off, "we Indians..." There are many states in India and "Indians" with a variety of features. Genetic testing may reveal ancestoral background for each individual family - but not the entire nation.

Answer 256

yes we are since the nature and culture of indians is a great proof.and the language sanskrit also prooves this truth.an imposed culture can't work very well.

Answer 257

The Myth of the Aryan Invasion was propounded in 19th century by western historians who had a mission to undermine the roots of Indian cultural heritage because they realised that Europeans had nothing better to offer to Indians on the cultural sphere. So they fabricated history with the sole aim to prove that the British culture was superior to Indian culture. There is proof available in Britain's parliamentary proceedings to this effect.



Rock shelters with paintings at Bhimbetka in the state of Madhya Pradesh are the earliest known traces of human life in India. The first known permanent settlements appeared over 9,000 years ago and gradually developed into the Indus Valley Civilization, dating back to 3300 BCE in western India. It was followed by the Vedic Civilization which laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of early Indian society. From around 550 BCE, many independent kingdoms and republics known as the Mahajanapadas were established across the country laying the foundations of ancient India.



Many a scholar and historian have acknowledged the discrepancies, raised objections and rejected the theory of aryan invasion since its inception in the early 19th century. According to historian Wheeler (in his "Civilization of Indus Valley and Beyond"), "..the [Aryan Invasion] cannot be proved and may be quite incorrect".

Also, Murrow in his book "The Sanskrit Language" comments, " For the Indo-Aryan invasion of India no direct evidence is available. In the text of the RgVed itself, although historical allusions are not uncommon, there is no reference anywhere to the fact of the migration, nor any definite indication that it was still

remembered." Indian Vedic scholars like Dayanand Saraswati, B.G. Tilak and Sri Arvind had already rejected the aryan invasion theory based mostly on literary analysis. In spite of having no evidence to support this doctrine, it is amusing to know how academics held on to this dogma.



The excavated ruins of the submerged city of

Dwaraka by Dr. S.R.Rao and his team in 1985 (Marine Archaeological Unit), along the coast of Gujarat, provides authenticity for the existence of the Mahabharat civilization (3000 B.C.). Satellite data combined with field archaeological studies have discovered once disappeared river Saraswati, which appears extensively in the Vedic literature. The study also showed that the river flow discontinued much earlier than 3000 B.C. The decipherment of the Indus script by S.R.Rao shows a amazing affinity with the Sanskrit family and analysis of the seals have putforth numerous words and names from the Sanskritic and Vedic age. It indeed becomes evident that the harappan culture was a part and parcel and continuation of an earlier Vedic age: an age that existed much prior to 3000 B.C.



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.



Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preserved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the same culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seeking). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 258

Indians are going ahead then other country people because Country like America done his job works in India and it increase every year.Few recent accident in India like BOMB BLAST IN BOMBAY TRAIN ,FLOOD IN GUJARAT'S CITY SURAT,FLOOD IN MAHARASHTRA.After every accident Indians people come very quickly in their daily life.In India there is no robbery,murder,etc. occur after such accident.One the other side when FLOOD COME IN FLORIDA STATE AT AMERICA people robe things from the shops,house,etc. were done.

ALL THOUGH INDIANS MORAL IS HIGH EVERY TIME AND ITS IS INCREASING EVERY MOMENT .

Answer 259

yes,

from history we got proof that on bank side of sindhu river people those stayed called Aryans and Dravidian , so they are our ancestors. also we can imagine from haddpa and mohendejdo about this

Answer 260

This is the 21st century.



Why are we debating this? Look to the future. Stop looking at the past.



Does it really matter what race we descended from?



The real big questions should be how to make poverty disappear from our country.



If we solve that, we will have all the answers.

Answer 261

WE R THE HUMAN BEINGS.

FROM THE FIRST DAY OF LIFE CAME ON EARTH, THAT LIFE IS ADAPTING & THE WHOLE EARTH IS GOING THROUGH THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION,

WE CAME.

ACCORDING TO SCIENCE, WE R INHERITING THE CHIMPANJEE(OR MONKEY; MAY B I'M NOT SURE) THROUGH THIS PROCESS OF EVOLUTION.



THOUGH WE CALL US MANKIND, ACTUALLY WE INHERRIT FROM THE ANIMAL(ESPECIALLY MAMAL) KINGDOM!!!



ACCORDING TO SOME SO CALLED SCIENTISTS, WE R THE BEST ANIMAL IN THIS EARTH.



NO MORE! I DON'T KNOW MORE!!!!

IF U LIKE MY ANSWER, WRITE ME AT [e-mail] OR CALL ME @ [phone]



JAYANTA

Answer 262

Yes, North indian and south indian people are proof.

Answer 263

Yes

Answer 264

Because many Indians have the Sirname/family name Arya and Dravid e.g. Rahul Dravid etc,.

Answer 265

My answer is --- Originally we Are decsendants of aryans and dravidians..... But ARE ALL OF US???? I know that our holy books prove it... But I think later (after the mughal invasion and all other invasions) I can only say that many of us are not purely aryans .....

Answer 266

The indications are that Mohenjo-daro was at its height when Cheops built the first great pyramid; that it had commercial, religious, and artistic connections with Sumeria, and Babylonia

Answer 267

in my opinion indians..are basically dravidian race...because the indus valley people were black in colour,short in height,nose is not sharp and is a plum shaped one.......these are the characteristics of the existing dravidians ..in parts of tamil nadu,kerala,karnataka,andhra........etc..so we indians are the descendants of dravidian race...

Answer 268

Hey..buddy ..dont be so sure...we indians are not the same people living in the same place i.e. India for time immemorial....man ...get some reality check.....dont you know India is a multicultural, multiracial, multi-whatever ......etc..etc...all of us from different parts of the world .....destined to live in this one subcontinent By God's desire....so theres no point that all of us are descendents of same so-called (nazi-propagated-pure race)......take for example PARSIS....they are also as Indian as you and me.....but we know that they are from Persia......OR take another example of SIKHS who are said to be descendants of afghan & chinese hun races.... gotchaaa my point ........well a good advice to my fellow countryman is to forget who emanated from where.......the matter to ponder upon in todays world is where are we heading?

Answer 269

long ago only tribes used to live but slowly india saw the invasions.First came dravidians they were not a invaders but came here in search of green pastures for they were basicaly farmers so they needed land for it & also for their cattles they were peace loving people.they were highly developed in all sectins as its e.g are seen in MOHANJADARO & HARAPPA CIVILIZIANS. They were also creators of our basic indian cultures in art and other areas .they were farmers so they only relied on rice,vegetables,fruits,milk & its products i.e pure veg.Theyare the one who have developed grt indian langaues i.e TAMIL which is known to be their langauge,they were worshipers of idols forms of god/godess.they were very dominate till ARYANS came & invaded us.all is culture, habits, names,rituals r still seen & many things r still seen.

aryans were rutless invaders they came to india to invade it but seening its richness they stayed here.They drived away the DRAVIDIANS from their land .Fearing them dravidians came & settled down in south indian region giving its name as DRAVIDA NADU i.e country of dravidians.

aryans also had great culture which is seen today also as grt sanskrit language indians great vedas,puranms .

after that both this races devloped here giving us a grt culture which was a devplement of india in that era seeing that culture many of came to india in grt enthusiam & were surprised to see such develped country.

Answer 270

i belive the answer is yes the proof we can find inside our body

gene some scientists taken random blood samples from various people & they found that we came from aryan&dravidian race

Answer 271

YES AS IN ANCIENT AGE ARYANS WERE FIRST TO COME TO INDIA AND MADE DIFFERENT SCRIPTS.DRAVIDIANS WERE ALSO VERY POPULARIN MAKING SCRIPTS.ARYANS ARE ALSO RELATED WITH VEDAS .YAJUR VED SAM VED ETC. DRAVIDIANS SCRIPT IS AVAILABLE TO SOUTH

Answer 272

yes.from our appearence we can decide that we are descndants of the Aryan and Dravidian race

Answer 273

Yes. We need to depend on mythology for a possible proof of it.

Answer 274

ya, hindi which we have spoken today is derived from dravidiens and morover there are many proofs like coins old remnents and many other incidences shows thst we are the decendents of aryans and dravidiens

Answer 275

YES WE INDIAN ARE THE DESCENDANTS OF THE ARYAN & DRAVIDIAN RACE. THEY CAME FROM COMMON CIVILIZATION.

Answer 276

yes we indians are descendants of the aryan and dravidian race.



The puranas & vedic books are proof of our being aryans or dravidians.

Answer 277

I feel that concept created by westerns to proove their dominance .Since Indians have rich culture and values, Europians want to proove that these cultures and values originated in their region (Europe) rather than other regions.We can see so many incidents of amputation of history by Europians to show their superiority . Unfortuantely our poor Indians following the same and teaching all nonsense to our future generations and helping maximum to destroy our values and culture.

Answer 278

We Indians are the descendants Of aryan.The proff of this is

Harrapan Civilization which is now in Pakistan.

Answer 279

actually strictly speaking we are a greatly mixed race ,but if we consider maximum portion of Indian population then we can say that

we have mainly Aryan(who are actually a branch of the Huns) and Dravidian blood flowing in us ....

Answer 280

Vedas declare in its first hymens ...

"He is Aryan who is born of Prayer and he is Non-Aryan who is born of lust."



Now you decide what you are ?



I support the views expressed by rian30..

Answer 281

The genetic and anthropological studies of indian people suggest that our present day population is a conglomeration of different racial groups belonging to different parts of the worlds. These groups entered india in different times through various land and water routes. Among them, the main racial groups include:



1. Negritos: Earliest occupants, they migrated from Africa. Features are seen in tribes like those in andamans, jharkhand, northeast etc.



2. Proto Australoids: they came from east mediterranean area(Palestine) soon after negritos.They constitute many isolated and semi isolated parts of central and southern india. eg. veddahs, irulas, bhils, kols, korwas..etc.



3. Mongloids: China is generally believed to be the homeland, from where they were pushed southwards into malaya peninsula, indonesia, india etc. They entered india through passes in the mountains. Features include high cheekbones, long flat nose, with little or no hair on face or body. there is also evidence of them entering through oceania to kerala and tamil nadu.



4. Mediterraneans: They came from east mediterranean region or southwest asia durin 3rd or 2nd millenium BC. Features include medium stature, dark skin, long head. Probably, they settled in the north west areas and started practising agriculture there, and were pushed further down into the central and southern india by subsequent migrants. They form the bulk of population of south india. These are popularly called dravidians. Along with the proto australoids, they are believed to be the chief architects of Indus Valley Civilization.



They brought earlier forms of Austro Asiatic languages, and are considered to be bearers of earliest forms of hinduism. For example, few findings of harappa and mohenjodaro include, a

statue of natraj, painting in a jar that resembles cunning fox of panchtantra, evidence of a game resembling present day's chess, evidence of both burial and cremation, bull and pipal tree was considered sacred. Father Heras has even claimed, that Harappan language was a very primitive form of Tamil.



5. Brachycephals: They are characterized by broad heads. Coorgis and Parsis are representatives of this group.



6. Nordics or popularly known as the Aryans: They constitute the last wave of migration into India. They spoke Aryan language and are believed to have migrated sometime in second millenium BC. Features include, long head, fair complexion, well developed nose and well built strong body. They are the predominant types of punjab, haryana, rajasthan etc.



Historical evidences show that they brought along a new culture with them.They had tamed horse and rode chariots, had a patrilineal family syatem, and worshipped sky gods like indra, agni, sun god etc. they personified natural forces and looked upon them as living beings. They brought earliest form of rig veda, however, they themselves were illitrates, meaning they could not read or write. The vedas were passed on to generations orally. The subsequent vedas have developed in India itself. They brought along with them the classes of kshatriya, brahmin, vaishya n dasa or shudra which was added later. The earliest are believed to be tribals, who settled in the northern western parts of India, and with time occupied the greater part of north India.

Answer 282

Yes we r ARYANS till now. Arya means "supreme". and I can bet we INDIANS

r best of the world...

Answer 283

No, we are on mixed types. Genetics may provide the answer. Howevrer, logical, we are mixed now.

Answer 284

the history tells itself. you take the epics ramayana or mahabharat, these epics will tell the fact. another the real fact is your body and face. the figure clearly shows how one differs from another.

Answer 285

yes indians are descendants of aryans and dravidians. i think that there is no proof for it.

Answer 286

yes. Indus valley civilisation

Answer 287

yes the proof is in the Ancient civilization how our forefathers lived and their society have been given in Indian Civilization

Answer 288

s there are some proofs. do u believe in god?yes/no

if u believe in god you should believe bcos u might come across the epics of god if that is true this is also true bcos it is very old

and u should believe this bcos its not very old.

Answer 289

Yes.I think we Indians belong to aryan race. I think we celebrate Sankrant or UTTERAYAN.Why?Originaly we came from cold region of Antactica.

Answer 290

evidences are available as scripts and sculptures and as statues in so many states in southern india

Answer 291

yes, there are so many proof in the J L Nehru's book discovery of india.

Answer 292

WE ALSO KNOW THAT MANY OF THE ARYAN "WANNABE'S" ARE ACTUALLY A MIXED RACE. NO PURE ARYAN REMAINS IN ANY PART OF SOUTH ASIA

Answer 293

YES .we r the decends of these cultures & race . 4500 yrs ago these races travelled below the himalayas & setelled 2 its south. the proofs r in the southern temples of rameshwaram.

Answer 294

yes.. Indians are descendent of Aryans... as per mohan-jo-daro findings.

Answer 295

Does it really matter to look behind when we are talking about the future ahead of us

Answer 296

Aryans.The excavations are only the proof.

Answer 297

yes we are belonging from aryans and davidians race.

its proof is in our ancient epic and mythology like mahabharat.

Answer 298

Indians are actually descendants of the Aryan.

Answer 299

no. the word Arya denotes the behaviour and not the race.

Answer 300

yes but can any one proof that who is his father is the right person smae here

Answer 301

yes.



the colour and physical status is more or less same to those race. so i think the present status is the modification of that two race.

the culture is also the same.

Answer 302

The separation of Indo-Aryans proper from Proto-Indo-Iranians is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 2000 BC[citation needed]. The Nuristani languages probably split in such early times, and are either classified as remote Indo-Aryan dialects, or as an independent branch of Indo-Iranian. It is believed that by 1500 BC, Indo-Aryans had reached Assyria in the west (the Mitanni) and northern Afghanistan in the east (the Rigvedic tribes).



The spread of Indo-Aryan languages has been connected with the spread of the chariot in the first half of the second millennium BC. Some scholars trace the Indo-Iranians (both Indo-Aryans and Iranians) back to the Andronovo culture (2nd millennium BC). Other scholars like Brentjes (1981), Klejn (1974), Francfort (1989), Lyonnet (1993), Hiebert (1998) and Sarianidi (1993) have argued that the Andronovo culture cannot be associated with the Indo-Aryans of India or with the Mitanni because the Andronovo culture took shape too late and because no actual traces of their culture (e.g. warrior burials or timber-frame materials of the Andronovo culture) have been found in India or Mesopotamia (Edwin Bryant. 2001). The archaeologist J.P. Mallory (1998) finds it "extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India" and remarks that the proposed migration routes "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" (Mallory 1998; Bryant 2001: 216).



Other scholars like Asko Parpola (1988) connect the BMAC with the Indo-Aryans. But although horses were known to the Indo-Aryans, evidence for the presence of horse in form of horse bones is missing in the BMAC (e.g. Bernard Sergent. Genèse de l'Inde. 1997:161 ff.). Asko Parpola (1988) has argued that the Dasas were the "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran" living in the BMAC and that the forts with circular walls destroyed by the Indo-Aryans were actually located in the BMAC. Parpola's hypothesis has been criticized by K.D. Sethna (1992) and other scholars.



The first undisputed horse remains in India are found in the Bronze Age Gandhara Grave culture context from ca. 1600 BC (although there are claims[citation needed] of horse bones found in Harappan and even pre-Harappan layers). This likely corresponds to an influx of early Indo-Aryan speakers over the Hindukush (comparable to the Kushan expansion of the first centuries AD). Together with indigenous cultures, this gave rise to the Vedic civilization of the early Iron Age. This civilization is marked by a continual shift to the east, first to the Gangetic plain with the Kurus and Panchalas, and further east with the Kosala and Videha. This Iron Age expansion corresponds to the black and red ware and painted grey ware cultures.



The Vedic Kuru and Panchala kingdoms in the first millennium became the core of the Mahajanapadas, archaeologically corresponding to the Northern Black Polished Ware, and the rise of the Mauryan Empire, and later the medieval Middle kingdoms of India.



Contemporary speakers of Indo-Aryan languages are spread over most of the northern Indian Subcontinent. The largest group are the speakers of the Hindi and Urdu dialects of the India and Pakistan, together with other dialects also grouped as Hindustani, numbering at roughly half a billion native speakers, constituting the largest community of speakers of any of the Indo-European languages. Other Indo-Aryan communities are in Nepal, Bangladesh and parts of Afghanistan. Of the 23 national languages of India, 16 are Indo-Aryan dialects (see also languages of India). The only Indo-Aryan branch surviving outside the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas is the Romani language, the language of the Roma people (Gypsies).



Hindustani is an umbrella term for various dialects descended from the Prakrits of medieval India. The largest of these are the Hindi and Urdu languages. Hindustani speaking people inhabit modern-day Pakistan and northern India. During the British Raj, this region was identified as "Hindustan", the Persian for "Land of the Hindus". Related languages are spoken all over Indian subcontinent, from Bengal to Sri Lanka and the Maldives.



The closely related Roma and Sinti people, also known as "Gypsies", are traditionally nomadic. They are believed to have left India in about 1000 AD and to have passed through what is now Afghanistan, Persia, Armenia, and Turkey. People recognizable by other Roma as Roma still live as far east as Iran, including some who made the migration to Europe and returned. By the 14th century, the Roma had reached the Balkans, by the 15th century they appeared in Western Europe, and by the 16th century, they had reached Scotland and Sweden. Peoples with some similarity to the Roma still exist in India, in particular in the desert state of Rajasthan. Roma immigration to the United States began in colonial times, and larger scale immigration began in the 1860s with groups from Britain. The largest number of immigrants came over in the early 1900s. A large number also moved to Latin

Answer 303

Mixture of both possibly

Answer 304

yes

Answer 305

yes

Answer 306

yes

Answer 307

yes

Answer 308

Yes. Proof- we are not Mongoloids.

Answer 309

ya , its important to our indian culture,we followed the aryan and dravidan race .for example all the married rules .ya the gys are not marrried his sister mother .only his uncle daughter.

Answer 310

yes

Answer 311

yes

Answer 312

yes,it is written in the holy book of sikhs also.

Answer 313

DRAVIDIAN RACE , BECAUSE ARYANS R COMING FROM WEST , WE R TRADITIONALLY LIVE HERE .

Answer 314

no we are not aryans simply it was a fake thing created.

Answer 315

Yes. Our culture is proof to it

Answer 316

Al Max Muller made it very clear that Aryan, in scientific language, According to Will Durrant, the word Aryan originally meant peasant. It is most likely derived from Sanskrit root ri-ar, “to plough” .However, the word Aryan describes nobleman in Rig-Veda, the oldest source of ancient Indian history.The Aryans entered Indian sub-continent from northwest circa 1500-1200 BC. The time frame is suggested to coincide with the violent destruction of Indus valley civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro . The Aryan, a semi-nomadic pastoral people, came in successive waves. They were swift horse-men armed with broad axes or riding horses drawn two-wheeled chariots overwhelming their enemies with showers of arrows. The pre-Aryans, non-Aryan or Dravidian moved south and east for safety after their cities in the Indus valley were destroyed by advancing Aryans. The Aryans settled down in villages, created an Aryan dominant cultural and political elite, composed Rig-Veda and, in time, their language, culture and religion became dominant in the Indian sub-continent. The older generation of European scholars and orientalists had erroneously traced all good or great elements of Indian civilization to Vedic Aryans. Recent archaeological discoveries and linguistic paleontology have, however, greatly changed our perspective of Vedic Aryans life, culture and religion. A great deal of pre-Aryan or non-Aryan influence on Aryan or Vedic language, culture and religion is now generally acknowledged. Suniti Kumar Chatterji in “Indian Heritage” insinuated that we owe more than 75 percent of culture and civilization to non-Aryan fore-fathers. Hinduism is truly the legacy of non-Aryans. The pre-Aryan worship of Sun and is part of Hinduism. Sun was worshipped in the Vedic age under various names as Surya, Savitri, Pushan, Bhag, Mitra, Varuna and Visavant. Similarly Rudra, Siva, Krishna, Sakti, Kubera, Ganesha and Hanumana are deities of pre-Aryan origin. More importantly yoga and dhayana were practiced in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro and thus a pre-Aryan origin.



an Aryan invasion during 1500-1200 BC was having no archaeological evidences suggesting people invading Indian sub-continent in successive waves. It is highly unlikely that Aryan people took off from their homelands with the specific purpose of invading Indian sub-continent. They must be the people on the move for any of a number of possible reasons. They must have stopped along the way to replenish their stocks and strength. It would have taken them several generations with settling down along the way. Again, there is a lack of supporting archaeological evidences along the proposed migrating routes. The Neolithic age came to Indian sub-continent much earlier than previously thoughtMost surprising of this excavation is the evidence of cultivation of cereal crops (barley, einkorn, emmer and wheat) dating back to circa 6000 BC. Although it is possible for Mehrgarh to be the easternmost end of Mesopotamia but impossible for it not to influence and initiate a move towards farming in the nearby Mohenjo-daro and Veda, there is no mention of Aryans or their descendants to have any memory of their homelands outside Indian sub-continent. It was generally assumed that the pre-Aryan or non-Aryan people of Indus valley were Drividians. . It is almost certain that Aryan invasion never took place and Hinduism is the legacy of Aryan/ non-Aryan Indians. The the rest of Indus valley. Indian, it IRig-Veda, there is no mention of Aryans or their descendants to have any memory of their homelands outside Indian sub-continent. I generally assumed that the pre-Aryan or non-Aryan people of Indus valley were Drividians. . It is almost certain that Aryan invasion never took place and Hinduism is the legacy of Aryan/ non-Aryan Indians.

Answer 317

YES, INDIANS ARE DESCENDANTS OF ARYANS AND DRAVIDIAN'S. THE NORTH INDIANS ARE KNOWN TO BE THE DESCENDANTS OF ARYANS AND SOUTH INDIANS OF DRAVIDIAN'S.THERE IS NO SOLID PROOF THAT I CAN GIVE BUT THE HISTORIANS HAVE PROVED IT.

Answer 318

Yes, any proof of it

Answer 319

horse race

Answer 320

yes

Answer 321

yes

Answer 322

belive i or not but it's true,and this the science is historically prooved.

Answer 323

We have thousand of proff, for example our dress code and culture and many more......

Answer 324

:30

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Questioning the Aryan Invasion Theory and

Revising Ancient Indian History1

Klaus Klostermaier



NB. The footnotes for this article are linked to a separate footnote page.



Introduction

Tacitus, the classical Roman writer, claimed to have described past events and

personalities in his works sine ira et studio, free from hostility and bias. This motto has

guided serious historians through the ages, and it became their highest ambition to write

history 'objectively', distancing themselves from opinions held by interested parties.



The ideal was not always followed, as we know. We have seen twentieth century

governments commissioning re-writings of the histories of their countries from the

standpoint of their own ideologies. Like the court-chroniclers of former times, some

contemporary academic historians wrote unashamedly biased accounts of events and

redesigned the past accordingly.



When, in the wake of World War II the nations of Asia and Africa gained

independence, their intellectuals became aware of the fact that their histories had been

written by representatives of the colonial powers which they had opposed. More often

than not they discovered that all traditional accounts of their own past had been brushed

aside by the 'official' historians as so much myth and fairytale. Often lacking their own

academically trained historians-or worse, only possessing native historians who had

taken over the views of the colonial masters-the discontent with existing histories of their

countries expressed itself often in vernacular works that lacked the academic credentials

necessary to make an impact on professional historians.



The situation is slowly changing. A new generation of scholars who grew up in

post-colonial times and who do not share the former biases, scholars in command of the

tools of the trade-intimacy with the languages involved, familiarity with the culture of

their countries, respect for the indigenous traditions-are rewriting the histories of their

countries.



Nowhere is this more evident than in India. India had a tradition of learning and

scholarship much older and vaster than the European countries that, from the sixteenth

century onwards, became its political masters. Indian scholars are rewriting the history

of India today.



The Aryan Invasion Theory and the Old Chronology

One of the major points of revision concerns the so called 'Aryan invasion theory', often

referred to as 'colonial-missionary', implying that it was the brainchild of conquerors of

foreign colonies who could not but imagine that all higher culture had to come from

outside 'backward' India, and who likewise assumed that a religion could only spread

through a politically supported missionary effort.



While not buying into the more sinister version of this revision, which accuses the

inventors of the Aryan invasion theory of malice and cynicism, there is no doubt that

early European attempts to explain the presence of Indians in India had much to with the

commonly held Biblical belief that humankind originated from one pair of humans-

Adam and Eve to be precise (their common birth date was believed to be c.4005

BCE)-and that all peoples on earth descended from one of the sons of Noah, the only

human to survive the Great Flood (dated at 2500 BCE). The only problem seemed to be

to connect peoples not mentioned in Chapter 10 of Genesis ['The Peopling of the Earth']

with one of the Biblical genealogical lists.



One such example of a Christian historian attempting to explain the presence of Indians

in India is the famous Abbé Dubois (1770-1848), whose long sojourn in India

(1792-1823) enabled him to collect a large amount of interesting materials concerning

the customs and traditions of the Hindus. His (French) manuscript was bought by the

British East India Company and appeared in an English translation under the title Hindu

Manners, Customs and Ceremonies in 1897 with a Prefatory Note by the Right Hon.

F. Max Müller.2 Abbé Dubois, loath 'to oppose [his] conjectures to [the Indians']

absurd fables' categorically stated:



It is practically admitted that India was inhabited very soon after the Deluge,

which made a desert of the whole world. The fact that it was so close to the

plains of Sennaar, where Noah's descendants remained stationary so long, as well

as its good climate and the fertility of the country, soon led to its settlement.



Rejecting other scholars' opinions which linked the Indians to Egyptian or Arabic origins,

he ventured to suggest them 'to be descendents not of Shem, as many argue, but of

Japhet'. He explains: 'According to my theory they reached India from the north, and I

should place the first abode of their ancestors in the neighbourhood of the Caucasus.'3

The reasons he provides to substantiate his theory are utterly unconvincing-but he goes

on to build the rest of his migration theory (not yet an 'Aryan' migration theory) on this

shaky foundation.



Max Müller (1823-1903), who was largely responsible for the 'Aryan invasion theory'

and the 'old chronology', was too close in spirit and time to this kind of thinking, not to

have adopted it fairly unquestioningly. In his Prefatory Note he praises the work of

Abbé Dubois as a 'trustworthy authority. . .which will always retain its value.'



That a great deal of early British Indology was motivated by Christian missionary

considerations, is no secret. The famous and important Boden Chair for Sanskrit at the

University of Oxford was founded by Colonel Boden in 1811 with the explicit object 'to

promote the translation of the Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as to enable his countrymen to

proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian Religion'.4 Max Müller,

in a letter to his wife wrote in 1886: 'The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a

great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It

is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way

of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3 000 years.'5



When the affinity between many European languages and Sanskrit became a commonly

accepted notion, scholars almost automatically concluded that the Sanskrit speaking

ancestors of the present day Indians were to be found somewhere halfway between

India and the Western borders of Europe-Northern Germany, Scandinavia, Southern

Russia, the Pamir-from which they invaded the Punjab. (It is also worth noting that the

early armchair scholars who conceived these grandiose migration theories, had no actual

knowledge of the terrain their 'Aryan invaders' were supposed to have transversed, the

passes they were supposed to have crossed, or the various climates they were believed

to have been living in). Assuming that the Vedic Indians were semi-nomadic warriors

and cattle-breeders, it fitted the picture, when Mohenjo Daro and Harappa were

discovered, to also assume that these were the cities the Aryan invaders destroyed

under the leadership of their god Indra, t

Answer 325

YES WE ARE DESCENDANT OF ARYAN

Answer 326

yes we are, it is written in veds, and which i hope comes from aryans

Answer 327

Yes. It is true. History cannot be erased

Answer 328

There is no proof of it. We are just following what we have told by our elders.

Answer 329

yes

Answer 330

Origin and background of the concept



Houston Stewart ChamberlainIn Sanskrit, the term Aryan means "noble" as it applied within the context of Hinduism. The word Aryan is derived from arya, which meant "exalted" or "noble one" in the Indian and Persian languages. Additionally, the Sumerian word ara meant "lofty and shining".[1] Arya appears in the ancient texts of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, known as the Rigveda and Gathas, respectively. The term is also found in Old Persian inscriptions and other Persian sources from approximately 500 BCE onwards. The word Iran, literally "Land of the Aryans", is derived from Aryanam as well (see also: Airyanem Vaejah). Seventy percent of those living in modern Iran speak in Persian dialect and are Aryan. India is also referred to as Aryavarta, which means "Abode of the Aryans". Indo-Aryans form majority of the population of northern India.



Since, in the 19th century, the Indo-Iranians were the most ancient known speakers of "Indo-European" languages, the word Aryan was adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian people, but also to Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the Romans, Greeks, the Germans, Balts, Celts and Slavs. It was argued that all of these languages originated from a common root - now known as Proto-Indo-European - spoken by an ancient people who must have been the ancestors of the European, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan peoples. The ethnic group composed of the Proto-Indo Europeans and their modern descendants was termed the Aryans. This usage was common in the late 19th and early 20th century. An example of an influential best-selling book that reflects this usage is the 1920 book The Outline of History by H.G. Wells. In it he also wrote of the accomplishments of the Aryan people, stating how they "learned methods of civilization" while "Sargon II and Sardanapalus were ruling in Assyria and fighting with Babylonia and Syria and Egypt". As such, Wells suggested that the Aryans had eventually "subjugated the whole ancient world, Semitic, Aegean and Egyptian alike".[2]



It should be noted that this usage is now regarded by most people as "obsolete", though still seen occasionally.[citation needed] In today's English, "Aryan", if used at all, is normally synonymous to Indo-Iranian, or in particular Proto-Indo-Iranian. The idea that the north Europeans were the "purest" of these people was later propagated most assiduously by the Comte de Gobineau and by other writers, most notably his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who wrote of an "Aryan race" – those who spoke Indo-European languages and were claimed to be the "noblest" of people.



Concept of the Dravidian Race

The identification of the Dravidian people as a separate race arose from the realization by 19th-century Western scholars that there existed a group of languages spoken by people in the south of India, which were completely unrelated to the Indo-Aryan languages prevalent in the north of the country. Because of this, it was supposed that the generally darker-skinned Dravidian speakers constituted a genetically distinct race. This notion corresponded to European belief of the time, according to which darker-skinned people were more "primitive" than the light-skinned whites. Accordingly, Dravidians were envisaged as primitive early inhabitants of India who had been partially displaced and subordinated by Aryans. The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit "drāvida", meaning "Southern". It was adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages (1856); a publication which established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world.



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.



Also go through the below link for additional information





Classical anthropology viewed them as a distinct race, one of about the 40 human races in their system ("Weddid race"). Indeed, southern Indians differ from northern Indians in many respects, one of which is often darker skin. This is true only statistically; since one can come across any number of north Indian who are dark or who have Mongoloid features like those from Nagaland. Coversly one can have any number of south Indians who are of lighter skins. Most modern historians, however, reject the conception of a distinct Dravidian race, asserting that the high degree of admixture between distinct genetic populations during prehistory is far more significant than the somewhat superficial overlay of language distribution, as language frequently spreads between groups of genetically disparate people as cultures meet and clash. Some believe that the darker skins of the Dravidian-speaking people would be explained by their adaptation to the hotter and sunnier climate of South India. Dark skin is not an acid test dividing south and north Indians. According to population geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, all Indias are genetically Caucasian. He contends that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians. Genetically there are only three races: Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid. Indians, including Dravidians, fall under Caucasian.



Also go through the below link for additional information

Answer 331

yes we have proof of it

Answer 332

yes

Answer 333

yes ,because we know very well

Answer 334

yes we are. and proofs are available for it.

Answer 335

Great Soul

Level 2



The first quantitative estimate of the speed of light is seen in Indian vedic scholar Sayana's commentary on the Rigveda, one of the main Hindu scriptures. It says sun light travels 2202 Yojanas in a half Nimesa. Yojana is an ancient unit of length. Arthasastra defines it as being equal to 8,000 dhanus, which is equivalent to 9 miles. A nimesa is an ancient unit of time that is equal to 16/75 seconds. Thus 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesa is equal to 185,794 miles per second after conversion. The modern estimate of the speed of light is 186,281.7 miles per second.



It is to be noted that Bhatta Bhaskara (probably in 10th century) made the same statement in his commentary on Taittiriya Brahmana, another Hindu Veda . He says this to be an old tradition.



Lets get to the details now:-



तरणिर्विश्वदर्शतो ज्योतिष्कृदसि सूर्य । विश्वमा भासिरोचनम् ॥

taranirviśvadarśato jyotishkridasi sūrya | viśvamā bhāsirocanam ||



Swift and all beautiful art thou, O Surya, maker of the light; illuminating all the radiant realm. [RV: 1.50.4]



Sayana (c.1315-1387 AD) comments: “It is remembered that Sun traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesa; giving light to all things, even to the moon and the planets, by night; for they are of a watery substance from which the rays of the sun are reflected.”



yojana is a yoking or harnessing, that which is yoked or harnessed, a team or vehicle, or a course or path.



yojanA is a stage or the distance traversed in one harnessing or without unyoking.



1 yojana is said to comprise either 4 or 8 krosha (a cry or shout, or the range of the voice in calling); and 1 krosha (or goruta ~ as far as a cow’s lowing may be heard, or a bull’s roar) may represent either 1000 or 2000 daNDa (a rod or staff).



Sound radiates in all directions, so perhaps there is some confusion in regarding a krosha either as the radius of travel in one direction or as the full diameter of travel.



Man is the traditional measure of all things, and 1 danda represents 1 pauruSa (a man’s length) which equals 1 dhanvantara (bow-string) or dhanu (bow).



1 yojana measures either 4,000 or (more likely) 8,000 dhanus.



Assuming that 1 paurusha is 6 ft long, then 1 yojana must represent a distance of about 14.6 km (or about 9 miles, as suggested by Monier-Williams).



A full range of self-consistent units was anciently devised from the proportions of man’s own frame, although their exact conversion into modern units is unclear.



The basic unit is an angula (digit or finger), and 1 danda was perhaps originally divided into 100 digits, although 108 is the traditional value, and Aryabhatta prefers 96.



Assuming a 6 ft danda, Aryabhatta’s angula is exactly ¾ inch (or about 1.9 cm).



It does appear that 1 angula has always measured around 1.8 to 1.9 cm, with 1 danda or dhanu ranging from 1.83 to 2.05 m, so that 1 yojana must extend somewhere between 14.6 and 16.4 km.



nimeSa means shutting the eye or winking, and as a measure of time it is a wink of the eye or a moment.



Kautilya’s Arthashastra (c.320 BC) defines 1 nimesha as 1/360,000th of a day and night ~ i.e. 0.24 seconds.



2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha.



Given that 1 yojana is between 14.6 and 16.4 km, 2,202 yojanas must represent between 32,149 and 36,113 km.



Half a nimesha is 0.12 seconds.



Sayana thus gives the speed of light as between 267,910 and 300,940 km/sec ~ the currently accepted value for the speed of light being 299,792 km/sec.



Assuming that the true speed of light was actually known to Sayana, who presented “2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha” as a verity; and accepting Kautilya’s value for nimesha; then a perfect yojana would be exactly 16,337.4636 m and a perfect paurusha or danda exactly 2.0422 m in length.



And (assuming 108 digits per danda) then 1 angula = 1.89 cm, 1 dhanurgraha = 7.56 cm, 1 dhanurmushti = 15.13 cm, 1 vitasti = 22.69 cm, and 1 hasta (cubit) = 51.05 cm.



All discussion of Sayana’s comment has assumed that one yojana is about 14.6 km, and this is based on the western ideal of a 6 ft man.



The ancient sacred Egyptian cubit measured 28 angulas or 52.92 cm; and the ancient sacred Babylonian cubit measured 51.03 cm ~ i.e. 27 angulas ~ and this cubit was well known in ancient India.



There are 32,000 hasta or cubits in a yojana; and if the Sumerian sacred cubit is assumed, then one yojana is actually 16.33 km.



Therefore, 2,202 yojanas measures 35,958 km, and the speed of light is properly calculated to be 299,648 km/sec ~ and western science did not match the precision of Sayana’s estimate until 1907 !



The ordinary cubit measures 24 angulas (digits) or 6 dhanurgrahas (palms) or about 45 cm.

The old Egyptian royal cubit measured 28 digits (each 1.8710 cm) or 7 palms (each 13.0970 cm) ~ i.e. 52.3881 cm.

A copper bar from Nippur (c. 2650 BC) perhaps defined a Sumerian cubit of about 51.85 cm.

The Persian cubit measured about 50.01 cm.

The Harappan cubit was between 51.562 cm and 52.324 cm in length.



Thus, an ordinary man is about 1.8 m tall, and his travel is measured by stages of about 14.5 km.

The divine Egyptian ruler measured 2.09552 m, and his journey was by stages of 16.7642 km.

The copper man of Nippur would perhaps have stood 2.074 high, with leaps of 16.592 km.

The Persian paurusha was about 2.0004 m long, with stages or yojanas of 16.0032 km.

The Indus standard was between 2.062 and 2.093 m, with yojanas from 16.50 to 16.74 km.



Given the dictum of 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha, an ordinary man would judge the speed of light to be 266,075 km/sec; and the pharaoh’s photon would travel at 307,623.07 km/sec, but neither the royal Egyptian cubit of 28 digits nor the mortal human cubit of 24 digits is appropriate for this formula, which traditionally relies on a measure of 108 (i.e. 4 x 27) digits.



The Nippur standard would provide a speed of 304,463.2 km/sec; the Persian standard gives us 293,658.72 km/sec; and the Sarasvati standard gives a figure somewhere between 302,775 km/sec and 307,179 km/sec.



Assuming a perfect yojana, the constant of 2,202 could actually be any number from 2,182 to 2,222, and the resultant speed of light would still be accurate to within 1 percent.



Very simply, light travels about 2,200 yojanas in half a nimesha; so that light travels about 2,200 x 720,000 yojanas in a day. And given a yojana of about 16.5 km, this means that the speed of light was anciently calculated to be about 302,500 km/sec. The modern accepted value for the speed of light is exactly 299,792.457 km/sec.



Source(s):



Louisiana State University titled "The speed of light and Puranic cosmology"



6 days ago

Answer 336

yes ..we are ..the proof s are the vied ..which is followed by us

Answer 337

During the 19th century, it was commonly believed that the Aryan race originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day Russia, and including the Caucasus Mountains. The Steppe theory of Aryan origins was not the only one circulating during the nineteenth century, however. Many British, American and German scholars argued that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany or Scandinavia, or at least that in those countries the original Aryan ethnicity had been preserved. This idea was widespread in both intellectual and popular culture by the early twentieth century.



In India, under the British Empire, the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian caste system. It was widely claimed that the Aryans were white people who had invaded India in ancient times[3], subordinating the darker skinned native Dravidian peoples, who were pushed to the south. Thus the foundation of Hinduism was ascribed to white invaders who had established themselves as the dominant castes, and who were supposed to have created the sophisticated Vedic texts. Much of these theories were simply conjecture fuelled by European imperialism (see white man's burden). This styling of an "Aryan invasion" by British colonial fantasies of racial supremacy lies at the origin of the fact that all discussion of historical Indo-Aryan migrations or Aryan and Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, and does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, and supporters of the Dalit movement, most commonly Tamils, claim that the worship of Shiva is a distinct Dravidian religion, to be distinguished from Brahminical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist Hindutva movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, asserting that Vedic beliefs emerged from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which pre-dated the supposed advent of the Indo-Aryans in India, and is identified as a likely candidate for a Proto-Dravidian culture.



Most indians are a mix of dravidian and aryan, although some are considered purely one or the other. it is suspected that the europeans were the ones who placed the “aryan” label on the lighter skinned, lighter eyed, and sharper nosed people who were mainly found in northern india. the term “aryan” is now considered to be a misinterpretation of the original sanskrit word “arya,” which means pure or good. but in the vedas (the primary texts of hinduism of ancient india), the word arya is not used to describe race. it is used as term of respect to address a person who is righteous and noble.



it was infact a german, max mueller, who concocted the idea that the term aryan described a race and language. it is also believed that mueller made these claims to support his “aryan invasion theory.” since the europeans could not believe that “barbarian, dark-skinned” people, who they viewed as inferior (not only in terms of appearance, but also in terms of culture), could ever have developed such an advanced civilization as that found in India, they exploited this theory to advance their belief of white supremacy.



many argue that since the aryans were nomadic, they could not have developed the hindu religion and could not have written the vedas. only a deep rooted civilization could have done this. ultimately, one could hold the western european caucasians responsible for propagating the fair skinned superiority/dark skinned inferiority myth in this case, but I suspect it has deeper roots than that.

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The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus' have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.

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Racial Theories



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required, by intimidation, force or bribery.



Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).



About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.



Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding

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References( PROOF)



^ Padfield, Peter Himmler New York:1990--Henry Holt Page 402

^ A modern exponent is the Pan-Aryan National Front, a web discussion forum, which has the stated claims of wanting to "arouse racial awareness" and to "liberate and unite" all "whites" according to the group's definition of white.

^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and The Politics of Identity New York: 2002--N.Y. University Press, Chapters 4 and 11

^ The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate by Edwin Bryant

^ McDougall, William., The Group Mind, p.159, Arno Press, 1973; Copyright, 1920 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Answer 338

no.Because we dont have enough proof.and who have seen them? nobody knows about them.

Answer 339

No, we do not know if we are actually descendents of any race.

Answer 340

No

Answer 341

yes..it is confirm

Answer 342

No. There is no proof.

Answer 343

it was discover of mohenjodaro.

Answer 344

actually we are bloodsucking crabs

Answer 345

nothing

Answer 346

no

Answer 347

no

Answer 348

no v r not....... its just a myth.

Answer 349

Indians where aryans, they did not invade A classical instance of the canard is the continued plugging in of the thesis that the Indo-Aryans were not the sons of the soil of India and that they were as much intruders or invaders as the other recorded historical invaders and plunderers from Alexander onwards.Aryans of India possessed the earliest known book and spoken words in the entire world literature as their Vedas. It is amazing that it does not strike as extremely odd to the so-called intellectuals and rationalists that if the early Aryans of India had their original abode elsewhere outside this country, it would be elementary to expect the knowledge contained in the Vedas to have necessarily pre- existed in such land of their alleged origin. So, the universally accepted proposition that the Vedas were the earliest known literature of the world, both spoken and recorded, does establish that no other people anywhere possessed the capacity and the treasury and knowledge of the Vedas-like literature. Accordingly, when no other foreign people outside India had Veda-like literature at their command, it would be calumny to persist with the awkward proposition that people of some foreign land were the ancestors of the Indo- Aryans and that the Aryans poured into or streamed into India from other lands or regions of the world. A few more aspects of the ridiculous thesis that Aryans entered India from elsewhere are intended to be highlighted in the subsequent discussions. An obstinate myth in circulation for centuries is regarding the origin of Aryans being from land outside India. Originally the Aryans seem to have lived somewhere in the region stretching from southern Russia to Central Asia. Certain names of animals, such as goats, dogs, horses, etc. and names of certain plants such as pine, maple, etc. are similar to one another in all the Indo-European languages. They show that the Aryans were acquainted with the rivers and forests. Curiously enough, common words exist only in a few Aryan languages for mountains although the Aryans crossed many hills." The Aryans had a concept of universalism not advanced by any people of that age; they glorified non-violence, then not preached or practiced anywhere in the world. The facts, however strongly suggest the foregoing hypothesis to be altogether fictitious and imaginary: Noted historian, Vincent A. Smith, has clearly concluded the proposition that "Language was no proof of commonality of blood". (Oxford History of India by Vincent A. Smith, 1957, p. 40). It is sheer superstitious prejudice and continued misplaced belief in myths with their least factual or historic foundation that tempts or drives even learned "A little earlier than 1500 b.c. the Aryans appeared in India. We do not find clear and definite archaeological traces of their advent." The above clear admission by the proponents of the theory of non-Indian origin of Aryans, despite all endeavours to paint Aryans as foreigners immigrating into India, is really astounding. These scholars themselves admit the absolute absence of any trace of archaeological evidence in their possession in support of this much- hyped and persistently repeated myth. It is a surreptitious suggestion and a mere nai"ve conjecture and surmise in gross distortion of truth or history seemingly with the blind purpose to equate other foreign people entering and invading India as being of the same kind of intruders that Aryans were wrongly suggested to be.It is our intent to show in further write-ups that Aryans were natives of India, and not in the least intruders or invaders or immigrants or migrants into India at any point of time in history or of pre-historic period. This caricature of history, being absurdly carried out by known learned historians persistently, must in the interest of truth and historical values cease unless these scholars have pursuits other than truth in the matter. This matter can hardly be put on the back burner any further. It has already done grave injustice to the Aryans and to the people of India. How the hypothesis of Aryan intrusion into India came to be widely postulated during the efforts to reconstruct history of India needs some exposition: "In fact, the accepted belief in the Indo-Aryan immigration from Central Asia depends largely on the interpretation of geographical allusions in the Rig Veda and Yajurveda. Direct testimony to the assumed fact is lacking and no tradition of an early home beyond the frontier survives in India." "The Vedas are in a sense hymns, but the gods to which they refer are not persons but manifestations of the ultimate truth and reality." The Aryans had no slave system; they reared cows. They were agriculturists and not pastoral or indulging in animal husbandry like the Asians. They had no feudal landlords; they never attacked or enslaved any people or country, not even Ceylon; they had no purdah; they cremated their dead while all the remaining communities of the world buried their dead. The script of their language was from left to right, unlike the Semitics or Iranians whose script ran from right to left. They had village democratic units and no kings or lords or chiefs like Central Asians or Mongols or Tartars. These features are in sharp contradistinction to the contemporary Central Asian or Arabic or Roman or Greek traditions or habits or institutions of these people. The Aryans could not, therefore, ever have been their constituents at any point of time in history. The Aryan had a concept of universalism not advanced by any people of those eras; they glorified non-violence, not preached or practiced anywhere in the world. What more proof is required to show their distinct identity from any The ). regarding the origin of the Aryans in India: "Theories of the origin of the Aryans in India relate to the question of what has been called the Indo-European homeland. In the 17th and 18th centuries, European scholars who first studied Sanskrit were struck by the similarity in its syntax and vocabulary to Greek and Latin. This resulted in the theory that there had been a common ancestry for these and other related languages, which came to be called the Indo-Europeans group of languages. This, in turn, resulted in the notion that the Indo-European-speaking people had a common homeland from which they had migrated to various parts of Asia and Europe. This theory led to unlimited speculation which continues today, regarding the original homeland of Aryans and the date of their dispersal from it. The early history of India is still beset by `the Aryan problem' which often clouds a genuine search for historical insight into this period." 11. The time has come now when, as per German philosopher Rudolf Karl Bultmann's advice, the demystification and demythologisation of the Aryan ingress into or their alleged invasion of ancient India can no longer be avoided. We have to expose its absolute hollowness as well as its fictitious origin. This matter can hardly be put on the back burner any further. It has already done grave injustice to the Aryans and to the people of India. Pricking of this prejudicial and false hypothesis is essential to show its absolutely imaginary origin. Its continuous repetition is obstinate, motivated by a fatal disregard of the truth. The habit is merely in line with the imitative peculiar to Indian people's trait of self-denigration. It is misconceived modernism and false rationalism. The entire enlightened spiritual centres) at Badrinath in the north (UP), Puri in the east (Orissa), Dwaraka in the west (Gujarat), and Shringeri and Kanchi in the south. That is India, that is Bharat, and that is Hinduism. In 1853, Max Muller introduced the word `Arya' into the English and European usage as applying to a racial and linguistic group when propounding the Aryan racial theory. However, in 1888, he himself refuted his own theory and wrote: "I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair, nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language...to me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar." (Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas by Max Muller, 1888, 120 pp) In Vedic literature the word `Arya' is nowhere defined in connecti

Answer 350

Aryan is an English language word derived from the Sanskrit and Iranian terms ari-, arya-, ārya-, and/or the extended form aryāna-. The Sanskrit and Old Persian languages both pronounced the word as arya and aryan. Beyond its use as the ethnic self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the meaning "noble/spiritual" has been attached to it in Sanskrit and Persian. In linguistics, it is sometimes still used in reference to the Indo-Iranian language family, but it is primarily restricted to the compound Indo-Aryan, the Indic subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch



The most probable date for Proto-Indo-Iranian unity is roughly around 2500 BC. In this sense of the word Aryan, the Aryans were an ancient culture preceding both the Vedic and Avestan cultures. Candidates for an archaeological identification of this Indoiranian culture are the Andronovo and/or Srubnaya Archaeological Complexes.



In linguistics, the term Aryan currently may be used to refer to the Indo-Iranian language family. To prevent confusion because of its several meanings, the linguistic term is often avoided today. It has been replaced by the unambiguous terms Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian, Indo-Iranian, Iranian and Indo-Aryan.



The Proto-Indo-Iranian language evolved into the family of Indo-Iranian languages, of which the oldest-known members are Vedic Sanskrit, Avestan and another Indo-Aryan language, known only from loan-words found in the Mitanni language



There is evidence of speakers of Indo-Aryan in Mesopotamia around 1500 BC in the form of loanwords in the Mitanni dialect of Hurrian, the speakers of which, it is speculated, may have once had an Indo-Aryan ruling class. The Indo-Aryans associated with the Vedic civilization are sometimes called Vedic Aryans.



Contemporary speakers of Indo-Aryan languages are spread over most of the northern Indian Subcontinent. The only Indo-Aryan branch surviving outside the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas is the Romani language, the language of the Roma people.



The term "Aryan" is also commonly used as a girl's and boy's name in various Iranian and Indic languages . Whilst the surname Arya is categorized into the Arora community



Since ancient times, Persians have used the term Aryan as a racial designation in an ethnic sense to describe their lineage and their language, and this tradition has continued into the present day amongst modern Iranians



Darius the Great, King of Persia (521–486 BC), in an inscription in Naqsh-e Rustam (near Shiraz in present-day Iran), proclaims: "I am Darius the great King… A Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage...". He also calls his language the "Aryan language," commonly known today as Old Persian. According to the Encyclopedia Iranica, "the same ethnic concept was held in the later centuries" and was associated with "nobility and lordship."



The word has become a technical term in the theologies of Zoroastrianism, but has always been used by Iranians in the ethnic sense as well. In 1967, Iran's Pahlavi dynasty (overthrown in the 1979 Iranian revolution) added the title Āryāmehr "Light of the Aryans" to those of the monarch, known at the time as the Shahanshah (King of Kings). Afghanistan's national airline is Ariana Airlines in reference to Airyanem Vaejah, the land of the original Iranian peoples.



The term also remains a frequent element in modern Persian personal names, including Arya and Aryan (boy's and girl's name), Aryana (a common surname), Iran-dokht (Aryan daughter, a girl's name), "Aryanzai" (son of an Aryan - in Pashto), Aryanpour (or Aryanpur, a surname), Aryaramne, among many others



According to Paul Thieme (1938), the Vedic term arya- in its earliest attestations has a meaning of "stranger", but "stranger" in the sense of "potential guest" as opposed to "barbarian" (mleccha, dasa), taking this to indicate that arya was originally the ethnic self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. Arya directly contrasts with Dasa or Dasyu in the Rigveda. "Discern thou well Aryas and Dasyus"). This situation is directly comparable to the term Hellene in Ancient Greece. The Middle Indic interjection arē!, rē! "you there!" is derived from the vocative arí! "stranger!".



The Sanskrit lexicon Amarakosha (c. AD 450) defines Arya as mahākula kulīnārya "being of a noble family", sabhya "having gentle or refined behavior and demeanor", sajjana "being well-born and respectable", and sādhava "being virtuous, honourable, or righteous". In Hinduism, the religiously initiated Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishyas were arya, a title of honor and respect given to certain people for noble behaviour. According to some sources, in Indian Vedas, the word Arya or Aryan, has never been used in an ethnic or racial sense. This word is still used by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians to mean noble or spiritual.



Because of ethnolinguistic arguments about connections between peoples and cultural values, "Aryan" peoples were often considered to be distinct from Semitic peoples. By the end of the nineteenth century this usage was so common that "Aryan" was often used as a synonym for "gentile", and this popular usage persisted even after academic authors had ceased to use the term in any other meaning than "Indo-Iranian". Among White supremacists the term still sometimes functions as a synonym for non-Jewish "white person."



The Aryan race was a term used in the early 20th century by European racial theorists who believed strongly in the division of humanity into biologically distinct races with differing characteristics. Such writers took the view that the Proto-Indo-Europeans constituted a specific race that had expanded across Europe, Iran and India. This meaning was, and still is, common in theories of racial superiority which were embraced by Nazi Germany. This usage tends to merge the Avestan/Sanskrit meaning of "noble" or "elevated" with the idea of distinctive behavioral and ancestral ethnicity marked by language distribution. In this interpretation, the Aryan Race is both the highest representative of mankind and the purest descendent of the Proto-Indo-European population.



From the late 19th century, a number of writers had argued that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had originated in Europe. Their opinion was received critically at first, but was widely accepted by the end of the nineteenth century. By 1905 Hermann Hirt in his Die Indogermanen (incidentally consistently using Indogermanen, not Arier to refer to the Indo-Europeans) claimed that the scales had tilted in favour of the hypothesis, in particular claiming the plains of northern Germany as the Urheimat and connecting the "blond type" with the core population of the early, "pure" Indo-Europeans. The identification of the Indo-Europeans with the north German Corded Ware culture was first proposed by Gustav Kossinna in 1902, and gained in notability over the following two decades, until V. Gordon Childe (notably of Marxist persuasion) who in his 1926 The Aryans: a study of Indo-European origins concluded that "the Nordics' superiority in physique fitted them to be the vehicles of a superior language" (a view which he later regretted having expressed).



The idea became a matter of national pride in learned circles of Germany, and was taken up by the Nazis. According to Alfred Rosenberg's ideology the "Aryan-Nordic" (arisch-nordisch) or "Nordic-Atlantean" (nordisch-atlantisch) race was thus a master race, at the top of a racial hierarchy, pitted against a "Jewish-Semitic" (jüdisch-semitisch) race, deemed to be a racial threat to Germany's homogeneous Aryan civilization, thus rationalizing Nazi anti-Semitism. Nazism portrayed their interpretation of an "Aryan race" as the only race capable of, or with an interest in, creating and maintaining culture and civilizations, while other races are merely capable of conversion, or destruction of culture. These arguments derived from late nineteenth century racial hierarchies. Some Nazis were also influenced by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888) where she postulates "Aryans" as the fifth of her "Root Races", dating them to about a million years ago, tracing them to Atlantis, an idea also repeated by Rosenberg, and held as doctrine by the Thule Society. Such theories were used to justify the introduction of the so-called "Aryan laws" by the Nazis, depriving "non-Aryans" of citizenship and employment rights, and prohibiting marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans. Though Mussolini's fascism was not originally characterised by explicit anti-Semitism, he too eventually introduced laws pressed upon him by Hitler, prohibiting mixed-race marriages between "Aryans" and Jews.



Because of historical racist use of Aryan, and especially use of Aryan race in connection with the propaganda of Nazism, the word is sometimes avoided in the West as being tainted, in the same manner as the swastika symbol. In the English language, the use of the word "Aryan" when referring to an ethnic group or race is no longer in technical use, and the popular use of "white person" fell out of use during the 1930s when the obvious obsession of the Nazis with the term became a matter of ridicule in Britain and North America. In the USA, the established and less contentious term "Caucasian" became dominant in official usage.

Answer 351

India's history and culture is ancient and dynamic, spanning back to the beginning of human civilization. Beginning with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India. The history of india is one puncuated by constant integration with migrating peoples and with the diverse cultures that surround India. Placed in the center of Asia, history in india is a crossroads of cultures from China to Europe, and the most significant Asian connection with the cultures of Africa.



The History of India begins with the birth of the Indus Valley Civilization in such sites as Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and Lothal, and the coming of the Aryans. These two phases are usually described as the pre-Vedic and Vedic perio ds. It is in the Vedic period that Hinduism first arose: this is the time to which the Vedas are dated.







Who Were the Aryans?

The Aryans were semi-nomadic Nordic Whites, perhaps located originally on the steppes of southern Russia and Central Asia, who spoke the parent language of the various Indo-European languages.



Latin, Greek, Hittite, Sanskrit, French, German, Latvian, English, Spanish, Russian etc. are all Indo-European languages; Indo-European, or more properly Proto-Indo-European (PIE), is the lost ancestral language from which those languages ultimately derive. The "Proto" indicates that the grammar and vocabulary of this long extinct language, probably spoken up until 3000 BC, are a hypothetical reconstruction by modern philologists. Just as Romance languages like Italian and Spanish derive from Latin, so Latin derives from PIE.



Indo-European philology traditionally used "Aryan" both to denote a people, understood racially or ethnically, and the language group itself ("Aryan speech"), irrespective of the race or ethnicity of the people speaking its various branches. In the wake of National Socialist Germany's defeat, the term fell out of general scholarly use in both senses, and "Indo-European" (IE) became the preferred designation of the language group, "Indo-Europeans" of both the people who occupied the original Aryan homeland and their descendants, who gradually spread out across Europe, much of the Indian sub-continent, and parts of the Near East. Racial nationalists are not, of course, obliged to adopt the timid PC-lexicon of contemporary scholarship, but we should be aware of imprecision of "Aryan" as a racial or ethnic classification.





Arya, meaning "noble," appears in various Indo-European languages. Its plural form (Aryas="nobles") was probably the name the Aryans used to describe themselves prior to their dispersal, and it may survive in Eire (Ireland) and certainly survives in Iran (Airyanam vaejo="realm of the Aryans"). The discovery of thousands of such cognate words in widely separated languages, along with similar grammatical structures, led philologists to conclude, early in the nineteenth century, that most European languages had evolved from a common proto-language spoken millennia ago by a distinct people who gradually left their original homeland in a series of migrations, carrying their language with them.



Traditionally Greek, Latin and Sanskrit were considered the closest languages to PIE, and much of the reconstructed Aryan proto-language is based on them. Modern Lithuanian, however, is the most archaic living language, closer to the original Aryan speech than any other. There is even an IE language, Tocharian, attested in Chinese Turkestan, which indicates that Aryans must have made an appearance in the Far East, a long-standing piece of linguistic evidence which has been recently confirmed by the discovery of the physical remains of a blond-haired people in China.







Perhaps the most famous proof for the prehistoric existence of PIE is the word for king: rex in Latin, raja in Sanskrit, ri in Old Irish, along with a host of other cognates. All are obviously variants of a common word for king. Since none of the peoples speaking these various languages were in physical contact with one another during the historical period -- i.e. at a time for which written records exist -- comparative philologists inferred that their respective languages must have evolved from a single proto-language, which is the only way of explaining the presence of the same word for "king" among such widely dispersed peoples. The Romans clearly didn't borrow rex from the Irish or the Indo-Aryans; each had instead inherited their own word for "king" from a common ancestral language.



Philologists can also, moreover, safely conclude that the Aryans must have had kings prior to emigrating from their original homeland in southern Russia. In fact a fairly detailed body of evidence about prehistoric Aryan political organization, marriage practices, and religious beliefs can be reconstructed on the basis of the survival of common vocabulary in the various extant Indo-European languages: They worshiped a sky-god, they traced descent through the male line, they raised cattle, they drank meed, they used horse-drawn chariots (which they probably invented) as weapons of war, etc. Even the red, white and blue/green that appears in so many modern flags may have an Aryan pedigree. It is likely a survival from the Aryan tripartite social division of their communities into priests (white), warriors (red), and herders and cultivators (blue/green).



Aryans, or more specifically Indo-Aryans, make their first notable appearance in history around 2000-1500 BC as invaders of Northern India. The Sanskrit Rig Veda, a collection of religious texts still revered by modern Hindus, records (often enigmatically) their gradual subjugation of the dark-skinned inhabitants, the Dasyus: e.g. "Indra [=Norse Thor, Celtic Taranis] has torn open the fortresses of the Dasyus, which in their wombs hid the black people. He created land and water for Manu [=Aryan man]"; "lower than all besides, hast thou, O Indra, cast down the Dasyus, abject tribes of Dasas"; "after slaying the Dasyus, let Indra with his white friends win land, let him win the sun and water"; "Indra subdued the Dasyu color and drove it into hiding." With all-outstripping chariot-wheel, O Indra,

Thou, far-famed, hast overthrown the twice ten kings ...

Thou goest from fight to fight, intrepidly

Destroying castle after castle here with strength. (RV 1.53)

The Aryans were remarkably expansionist, and almost everywhere they went they conquered and subjugated the indigenous peoples, imposing their languages and (to varying degrees) their religious beliefs on the natives, and receiving in turn contributions from the peoples whom they conquered. Aryan invasions -- or more accurately, a long sequence of different invasions by speakers of Indo-European languages -- swept across Old Europe beginning as early as the fourth millennium BC, and over time the conquerors and the conquered melded into specific peoples with distinctive languages. Most of the contemporary inhabitants of Europe, along with their respective early national cultures, are the result of interaction between successive waves of Aryan invaders and culture of the particular White people that they conquered and with whom they later intermarried, and as a result almost all modern European languages are members of the Western branch of the IE family tree.



The birth of a European culture, however, predates the arrival of the Indo-Europeans: The cave art of Lascaux, which some have identified as the first flowering of Western man's creative genius, was the work of Old Europeans, as were Stonehenge in the North and the Minoan Palace culture of Crete in the South. A pan-European religious symbolism had already evolved, much of which was later incorporated into IE mythologies, including various regional adaptations of the ubiquitous Old European reverence for the Mother Goddess. Many of the principal figures in Greek mythology predate the arrival of Aryans, and during the course of ancient history Old European religious beliefs and practices continually reasserted themselves. [Image: Minoan snake goddess, from the Palace of Minos, circa 1600 BC]



Europe is European because the conquerors and the conquered were members the same White race, different branches on the same family tree; India is a morass of poverty because the bulk of the conquered, with whom the Indo-Aryans eventually intermarried, were non-White Veddoids. The lesson is obvious. Even today high-caste Hindus can still be identified by their Caucasian features and light skin, and the poorest and most backward parts of India are generally the darkest.



As an aside, recent genetic studies have indicated that the Basques of Aquitaine and the Pyrenees are probably the purest form of Old Europeans as they existed prior to the arrival of Indo-European invaders. They evidently emerged from the invasions of Europe unconquered, and they remained sufficiently isolated to retain their own unique, non-IE language.

Answer 352

Indians are not actually descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race

The terms Dravidians and Dravidian Race are sometimes given to the people of southern and central India and Sri Lanka who speak Dravidian languages, the best known of which are Kannada,Malayalam, Tamil ,Telugu,and Tulu .Notably one Dravidian language, Brahui, is spoken in Pakistan, perhaps hinting at the language family's wider distribution prior to the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages.



Concept of the Dravidian Race

The identification of the Dravidian people as a separate race arose from the realization by 19th-century Western scholars that there existed a group of languages spoken by people in the south of India, which were completely unrelated to the Indo-Aryan languages prevalent in the north of the country. Because of this, it was supposed that the generally darker-skinned Dravidian speakers constituted a genetically distinct race. This notion corresponded to European belief of the time, according to which darker-skinned people were more "primitive" than the light-skinned whites. Accordingly, Dravidians were envisaged as primitive early inhabitants of India who had been partially displaced and subordinated by Aryans. The term Dravidian is taken from the Sanskrit "drāvida", meaning "Southern". It was adopted following the publication of Robert Caldwell's Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages (1856); a publication which established the language grouping as one of the major language groups of the world.

A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.

Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.



Classical anthropology viewed them as a distinct race, one of about the 40 human races in their system ("Weddid race"). Indeed, southern Indians differ from northern Indians in many respects, one of which is often darker skin. This is true only statistically; since one can come across any number of north Indian who are dark or who have Mongoloid features like those from Nagaland. Coversly one can have any number of south Indians who are of lighter skins. Most modern historians, however, reject the conception of a distinct Dravidian race, asserting that the high degree of admixture between distinct genetic populations during prehistory is far more significant than the somewhat superficial overlay of language distribution, as language frequently spreads between groups of genetically disparate people as cultures meet and clash. Some believe that the darker skins of the Dravidian-speaking people would be explained by their adaptation to the hotter and sunnier climate of South India. Dark skin is not an acid test dividing south and north Indians. According to population geneticist L.L. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford, all Indias are genetically Caucasian. He contends that Indians are about three times closer to West Europeans than to East Asians. Genetically there are only three races: Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid. Indians, including Dravidians, fall under Caucasian.



Genetic studies

Recent studies of the distribution of alleles on the Y chromosome. microsatellite DNA, and mitochondrial DNA in India have cast overwhelmingly strong doubt upon any biological Dravidian "race" as distinct from non-Dravidians in the Indian subcontinent. This doubtfulness applies to both paternal and maternal descent.

Since skin color is subject to strong selective pressure, similar skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from genetic relatedness. Sub-Saharan Africans, tribal populations from southern India, and Indigenous Australians have similar skin pigmentation, but genetically they are no more similar than are other widely separated groups.Furthermore, in some parts of the world in which people from different regions have mixed extensively, the connection between skin color and ancestry has been substantially weakened.In Brazil, for example, skin color is not closely associated with the percentage of recent African ancestors a person has, as estimated from an analysis of genetic variants differing in frequency among continent groups.



Modern views

It has been suggested that the proto-Dravidians of the Indian subcontinent arrived from the Middle East, and may have been related to the Elamites, whose language some propose be categorized along with the Dravidian languages as part of a larger Elamo-Dravidian language family. However, many linguists dispute the existence of an Elamo-Dravidian language family. The Dravidians were preceded in the subcontinent by an Austro-Asiatic people, and followed by Indo-European-speaking migrants sometime later. The original inhabitants may be identified with the speakers of the Munda languages, which are unrelated to either Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages. This view is put forward in geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's book The History and Geography of Human Genes. Historically there is no evidence of a member of Dravidian family of languages before 500BC. While "Dravidian" as an ethnic or racial type can be dismissed, the earliest historical evidence of a Dravidian language does not go beyond 200 BC. There is no Dravdian linguistic influence in the earliest stratum of Rig Veda, while the Dravidian morphological influence rapidly increases after Rig-Veda. This has led some scholars to speculate that Dravidian languages came into the Indian subcontinent after Aryan and hence the influx of "Dravidian speaking people" into India postdates Indo-Aryans.



ARYANS:-Aryan is an English language word derived from the Sanskrit and Iranian terms ari-, arya-, ārya-, and/or the extended form aryāna-. The Sanskrit and Old Persian languages both pronounced the word as arya- and aryan. Beyond its use as the ethnic self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the meaning "noble/spiritual" has been attached to it in Sanskrit and Persian. In linguistics, it is sometimes still used in reference to the Indo-Iranian language family, but it is primarily restricted to the compound Indo-Aryan, the Indic subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch.



Early Indo-Aryans

The earliest traces of distinctly Indo-Aryan culture have been found in Mesopotamia (including regions like Syria and Palestine). The Mitanni treaty (ca. 1380 BCE) refers to four Vedic gods. The names of many Mitanni kings have an Indo-Aryan character. Paul Thieme (1960) and other scholars concluded that these Mitanni names and terms are Indo-Aryan and not Iranian .

Other evidence is found in references to the names of Mitanni rulers and the gods they swore by in treaties; these remains are found in the archives of the Mitanni's neighbors. The time period for this spans the 15th and 14th centuries.

The Mitanni were a Hurrian people, and even its elite was Hurrianized by the 14th century. Many scholars argue that there was an Indo-Aryan elite that established itself over the Hurrian Mitanni at some point during the 17th or 16th century, but there is, according to Brentjes (1981), no evidence in the archaeological record for a Central Asian origin of this elite. In contrast to this, Brentjes (1981) points out that the Mitanni culture used the peacock motif, which suggests that the Mitanni were familiar with India. Some of the peacock motifs in the Middle East are dated to before 1600 BCE and possibly to before 2100 BCE, predating Mitanni presence in Mesopotamia.

There were also tribes (the Maiotes and Sindoi/Indoi) that spoke Indo-Aryan languages in the Ukraine.Kretschmer (1944) saw this as proof for the Pontic homeland hypothesis.



The Aryan invasion theory was controversial from its beginning and thus was sometimes subject to racialization, mostly by people with who believed in white-supremacy. While many of these views were disputed at the time, or quickly proved to by false, they are still sometimes used by Neo-Nazi groups.

From early on some scholars had argued that the transfer of the Indo-Aryan languages into India was accomplished by white-skinned invaders, who subordinated dark-skinned natives. The famous German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer proposed just such a theory, observing the "fairer white color" of the ruling caste of the non-local Nordic Brahmans: "The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands.”

The derogatory application of the word "anasa" (interpreted to mean "noseless") to the Dasa, the enemies of the Aryans, was explained as a reference to negroid-type flat noses. Other arguments were derived from alleged references to the "golden" hair of some Vedic deities. From these arguments scholars derived the idea that the Aryans had subordinated or displaced earlier inhabitants of India. Because of the distribution of the Dravidian languages, which are unrelated to Sanskrit and the other languages of the Indo-European group, it was often speculated that Dravidian speaking peoples had been the aboriginal inhabitants.

By the 1880s several scholars were arguing that the original home of the of Indo-European speakers was somewhere in Europe. At this time these people, now known as Proto-Indo-Europeans, were referred to in English as the "primitive Aryans", to distinguish them from the historical Aryans of Iran and India. By this date Darwinian ideas had replaced the biblical model of human origins. Thomas Huxley in his essay The Aryan Question (1890),

""Professor Max Müller, to whom Aryan philology owes so much, will not say more now, than that he holds by the conviction that the seat of the primitive Aryans was "somewhere in Asia." Dr. Schrader sums up in favour of European Russia; while Herr Penka would have us transplant the home of the primitive Aryans from Pamir in the far east to the Scandinavian peninsula in the far west""

Huxley took the view that what he called the "primitive Aryans" were of Nordic race, writing that "typical specimens have tall and massive frames, fair complexions, blue eyes, and yellow or reddish hair–that is to say, they are pronounced blonds." Huxley's view was shared by other writers such as Charles Morris in his 1888 book The Aryan Race, and Friedrich Nietszche in On the Genealogy of Morals (1887). These and other later writers argued that the Aryans were a warrior people who had imposed themselves over others by their ruthless military energy, based on chariot warfare. The invaders were thought to have entered the Indian subcontinent from the mountain passes of the Hindu Kush (present-day Afghanistan), bringing with them the domesticated horse, probably previously unknown in India.



Isaac Taylor noted that "German scholars have contended that the physical type of the primitive Aryans was that of the North Germans - a tall, fair, blue-eyed dolichocephalic race", while French writers have maintained that they were brachycephalic Gauls. This increasing preoccupation with race led Max Müller to point out that language and race are not necessarily coterminous: "I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar."



Even in the 19th century, several theorists had criticised the use of the term "primitive Aryans" to refer to the earliest speakers of Indo-European languages, wherever they may have originated. They argued that the word should only describe the cultures in which the term "Arya" was used – those that occupied Iran and northern India. The tribal name of the earliest speakers is unknown, hence the term Proto-Indo-Europeans is now used. Such writers stated that equation of the Indo-Iranians with northern European invaders was unjustified. There was no reason to believe that the peoples of Iran and northern India were ever Nordic. There are references in Sanskrit literature where the hair of Brahmins is assumed to be black. For example, Atharva Veda contains a charm for making "strong black hairlocks" grow and in Baudhayana’s Dharma-Sutra , the verse "Let him kindle the sacrificial fire while his hair is still black". And apart from a few gods associated with the sun, there is in Sanskrit literature only one golden-haired (hiranyakeshin) person , i.e. Hiranyakeshin, the author of the Hiranyakeshin-Shrauta-Sutra.

More recent writers have taken the view that racial arguments are irrelevant to the theory. Hans Hock (1999b) studied all the occurrences that were interpreted racially in Geldner's translation of the Rig Veda and concludes that they were either mistranslated or open to other interpretations. He writes that the racial interpretation of the Indian texts "must be considered dubious." Hock also notes that "early Sanskrit literature offers no conclusive evidence for preoccupation with skin color. More than that, some of the greatest Epic heroes and heroines such as Krishna, Draupadi, Arjuna, Nakula and Damayanti are characterized as dark-skinned. Similarly, the famous cave-paintings of Ajanta depict a vast range of skin colors. But in none of these contexts do we find that darker skin color disqualifies a person from being considered good, beautiful, or heroic." Hans Hock also notes that the world of the Aryas is often described with the words "light, white, broad and wide", while the world of the enemies of the Aryas is often described with the words "darkness or fog". And in many of these instances, he notes, a "racial" interpretation can be safely ruled out. Vishnu, Rama and many others are also described as dark-skinned. Ravana, who was often described as Dravidian, came from a Vedic family in Gujarat. On the other hand Siva who is considered by many invasion-theorists as a Dravidian god is often described as fair-skinned. Also, Veda Vyas who compiled the Vedas and wrote the great Hindu epic Mahabharata was dark-skinned. In rig veda there is a verse about a son and hero who has a pishanga (tawny, reddish brown, golden) complexion. The Rishi Kanva is described as having a dark complexion.

According to another examination by Trautmann (1997), the racial evidence of the Indian texts is soft and based upon an amount of overreading. He concludes: "That the racial theory of Indian civilization still lingers is a miracle of faith. Is it not time we did away with it?"

Answer 353

No. It was a british imperialist and evangelicals created myth. The only reason its still alive at all, is that it is still usefull for political and proselytiser's agenda.



Aryans were the original Indians. The civilisation was Indian to start with.



An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct. And the great epic Ramayana has a singularly eloquent expression describing Rama as:



arya sarva samascaiva sadaiva priyadarsanah - Arya, who worked for the equality of all and was dear to everyone . The Rig Veda also uses the word Arya something like thirty six times, but never to mean a race. The nearest to a definition that one can find in the Rigveda is probably:



praja arya jyotiragrah ...



Children of Arya are led by light - Rig Veda, VII. 33.17.



Thus, the modern notion of an Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is contradicted by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold. Interestingly, so were the Chinese. Race never had anything to do with it until the Europeans adopted the ancient word to give expression to their nationalistic and other aspirations.



The term 'aryan' has never been used in a racial sense anywhere in the vast compendium of Hindu literature. In the whole of the Rig Veda the word arya occurs no more than four times. It stands for whatever is regarded as eminent and ennobling. The term was used in a racial sense for the first time by Western historians who cooked up the theory of an Aryan invasion of India around 1500 B.C. They also popularized in a racial sense, the term Dravidian which had earlier had only a linguistic connotation.



In the year 1784, Sir William Jones wrote to Sir Warren Hastings how to spread "our pure faith" as "no mission from the Church of Rome will ever be able to convert the Hindus." He wrote about translating into Sanskrit and "then quietly to disperse the work among the well-educated natives." He goes on to state that "all the 14 Menus (Manus) are reducible to one," and that "a connection subsisted between the old idolatrous nations."



The Ayran Invasion Theory - AIT specifically justified the presence of the British among their “Aryan cousins” in India, being merely the second wave of Aryan settlement there. It supported the British view of India as merely a geographical region without historical unity, a legitimate prey for any invader capable of imposing himself. It provided the master illustration to the rising racialist worldview:



(1) the dynamic whites entered the land of the indolent dark natives;

(2) being superior, the whites established their dominance and imparted their language to the natives;

(3) being race-conscious, they established the caste system to preserve their racial separateness;

(4) but being insufficiently fanatical about their race purity, some miscegenation with the natives took place anyway, making the Indian Aryans darker than their European cousins and correspondingly less intelligent and less dynamic;

(5) hence, for their own benefit they were susceptible to an uplifting intervention by a new wave of purer Aryan colonizers.





The Fiction of Aryan Invasion Theory



The preplanned scheme of Jones to introduce the idea that Sanskrit was an outside language gave birth to the speculation of the imagined existence of some Central Asian (Aryan) race who spoke Sanskrit and who brought Sanskrit language to India when they forcefully entered the country. In this way, the fiction of the Aryan Invasion was created much later, sometime in the 1800’s by the same group of people and was extensively promoted by Max Muller.



It is a well known fact that India is called Aryavart. Manu Smriti (2/21,22) describes the exact location of Aryavart which lies from the south of the Himalayas and all the way up to the Indian Ocean. Its inhabitants are called the Arya. But it is not a locally spoken name. But it is not a locally spoken name. Commonly, we write Bharatvarsh for India in general and scriptural writings. The territory of India (or Bharatvarsh for Aryavart) during the Mahabharat war (3139 BC) was up to Iran. So the ancient Iranian people also used to call themselves the Aryans.



People of the British regime using this information, fabricated a story that some unknown race of Central Asia who came and settled in Iran were called the Aryans and they were Sanskrit speaking people. They invaded India, established themselves permanently, and wrote the Vedas. Those who introduced this ideology never cared to produce any evidence in support of their statement because it never existed, and furthermore, fiction stories don’t need evidences as they are self-created dogmas.



In the Bharatiya history there are descriptions of Shak and Hun invasions and also of the Muslim invasions but never an Aryan invasion.



Max Muller promoted this invasion story and formulated his dates of Vedic origin accordingly.



To add insult to an injury Hitler declared himself an Aryan and used Hindu Swastik to be his symbol.



The Western experts concluded, somewhere between 1500 and 1000 BE, the primitive barbarians who composed the Veda invaded northern India, driving the helpless Dravidians into the southern part of the subcontinent where they live today. There are two difficulties with this popular theory:



Today’s northern Hindus have absolutely no memory of having ever driven the Dravidians out of north India. None of their ancient manuscripts mentions any such thing.



Today’s Dravidians have absolutely no memory of ever having lived in North India. In fact, their ancient traditions suggest that their forebears came from the south, not from the north.



Minor problems like these did not discourage the Europeans and American scholars of the time. Thousands of pages of the Hindu’s own historical records were simply dismissed as fiction.



Over and over the Vedas mention a mighty river called the Saraswati where Aryan communities flourished and Vedic priests sang hymns of glorious gods, like Indra. Western scholars speculated that the Saraswati might have been one of the rivers to the east of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia. Perhaps, some even speculated, it had never been anything but a figment of the ancient poet's imaginations!



In the early 1980's proponents of the Aryan Invasion Theory, got a terrible shock. Satellite imaging was revolutionzing our knowledge of Earth's geography. It allowed scientists to get a look at the planet from low orbit out in space. Satellite photos of the dry bed of an enormous river, so huge it may have been five miles across at one site. While that river was in business, it may been the largest in the world, bigger even than than the Amazon today. The geologists quickly established the river had dried up around 1900 BCE. Yet according to our friend Max Muller the Veda hadn't been composed till at the very least 700 years after the river disappeared. What was this? Poets pretending they still lived alongside a river that vanished centuries before? Not darn likely!



source: Hinduism - By Linda Johnsen



It was also in the 19th century that appeared the myth of the Indo-Europeans being at the source of all Western civilization and for this we have to thank British authors who were taken up with evolutionist theory. Indian historians trained in Europe have fallen victim to this myth but that does not make it any more authentic. Later on, at the beginning of the 20th century, it became fashionable to support the Marxist theory which replaced race with class, though its premises were just as shaky.



source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman



While this theory provided an explanation within the framework of the then emerging filed of archaeology, it suffered from serious flaws. Also the context in which the word Aryan was used was wrong because this word in the earliest Indian literature refers to culture and not any specific race or linguistic background. A major flaw of the invasion theory was that it had no explanation for why the Vedic literature that was assumed to go back into the second millennium had no reference to any region outside of northwest India. Furthermore, the astronomical references in the Vedic literature allude to events in the third millennium B.C.D. and earlier. Then there was the fact that the earliest Indian sciences and literature and philosophy were very advanced indicating a very long tradition of scholarship which the invasion model did not posit. Most importantly, the discovery of the archaeological sites of the Indus-Saraswati tradition, which go back to at least 6500 B.C.E. and which show cultural continuity with the later Indian civilization, created a fundamental contradiction for the model. If one could explain the cultural continuity by arguing that the invading Aryans eventually adopted the culture of the original inhabitants then how was one to explain the fact that they were able to impose their language on the same people.



Once the theory of this horse riding invaders, took root, any evidence that went against this view was ignored or simply brushed aside as being ambiguous. But the main reason that the Aryan invasion theory survived so long is because questions about the process supporting the hypothesis were not asked.



Another reason for the popularity of the invasion theory was that parallels were seen with the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans. The fundamental differences between the two situations were ignored. Europe of five hundred years ago was densely populated unlike the steppes of Central Asia thirty five hundred years ago. European expansion was imperial in design impelled in part by capitalism and by the exclusionary world-view of Christianity in contrast to the Indo-Aryans with their Old Religion that saw the world to be interconnected.



Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) did not subscribe to the theory that the languages of North and South India are unrelated.



Sri Aurobindo's study of Tamil led him to discover that the original connection between the Sanskrit and Tamil languages was “far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed.” These languages are “two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue.” And, “My first study of Tamil words had brought me to what seemed a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue.”



Hindus collectively have no memory of an Aryan invasion of India that supposedly took place around 1,500 B.C. Hindu epics do not mention any such invasion. Surely, the extensive Hindu literature would describe the Aryan invasion if such had indeed taken place.





This theory, which posits the invasion of ancient India by a white-skinned race (the "Aryans") who conquer an indigenous, dark-skinned population, therefore worked ingeniously with the British divide-and-conquer strategy for rule in India. The theory and its variants continue to be used today by the Vatican and other Christian enterprises in their campaign to "harvest" tribals and other vulnerable communities of Hindus. For these spiritual imperialists, spurious racial theories still hold their divide-and-conquer appeal.



The early excavations showed well established flourishing cities of Harrappa and Mohanjodaro.



Since then much more excavation has been done. The early coivilisation was noit limited to west part of India. there is clear continuity and its Spread was a very large part of India. Aryan invasion theory flopped because Aryans did not not seem to clash with locals anywhere. And civilisations are much older than most early indologists were ready to accept.



It was simply too much for them as accepting that India has such developed civilisation refutes bible theory of creation to start with. If anything civilisation was already developed when they were writing old Testament.



West has still some problem accepting that world is way older than bible makes them believe. They even tried to undermine acheivement of Egyptians. Some even coined the idea that Egyptian pyramids were designed by aliens!



You can put Aryan migration theory in this context.When no proof of invasion could be substantiated then Migration theory came up. It is just snatching away the acheivement of natives.



Many small tribes and groups really have been migrating in India like forever. They brought some of their customs along with them. And local Indian civilization let them be. The basic features of Hinduism have alwys been indigenous.



It was a country with rich resourses, well established cities and industries. Soil of rivers flowing here is rich and farming not that difficult.



Great civilisations and philosophers develope in a calm atmosphere. And ancient India provided that. These things are not developed in nomadic cowboy herds as suggested by some researchers.



Untill and unless locals are already content, they are not assimilative of newer migrants nor tolerant.



A detailed analysis of the Aryan invasuion theory can be read at the site given is source.



Source(s):



http://www.hinduwisdom.info/aryan_invasi...



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Pappu

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Indians are actually descendants of the Aryan.



Source(s):



This is as per Indian history.



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Great Soul

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yes! there are many ways to prove this.



The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna).



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. You don't get to read about these kind of races in India or elsewhere.



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?



This says it all. And to conclude, its very clear from the points discussed above that Indians are descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.



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neelu044

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No, we do not know if we are actually descendents of any race.



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ashok_sahu1953

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We are Aryan which means virtuous and virtue can be taught through an Acharya or a teacher who himself is an example worth emulating. Dravida is not inferior to Arya, it means a person who is conditioned to the environment. Arya is a person who remains uninfluenced by the surroundings and is guided by the inner spirit. Neither it is true that Aryans had come from outside India who invaded and drove out the Dravidians to the south, nor the fact that these two are different races.



Projecting these two as two different races, one of whom was the invader and the other the vanquished; was part of a British ploy to perpetuate their rule over Indians by dividing them and also develop mutual hatred among them to facilitate easy conversion of the South Indians to Christianity. They did succeed in erstwhile Trivancore and Madras and Mysore where we have the first crop of Missionary proselytizers of Indian origin.



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kennabrew

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Nol. First off, "we Indians..." There are many states in India and "Indians" with a variety of features. Genetic testing may reveal ancestoral background for each individual family - but not the entire nation.



Source(s):



Genetic science



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amitsmittal

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The great Aryan theory given by Max Muller is wrong. The Max Muller organization itself accepted that and took the theory back. Though they did it in a very silent way and never made any efforts to publish the new findings that simply falsified the concept of whole Aryan invasion.



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kiran k

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yes we are, it is written in veds, and which i hope comes from aryans



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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vedic_civil...



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dimpee

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We can not say that we are actual descendents of the Aryan and Dravidian race.

Proof:---

INDIA is a multiculture socity . Many foreign countries invesened India in past and all carried their respective cultures and spread here.So it could be possible that we be descendent of those.



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rahul m

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yes we are from long back an origin of aryans and dravidians it is revealed by our culture,policies, bravenessetc this is more than enough to show the proof



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geminii2_2

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There is no scientifical proof that Aryan and Dravidian are two different races.The so called Aryan and Dravidian races are members of the same mediterranean branch of the causcasean race which prevailed in the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria North Africa and Middle East.



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rai_madhu78

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I think so.The very fact that many of the people in our country have bluish grey eyes and pure white colour shows that somewhere we have something in our blood which may connect us to the Aryans & Dravidians.



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k.p d

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During the 19th century, it was commonly believed that the Aryan race originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day Russia, and including the Caucasus Mountains. The Steppe theory of Aryan origins was not the only one circulating during the nineteenth century, however. Many British, American and German scholars argued that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany or Scandinavia, or at least that in those countries the original Aryan ethnicity had been preserved. This idea was widespread in both intellectual and popular culture by the early twentieth century.



In India, under the British Empire, the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian caste system. It was widely claimed that the Aryans were white people who had invaded India in ancient times[3], subordinating the darker skinned native Dravidian peoples, who were pushed to the south. Thus the foundation of Hinduism was ascribed to white invaders who had established themselves as the dominant castes, and who were supposed to have created the sophisticated Vedic texts. Much of these theories were simply conjecture fuelled by European imperialism (see white man's burden). This styling of an "Aryan invasion" by British colonial fantasies of racial supremacy lies at the origin of the fact that all discussion of historical Indo-Aryan migrations or Aryan and Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, and does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, and supporters of the Dalit movement, most commonly Tamils, claim that the worship of Shiva is a distinct Dravidian religion, to be distinguished from Brahminical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist Hindutva movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, asserting that Vedic beliefs emerged from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which pre-dated the supposed advent of the Indo-Aryans in India, and is identified as a likely candidate for a Proto-Dravidian culture.



Most indians are a mix of dravidian and aryan, although some are considered purely one or the other. it is suspected that the europeans were the ones who placed the “aryan” label on the lighter skinned, lighter eyed, and sharper nosed people who were mainly found in northern india. the term “aryan” is now considered to be a misinterpretation of the original sanskrit word “arya,” which means pure or good. but in the vedas (the primary texts of hinduism of ancient india), the word arya is not used to describe race. it is used as term of respect to address a person who is righteous and noble.



it was infact a german, max mueller, who concocted the idea that the term aryan described a race and language. it is also believed that mueller made these claims to support his “aryan invasion theory.” since the europeans could not believe that “barbarian, dark-skinned” people, who they viewed as inferior (not only in terms of appearance, but also in terms of culture), could ever have developed such an advanced civilization as that found in India, they exploited this theory to advance their belief of white supremacy.



many argue that since the aryans were nomadic, they could not have developed the hindu religion and could not have written the vedas. only a deep rooted civilization could have done this. ultimately, one could hold the western european caucasians responsible for propagating the fair skinned superiority/dark skinned inferiority myth in this case, but I suspect it has deeper roots than that.

------------------------------...



The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus' have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.

------------------------------...

Racial Theories



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required, by intimidation, force or bribery.



Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).



About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.



Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding

------------------------------...

References( PROOF)



^ Padfield, Peter Himmler New York:1990--Henry Holt Page 402

^ A modern exponent is the Pan-Aryan National Front, a web discussion forum, which has the stated claims of wanting to "arouse racial awareness" and to "liberate and unite" all "whites" according to the group's definition of white.

^ Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and The Politics of Identity New York: 2002--N.Y. University Press, Chapters 4 and 11

^ The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate by Edwin Bryant

^ McDougall, William., The Group Mind, p.159, Arno Press, 1973; Copyright, 1920 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.



Source(s):



http://www.tuhl.freeserve.co.uk...

http://en.wikipedia.org



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Mona B

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Although there is little in the way of 'hard' proof, the most conclusive evidence, to my way of thinking are our great epics, the 'Ramayana' and the 'Mahabharata'. These two great works of literature are a cohesion of many sources, and the fact that they have survived through the ages and through the ravages of foreign, indeed alien, indoctrination, is proof positive of their authenticity as records of a past that seem to us almost mythological. But within their great store of legends are the seeds of history and the hard core of truth. The 'Ramayana', in fact, is nothing more or less than an account of the Aryan invasion of our country and the consolidation of their kingdoms. The 'Mahabharata' expands on the same theme, but at a later date. These two great books are the proofs of our ancestry.



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bhupendra072...

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Yes, the book of TR Trautmann - Historiographia Linguistica, 2004 intimate the race of Indians are Aryan or Dravidian in different part of India. SUMMARYBritish India was an especially fruitful site for the development of historical linguistics. Four major, unanticipated discoveries were especially associated with the East India Company: those of Indo-European, Dravidian, Malayo-Polynesian and the Indo-Aryan nature of Romani. It is argued that they came about in British India because the European tradition of language analysis met and combined with aspects of the highly sophisticated Indian language analysis. The discoveries of Indo-European and Dravidian, the subject of this article, were connected with the British-Indian cities of Calcutta and Madras, respectively, and the conditions under which they came about are examined. The production of new knowledge in British India is generally viewed through the lens of post-colonial theory, and is seen as having been driven by the needs of colonial governance. This essay sketches out a different way of looking at aspects of colonial knowledge that fall outside the colonial utility framework. It views these discoveries and their consequences as emergent products of two distinct traditions of language study which the British and the Indians brought to the colonial connection. If this is so, it follows that some aspects of modernism tacitly absorb Indian knowledge, specifically Indian language analysis.



Source(s):



TR Trautmann - Historiographia Linguistica, 2004



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three aces

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We are of course descendants of the Aryan and Dravidian race.Proof is we are still descending in the race.



Source(s):



History and current affairs.



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sudip p

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yes ..we are ..the proof s are the vied ..which is followed by us



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book



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Amrit

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The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.





------------------------------...

------------------------------...

Racial Theories



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.



Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).



About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.



Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding.







------------------------------...





Racial Interpretation of Vedas



Europeans Vedic interpreters used this same racial idea to explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna). To turn this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the red race and where is the yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas been a red race and the Vaishyas as yellow race?



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?







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The Term Aryan



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.







------------------------------...





New Evidence on the Indus Culture



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.



The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.



This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion thoery or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.







------------------------------...





Aryan and Dravidian Races



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.







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North and South Indian Religions



Scholars dominated by the Aryan Dravidian racial idea have tried to make some Hindu gods Dravidian and other gods Aryan, even though there has been no such division within Hindu culture. This is based upon a superficial identifi- cation of deities with color i.e. Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which we have already shown the incorrectness of. In the Mahabharat, Krishna traces his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a famous Aryan people of the north and west of India, and there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers whose names meant dark (like Krishna Angiras or Shyava Atreya).



Others say that Shiva is a Dravidian god because Shaivism is more prominent in south than in north India. However, the most sacred sites of Shiva are Kailash in Tibet, Kashmir, and the city of Varanasi in the north. There never was any limitation of the worship of Shiva to one part of India.



Shiva is also said not to be a Vedic god because he is not prominent in the Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text, where deities like Indra, Agni and Soma are more prevalent than Rudra (the Vedic form of Shiva). However, Rudra-Shiva is dominent in the Atharva and Yajur Vedas, as well as the Brahmanas, which are also very old Vedic texts. And Vedic gods like Indra and Agni are often identi- fied with Rudra and have many similar characteristics (Indra as the dancer, the destroyer of the cities, and the Lord of power, for example). While some differences in nomenclature do exist between Vedic and Shaivite or Vedic and any other later teachings like the Vaishnava or Shakta - and we would expect a religion to undergo some development through time - there is nothing to show any division between Vedic and Shaivite traditions, and certainly nothing to show that it is a racial division. Shiva in fact is the deity most associated with Vedic ritual and fire offerings. He is adorned with the ashes, the bhasma, of the Vedic fire.



Early investigators also thought they saw a Shaivite element in the so-call ed Dravidian Indus Valey civilization, with the existence of Shivalinga like sacred objects, and seals resembling Shiva. However, further examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like fire-altars replete with all the tradi- tional offers as found in the Hindu Brahmanas, thus again refuting such simplistic divisions. The religion of the Indus (Saraswati) culture appears to include many Vedic as well as Puranic elements.



Some hold that Shaivism is a south Indian religion and the Vedic religion is north Indian. However, the greatest supporter of Vedanta, Shankaracharya, was a Dravidian Shaivite from Kerala. Meanwhile many south Indian kings have been Vaishnavites or worshippers of Vishnu (who is by the same confused logic considered to be a north Indian god). In short there is no real division of India into such rigid compartments as north and south Indian religions, though naturally regional variations do exist.







------------------------------...





Aryan and Dravidian Languages



The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do have important differences. Their ways of developing words and grammer are different. However, it is a misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan. The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European languages, which are materialistic in orientation, bacause Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the term is being used in a Western or European sense that we should remember is quite apart from its traditional Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the Sanskrit term does not have.



We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion. The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different language group than the other Europeans, but we do not speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being non-Europeans, nor do we consider that their religious beliefs must therefore be unrelated to those of the rest of Europe.



Even though Dravidian languages are based on a different model than Sanskrit there are thirty to seventy per cent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like Telugu and Tamil, which is much higher percentage than north Indian languages like Hindi. In addition both north and south Indian languages have a similar construction and phraseology that links them close together, which European languages often do not share. This has caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a Dravidian language. In short, the language compart- ments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as has been thought.



In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral letters, for example), which are not present in other Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there were already Drvidians in the same region as the Vedic people, and part of the same culture with them, or that Dravidian languages could also have been early off-shoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have been none other than Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the Rig Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text.







------------------------------...





Dravidians in Vedic/Puranic Lore



Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana or Manu Samhita, have looked at the Dravidians as people outside of the Vedic culture. However, they do not look at them as indigenous or different people but as fallen descendants of Vedic kings, notably Vishwamitra. These same texts look upon some people of north India, including some groups from Bengal, as also outside of Vedic culture, even though such people were Indo-European in language.



Other texts like the Ramayana portray the Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha (modern Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama. The Vedic rishi Agastya is also often portrayed as one of the progenitors of the Dravid- ian peoples. Hence there appears to have been periods in history when the Dravidians or some portion of them were not looked on with favour by some followers of Vedic culture, but this was largely temporary.



If we look through the history of India, there has been some time when almost every part of India has been dominated for a period by unorthodox traditions like Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to mention outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or dominated by other foreign conquerors, like the Greeks, the Scythians (Shakas) or the Huns. That Gujarat was a once suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into another race or religion. That something similar happened to the Dravidians at some point in history does not require making something permanently non-Aryan about them. In the history of Europe for example, that Austria once went through a protestant phase, does not cause modern Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.



The kings of south India, like the Chola and Pandya dynsties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of all the Aryas, originally a south Indian king, Satyavrata. Hence there are not only traditions that make the Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but those that make the Aryans of north India descendants of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any differences between them appear to be secondary, and nothing like the great racial divide that the Aryan-Dravidian idea has promoted.







------------------------------...





Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic Culture



Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preser- ved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan. This again was not something part of the Aryan tradition of India, as part of the misinterpretation of the term Aryan fostered by European thought which often had a political or religi- ous bias, and which led to the Nazis. To equate such racism and violence with the Vedic and Hindu religion, the least aggressive of all religions, is a rather sad thing, not to say very questionable scholarship.



Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of north India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north. They need not feel that they are losing their culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.



Vedic and Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultral variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the develop- ment of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Meca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.



Meanwhile the people of north India also need not take this north-south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any Caucasian race group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.



It is also not necessary to turn various Vedic gods into Dravidian gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so-called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their gods. This only gives credence to what is superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, north or south, which is high or spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures within the greater tradition.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.



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The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy

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The origins and affinities of the1 billion people living on the subcontinent of India have long been contested.This is owing, in part, to the many different waves of immigrants that have influenced the genetic structure ofIndia. In the most recent of these waves, Indo-European-speaking people from West Eurasia entered India fromthe Northwest and diffused throughout the subcontinent. They purportedly admixed with or displacedindigenous Dravidic-speaking populations. Subsequently they may have established the Hindu caste system andplaced themselves primarily in castes of higher rank. To explore the impact of West Eurasians on contemporaryIndian caste populations, we compared mtDNA (400 bp of hypervariable region 1 and 14 restriction sitepolymorphisms) and Y-chromosome (20 biallelic polymorphisms and 5 short tandem repeats) variation in265males from eight castes of different rank to750 Africans, Asians, Europeans, and other Indians. For maternallyinherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%­30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypesbelong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, thehighest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternallyinherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, theaffinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans,particularly East Europeans. These findings are consistent with greater West Eurasian male admixture with castesof higher rank. Nevertheless, the mitochondrial genome and the Y chromosome each represents only a singlehaploid locus and is more susceptible to large stochastic variation, bottlenecks, and selective sweeps. Thus, toincrease the power of our analysis, we assayed 40 independent, biparentally inherited autosomal loci (1 LINE-1and 39Aluelements) in all of the caste and continental populations (600 individuals). Analysis of these datademonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes aresignificantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trendtoward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians. Weconclude that Indian castes are most likely to be of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture resultingin rank-related and sex-specific differences in the genetic affinities of castes to Asians and Europeans.Shared Indo-European languages (i.e., Hindi and mostEuropean languages) suggested to linguists of the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries that contemporaryHindu Indians are descendants of primarily West Eur-asians who migrated from Europe, the Near East, Ana-tolia, and the Caucasus 3000­8000 years ago (Poliakov1974; Renfrew 1989a,b). These nomadic migrants may have consolidated their power by admixing with na-tive Dravidic-speaking (e.g., Telugu) proto-Asian popu-lations who controlled regional access to land, labor,and resources (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), and subse-quently established the Hindu caste hierarchy to legiti-mize and maintain this power (Poliakov 1974; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). It is plausible that these West Eur-asian immigrants also appointed themselves topredominantly castes of higher rank. However, ar-chaeological evidence of the diffusion of material cul-ture from Western Eurasia into India has been limited(Shaffer 1982). Therefore, information on the geneticrelationships of Indians to Europeans and Asians couldcontribute substantially to understanding the originsof Indian populations.Previous genetic studies of Indian castes havefailed to achieve a consensus on Indian origins andaffinities. Various results have supported closer affinityof Indian castes either with Europeans or with Asians,and several factors underlie this inconsistency. First,erratic or limited sampling of populations has limitedinferences about the relationships between caste andcontinental populations (i.e., Africans, Asians, Europe-ans). These relationships are further confounded bythe wide geographic dispersal of caste populations. Ge-netic affinities among caste populations are, in part,inversely correlated with the geographic distance be-tween them (Malhotra and Vasulu 1993), and it islikely that affinities between caste and continentalpopulations are also geographically dependent (e.g.,different between North and South Indian caste popu-lations). Second, it has been suggested that castes ofdifferent rank may have originated from or admixedwith different continental groups (Majumder andMukherjee 1993). Third, the size of caste populationsvaries widely, and the effects of genetic drift on somesmall, geographically isolated castes may have beensubstantial. Fourth, most of the polymorphisms as-sayed over the last 30 years are indirect measurementsof genetic variation (e.g., ABO typing), have beensampled from only a few loci, and may not be selec-tively neutral. Finally, only rarely have systematiccomparisons been made with continental populationsusing a large, uniform set of DNA polymorphisms(Majumder 1999).To investigate the origin of contemporary castes,we compared the genetic affinities of caste populationsof differing rank (i.e., upper, middle, and lower) toworldwide populations. We analyzed mtDNA (hyper-variable region 1 [HVR1] sequence and 14 restriction-site polymorphisms [RSPs]), Y-chromosome (5 short-tandem repeats [STRs] and 20 biallelic polymor-phisms), and autosomal (1 LINE-1 and 39Aluinserts)variation in265 males from eight different Telugu-speaking caste populations from the state of AndhraPradesh in South India (Bamshad et al. 1998). Com-parisons were made to400 individuals from tribal andHindi-speaking caste and populations distributedacross the Indian subcontinent (Mountain et al. 1995;Kivisild et al. 1999) and to350 Africans, Asians, andEuropeans (Jorde et al. 1995, 2000; Seielstad et al.1999).RESULTSAnalysis of mtDNA Suggests a Proto-Asian Originof IndiansMtDNA HVR1 genetic distances between caste popula-tions and Africans, Asians, and Europeans are signifi-cantly different from zero (p< 0.001) and reveal that,regardless of rank, each caste group is most closely re-lated to Asians and is most dissimilar from Africans(Table 1). The genetic distances from major continen-tal populations (e.g., Europeans) differ among thethree caste groups, and the comparison reveals an in-triguing pattern. As one moves from lower to uppercastes, the distance from Asians becomes progressivelylarger. The distance between Europeans and lowercastes is larger than the distance between Europeansand upper castes, but the distance between Europeansand middle castes is smaller than the upper caste-European distance. These trends are the same whetherthe Kshatriya and Vysya are included in the uppercastes, the middle castes, or excluded from the analy-sis. This may be owing, in part, to the small sample size(n= 10) of each of these castes. Among the upper castesthe genetic distance between Brahmins and Europeans(0.10) is smaller than that between either the Kshatriyaand Europeans (0.12) or the Vysya and Europeans(0.16). Assuming that contemporary Europeans reflectWest Eurasian affinities, these data indicate that theamount of West Eurasian admixture with Indian popu-lations may have been proportionate to caste rank.Conventional estimates of the standard errors ofgenetic distances assume that polymorphic sites are in-dependent of each other, that is, unlinked. BecausemtDNA polymorphisms are in complete linkage dis-equilibrium (as are polymorphisms on the nonrecom-Table 1. MtDNA (HVR1 Sequence) Genetic Distancesbetween Caste Groups from Andhra Pradesh andContinental PopulationsCaste groupAfricansAsiansEuropeansUp... (0.106)aMiddle.182.025.086 (0.084)bLower.163.023.113All castes.196.026.077aGenetic distance between upper castes and Europeans if theKshatriya and Vysya are excluded from the analysis.bGenetic distance between the middle castes and Europeans ifthe Kshatriya and Vysya are grouped in the middle castes.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 995www.genome.org

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bining portions of the Y chromosome), this assump-tion is violated. Alternatively, the mtDNA genome canbe treated as a single locus with multiple haplotypes.However, even if this assumption is made, mtDNA dis-tances do not differ significantly from one anothereven at the level of the three major continental popu-lations (Nei and Livshits 1989), the standard errors be-ing greater than the genetic distances. Consideringthat the distances between castes and continentalpopulations are less than those between different con-tinental populations, the estimated mtDNA geneticdistances between upper castes and Europeans versuslower castes and Europeans would not be significantlydifferent from each other. Therefore, to resolve furtherthe relationships of Europeans and Asians to contem-porary Indian populations, we defined the identities ofspecific mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes.The presence of the mtDNA restriction sitesDdeI10,394andAluI10,397de... a haplogroup (a groupof haplotypes that share some sequence variants), M,that was originally identified in populations that mi-grated from mainland Asia to Southeast Asia and Aus-tralia (Ballinger et al. 1992; Chen et al. 1995; Passarinoet al. 1996) and is found at much lower frequency inEuropean and African populations. Most of the com-mon haplotypes found in Telugu- and Hindi-speakingcaste populations belong to haplogroup M (Table 2)and do not differentiate into language-specific clustersin a phylogenetic reconstruction (Fig. 1). Furthermore,these Indian haplogroup-M haplotypes are distinctfrom those found in other Asian populations (Fig. 2)and indicate the existence of Indian-specific subsets ofhaplogroup M (e.g., M3). As expected if the lowercastes are more similar to Asians than to Europeans,and the upper castes are more similar to Europeansthan to Asians, the frequencies of M and M3 haplo-types are inversely proportional to caste rank (Table 2).Of the non-Asian mtDNA haplotypes found in In-dian populations, most are of West Eurasian origin(Table 2; Torroni et al. 1994; Richards et al. 1998).However, most of these Indian West-Eurasian haplo-types belong to an Indian-specific subset of hap-logroup U, that is, U2i (Kivisild et al. 1999), the oldestand second most common mtDNA haplogroup foundin Europe (Torroni et al. 1994). In agreement with theHVR1 results, the frequency of West Eurasian mtDNAhaplotypes is significantly higher in upper castes thanin lower castes (p< 0.05), the frequency of U2i haplo-types increasing as one moves from lower to highercastes. In addition, the frequency of mtDNA hap-logroups with a more recent coalescence estimate (i.e.,H, I, J, K, T) was fivefold higher in upper castes (6.8%)than in lower castes (1.4%). These haplotypes are de-rivatives of haplogroups found throughout Europe (Ri-chards et al. 1998), the Middle East (Di Rienzo andWilson 1991), and to a lesser extent Central Asia (Co-mas et al. 1998). Collectively, the mtDNA haplotypeevidence indicate that contemporary Indian mtDNAevolved largely from proto-Asian ancestors with WesternEurasian admixture accountingfor 20%­30% of mtDNA haplo-types.Y-Chromosome VariationConfirmsIndo-European AdmixtureGenetic distances estimatedfrom Y-chromosome STR poly-morphisms differ significantlyfrom zero (p< 0.001) and reveala distinctly different pattern ofpopulation relationships (Table3). In contrast to the mtDNAdistances, the Y-chromosomeSTR data do not demonstrate acloser affinity to Asians for eachcaste group. Upper castes aremore similar to Europeans thanto Asians, middle castes areequidistant from the twogroups, and lower castes aremost similar to Asians. The ge-netic distance between castepopulations and Africans is pro-Table 2. MtDNA Haplogroup Frequencies in Dravidic and Hindi-Speaking IndiansHaplogroupDravidic (%)Hindi (%)uppermiddlelowertotalAsian6... (5.5)64.6 (3.8)71.4 (5.3)65.7 (2.7)55.7 (2.9)A00000.3 (.32)B00000F00002.7 (.94)M61 (5.5)64.6 (3.8)71.4 (5.3)65.7 (2.7)52.7 (2.9)M318.6 (4.4)3.5 (1.5)1.4 (1.4)6.6 (1.4)6.0 (1.4)M-C00000.7 (.48)M-D00001.0 (.57)M-G00.9 (.74)00.4 (.36)0M-E01.8 (1.1)00.8 (.51)0West Eurasian23.7 (4.8)14.2 (2.8)7.1 (3.0)14.5 (2.0)27.4 (2.6)U2ib16.9 (4.2)9.7 (2.3)5.7 (2.7)10.3 (1.7)15.3 (2.1)W1.7 (1.5)000.4 (.36)3.7 (.29)H3.4 (2.0001.2 (.62)2.3 (.87)I00001.3 (.65)J00.9 (.75)00.4 (.36)0.7 (.48)K1.7 (1.5)000.4 (.36)0T02.7 (1.3)1.4 (1.4)1.7 (.73)1.7 (.75)X00000.7 (.48)Others15.3 (4.1)21.2 (1.3)21.4 (4.8)19.8 (2.3)16.7 (2.2)standard errors are in parentheses.aThese haplotypes belong to super-haplogroup R (ancestral to haplogroups B, F, H, T, J, V,and U) but do not belong to any previously recognized haplogroup.bU2i is differentiated from haplogroup U by the presence of a transition at np 16051.Bamshad et al.996 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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gressively larger moving from lower to middle to uppercaste groups (Table 3).Genetic distances estimated from Y-chromosomebiallelic polymorphisms differ significantly from zero(p< 0.05), and the patterns differ from the mtDNA re-sults even more strikingly than the Y-chromosomeSTRs. For Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphism data,each caste group is more similar to Europeans (Table 4),and as one moves from lower to middle to highercastes the genetic distance to Europeans diminishesprogressively. This pattern is further accentuated byseparating the European population into Northern,Southern, and Eastern Europeans; each caste group ismost closely related to Eastern Europeans. Moreover,the genetic distance between upper castes and EasternEuropeans is approximately half the distance betweenEastern Europeans and middle or lower castes. Theseresults suggest that Indian Y chromosomes, particu-larly upper caste Y chromosomes, are more similar toEuropean than to Asian Y chromosomes. This under-scores the close affinities between Hindu Indian andIndo-European Y chromosomes based on a previouslyreported analysis of three Y-chromosome polymor-phisms (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999b).Overall, these results indicate that the affinities ofIndians to continental populations varies according toFigure 1Phylogeny of haplogroup M in India. Phylogenetic relationships between HVR1 haplotypes were estimated by constructingreduced median networks. The size of each node is porportional to the haplotype frequency. Reticulations indicate parallel mutationalpathways or multiple mutations. The identities of HVR1 mutations (numbered according to the Cambridge reference sequence +16000;Anderson et al. 1981) that define major haplogroup subsets are depicted along selected internodes. The coalescence estimate of Indianhaplogroup-M haplotypes is 48,000 1500 yr, suggesting that Indian-specific mtDNA haplotypes split from a proto-Asian ancestor inthe late Pleistocene.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 997www.genome.org

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caste rank and depends on whether mtDNA or Y-chromosome data are analyzed. However, conclusionsdrawn from these data are limited because mtDNA andthe Y chromosome is each effectively a single haploidlocus and is more sensitive to genetic drift, bottlenecks,and selective sweeps compared to autosomal loci.These limitations of our analysis can be overcome, inpart, by analyzing a larger set of independent autoso-mal loci. Consequently, we assayed 1 LINE-1 and 39unlinkedAlupolymorphisms.Aff... to Europeans and Asians Stratifiedby Caste RankGenetic distances estimated from autosomalAluele-ments correspond to caste rank, the genetic distancebetween the upper and lower castes being more than2.5 times larger than the distance between upper andmiddle or middle and lower castes (upper to middle,0.0069; upper to lower, 0.018; middle to lower,0.0071). These trends are the same whether the Ksha-triya and Vysya are included in the upper castes, themiddle castes, or excluded from the analysis (data notshown). Furthermore, a neighbor-joining network ofgenetic distances between separate castes (Fig. 3)clearly differentiates castes of different rank into sepa-rate clusters. This is similar to the relationship betweengenetic distances and caste rank estimated fromTable 3. Y Chromosome (STRs) Genetic Distancesbetween Caste Groups from Andhra Pradesh andContinental PopulationsCaste groupAfricansAsiansEuropeansUp... castes.0151.0101.0102Figure 2Major subsets of haplogroup M. Phylogenetic relationships of HVR1 haplotypes assigned to haplogroup M were estimated for:(a) 343 Indians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a; this study); (b) 16 Turks and 78 Central Asians (Comas et al. 1998; this study); (c) 60Mongolians (Kolman et al. 1996); (d) 25 Ethiopians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a); (e) 56 Chinese (Horai et al. 1996; this study); (f) 103Japanese (Horai et al. 1996; Seo et al. 1998). The founding node of each network (M*) differs from the CRS (Anderson et al. 1981) bytransitions at np 10398, 10400, and 16223. The frequency of each subset of haplogroup M is indicated. Each phylogenetic network waspruned by eliminating branches containing haplotypes summing to a frequency of <5% (these branches were binned with the founderhaplotype, M*). The identities of HVR1 mutations (numbered according to the CRS 16,000; Anderson et al. 1981) that define majorhaplotype subsets are depicted along selected internodes.Bamshad et al.998 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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mtDNA (Bamshad et al. 1998). It is important to note,however, that the autosomal genetic distances are es-timated from 40 independent loci. This afforded us theopportunity to test the statistical significance of thecorrespondence between genetic distance and castestatus. The Mantel correlation between interindividualgenetic distances and distances based on social rankwas low but highly significant for individuals rankedinto upper, middle, and lower groups (r= 0.08;p< 0.001) and into eight separate castes (r= 0.07;p< 0.001). Given the resolving power of this autoso-mal dataset, we next tested whether we could reconcilethe results of the analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers in castes and continental popu-lations.Genotypic differentiation was significantly differ-ent from zero (p< 0.0001) between each pair of castepopulations and between each caste and continentalpopulation. Similar to the results of both the mtDNAand Y-chromosome analyses, the distance between up-per castes and European popu-lations is smaller than the dis-tance between lower castes andEuropeans (Table 5). However,in contrast to the mtDNA re-sults but similar to the Y-chromosome results, the affin-ity between upper castes andEuropeans is higher than thatof upper castes and Asians(Table 5). If the Kshatriya and Vysya are excluded fromthe analysis or included in the middle castes, the ge-netic distance between the upper caste (Brahmins) andEuropeans remains smaller than the distance betweenthe lower castes and Europeans and the distance be-tween upper castes and Asians (Table 5). Analysis ofeach caste separately reveals that the genetic distancebetween the Brahmins and Europeans (0.013) is lessthan the distance between Europeans and Kshatryia(0.030) or Vysya (0.020). Nevertheless, each separateupper caste is more similar to Europeans than toAsians.Because historical evidence suggests greater affin-ity between upper castes and Europeans than betweenlower castes and Europeans (Balakrishnan 1978, 1982;Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), it is appropriate to use aone-tailed test of the difference between the corre-sponding genetic distances. The 90% confidence limitsof Nei's standard distances estimated between uppercastes and Europeans (0.006­0.016) versus lower castesand Europeans (0.017­0.037) do not overlap, indicat-ing statistical significance at the 0.05 level. Signifi-cance at 0.05 is not achieved if the Kshatriya and Vysyaare excluded. These results offer statistical support fordifferences in the genetic affinity of Europeans to castepopulations of differing rank, with greater Europeanaffinity to upper castes than to lower castes.DISCUSSIONPrevious genetic studies have found evidence to sup-port either a European or an Asian origin of Indiancaste populations, with occasional indications of ad-mixture with African or proto-Australoid populations(Chen et al. 1995; Mountain et al. 1995; Bamshad et al.1996, 1997; Majumder et al. 1999; Quintana-Murci etal. 1999a). Our results demonstrate that for biparen-tally inherited autosomal markers, genetic distancesbetween upper, middle, and lower castes are signifi-cantly correlated with rank; upper castes are more simi-lar to Europeans than to Asians; and upper castes aresignificantly more similar to Europeans than are lowercastes. This result appears to be owing to the amalgam-ation of two different patterns of sex-specific geneticvariation.The majority of Indian mtDNA restriction-sitehaplotypes belong to Indian-specific subsets (e.g., M3)Table 4. Y Chromosome (Bi-Allelic Polymorphisms) Genetic Distances betweenCaste Groups from Andhra Pradesh and Continental PopulationsaCaste groupAsiansEuropeansW. EuropeansS. EuropeansE. EuropeansUpper.388.135.265.168... comparisons to unpublished data of M.F.H.Figure 3Neighbor-joining network of genetic distancesamong caste communities estimated from 40Alupolymor-phisms. Distances between upper castes (U; Brahmin, Vysya,Kshatriya), middle castes (M; Yadava, Kapu), and lower castes (L;Mala, Madiga, Relli) are significantly correlated with social rank.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 999www.genome.org

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of a predominantly Asian haplogroup M, although asubstantial minority of mtDNA restriction site haplo-types belong to West Eurasian haplogroups. A higherproportion of proto-Asian mtDNA restriction-site hap-lotypes is found in lower castes compared to middle orupper castes, whereas the frequency of West Eurasianhaplotypes is positively correlated with caste rank, thatis, is highest in the upper castes. For Y-chromosomeSTR variation the upper castes exhibit greatest similar-ity with Europeans, whereas the lower caste groups aremost similar to Asians. For Y biallelic polymorphismvariation, each caste group is more similar to Europe-ans than to Asians, and the affinity to Europeans isproportional to caste rank, that is, is highest in theupper castes.Importantly, five different types of data (mtDNAHVR1 sequence, mtDNA RSPs, Y-chromosome STRs, Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms, and autosomalAlupolymorphisms) support the same general pattern:relatively smaller genetic distances from Europeanpopulations as one moves from lower to middle to up-per caste populations. Genetic distances from Asianpopulations become larger as one moves from lower tomiddle to upper caste populations. It is especially note-worthy that the analysis of Y biallelic polymorphisms,which involved an independent set of comparativeAsian, European, and African populations, again indi-cated the same pattern. Additional support is offeredby the fact that the autosomal polymorphisms yieldeda statistically significant difference between the upper-caste­European and lower-caste­European genetic dis-tances. With additional loci, other differences (e.g., thedistances between different caste groups and Asians)may also reach statistical significance.The most likely explanation for these findings,and the one most consistent with archaeological data,is that contemporary Hindu Indians are of proto-Asianorigin with West Eurasian admixture. However, admix-ture with West Eurasian males was greater than admix-ture with West Eurasian females, resulting in a higheraffinity to European Y chromosomes. This supports anearlier suggestion of Passarinoet al. (1996), which was basedon a comparison of mtDNA andblood group results. Further-more, the degree of West Eur-asian admixture was propor-tional to caste rank. This expla-nation is consistent with eitherthe hypothesis that proportion-ately more West Eurasians be-came members of the uppercastes at the inception of thecaste hierarchy or that socialstratification preceded the WestEurasian incursion and thatWest Eurasians tended to insert themselves intohigher-ranking positions. One consequence is thatshared Indo-European languages may not reflect acommon origin of Europeans and most Indians, butrather underscores the transfer of language mediatedby contact between West Eurasians and native proto-Indians.West Eurasian admixture in Indian populationsmay have been the result of more than one wave ofimmigration into India. Kivisild et al. (1999) deter-mined the coalescence (50,000 years before present)of the Indian-specific subset of the West Eurasian hap-lotypes (i.e., U2i) and suggested that West Eurasian ad-mixture may have been much older than the pur-ported Dravidian and Indo-European incursions. Ouranalysis of Indian mtDNA restriction-site haplotypesthat do not belong to the U2i subset of West Eurasianhaplotypes (i.e., H, I, J, K, T) is consistent with morerecent West Eurasian admixture. It is also possible thathaplotypes with an older coalescence were introducedby Dravidians, whereas haplotypes with a more recentcoalescence belonged to Indo-Europeans. This hypoth-esis can be tested by a more detailed comparison toWest Eurasian mtDNA haplotypes from Iran, Anatolia,and the Caucasus. Alternatively, the coalescence datesof these haplotypes may predate the entry of West Eur-asians populations into India. Regardless of their ori-gin, West Eurasian admixture resulted in rank-relateddifferences in the genetic affinities of castes to Europe-ans and Asians. Furthermore, the frequency of WestEurasian haplotypes in the founding middle and uppercastes may be underestimated because of the upwardsocial mobility of women from lower castes (Bamshadet al. 1998). These women were presumably morelikely to introduce proto-Asian mtDNA haplotypesinto the middle and upper castes.Our analysis of 40 autosomal markers indicatesclearly that the upper castes have a higher affinity toEuropeans than to Asians. The high affinity of caste Ychromosomes with those of Europeans suggests thatthe majority of immigrating West Eurasians may haveTable 5. Autosomal Genetic Distancesabetween Caste Groups from AndhraPradesh and Continental PopulationsCaste groupAfricansAsiansEuropeansUp... (0.074 .018).058 (0.024 .009).032b(.011 .003)Middle.149 (0.082 .018).032 (0.013 .005).057c(.020 .006)Lower.147 (0.083 .017).044 (0.017 .005).073 (.027 .006)All castes.147.039.045aNei standard distances standard errors are in parentheses.bIf the Kshatriya and Vysya are excluded, the genetic distance between the upper castes andEuropeans is 0.038.cIf the Kshatriya and Vysya are grouped in the middle castes, the genetic distance betweenthe middle castes and Europeans is 0.050.Bamshad et al.1000 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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been males. As might be expected if West Eurasianmales appropriated the highest positions in the castesystem, the upper caste group exhibits a lower geneticdistance to Europeans than the middle or lower castes.This is underscored by the observation that the Ksha-triya (an upper caste), whose members served as war-riors, are closer to Europeans than any other caste (datanot shown). Furthermore, the 32-bp deletion polymor-phism in CC chemokine receptor 5, whose frequencypeaks in populations of Eastern Europe, is found onlyin two Brahmin males (M. Bamshad and S.K. Ahuja,unpubl.). The stratification of Y-chromosome dis-tances with Europeans could also be caused by male-specific gene flow among caste populations of differentrank. However, we and others have demonstrated thatthere is little sharing of Y-chromosome haplotypesamong castes of different rank (Bamshad et al. 1998;Bhattacharyya et al. 1999).The affinity of caste populations to Europeans ismore apparent for Y-chromosome biallelic polymor-phisms than Y-chromosome STRs. This could be attrib-uted to the use of different European populations incomparisons using STRs and biallelic polymorphisms.Alternatively, it may reflect, in part, the effects of highmutation rates for the Y-chromosome STRs, whichwould tend to obscure relationships between caste andcontinental populations. A lack of consistent cluster-ing at the continental level has been observed in sev-eral studies of Y-chromosome STRs (Deka et al. 1996;Torroni et al. 1996; de Knijff et al. 1997). The autoso-malAluand biallelic Y-chromosome polymorphisms,in contrast, have a slower rate of drift than Y-chromosome STRs because of a higher effective popu-lation size, and their mutation rate is very low. Thus,the Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms and auto-somalAlumarkers may serve as more stable markers ofworldwide population affinities.Our analysis may help to explain why estimates ofthe affinities of caste groups to worldwide populationshave varied so widely among different studies. Analy-ses of recent caste history based on only mtDNA orY-chromosome polymorphisms clearly would suggestthat castes are more closely related to Asians or to Eu-ropeans, respectively. Furthermore, we attempted tominimize the confounding effect of geographic differ-ences between populations by sampling from a highlyrestricted region of South India. Because of the ubiq-uity of the caste system in India's history, it is reason-able to predict similar patterns in caste populationsliving in other areas. Indeed, any genetic result be-comes more compelling when it is replicated in otherpopulations. Therefore, comparable studies in castepopulations from other regions of India must be com-pleted to test the generality of these results.The dispersal and subsequent growth of Indianpopulations since the Neolithic Age is one of the mostimportant events to shape the history of South Asia.However, the origin and dispersal route of the aborigi-nal inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent is unclear.Our findings suggest a proto-Asian origin of the In-dian-specific haplogroup-M haplotypes. Hap-logroup-M haplotypes are also found at appreciable fre-quencies in some East African populations-18% ofEthiopians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a) and 16% ofKenyans (M. Bamshad and L.B. Jonde, unpubl.). Acomparison of haplogroup-M haplotypes from East Af-rica and India has suggested that this southern routemay have been one of the original dispersal pathwaysof anatomically modern humans out of Africa (Quin-tana-Murci et al. 1999a). Together, these data supportour previous suggestion (Kivisild et al. 1999) that Indiamay have been inhabited by at least two successive latePleistocene migrations, consistent with the hypothesisof Lahr and Foley (1994). It also adds to the growingevidence that the subcontinent of India has been amajor corridor for the migration of people betweenAfrica, Western Asia, and Southeast Asia (Cavalli-Sforzaet al. 1994).It should be emphasized that the DNA variationstudied here is thought to be selectively neutral andthus represents only the effects of population history.These results permit no inferences about phenotypicdifferences between populations. In addition, allelesand haplotypes are shared by different caste popula-tions, reflecting a shared history. Indeed, these find-ings underscore the longstanding appreciation that thedistribution of genetic polymorphisms in India ishighly complex. Further investigation of the spread ofanatomically modern humans throughout South Asiawill need to consider that such complex patterns maybe the norm rather than the exception.METHODSSample CollectionAll studies of South Indian populations were performed withthe approval of the Institutional Review Board of the Univer-sity of Utah, Andhra University, and the government of India.Adult males living in the district of Visakhapatnam, AndhraPradesh, were questioned about their caste affiliations andsurnames and the birthplaces of their parents. Those whowere unrelated to any other subject by at least three genera-tions were considered eligible to participate.We classified caste populations based upon the tradi-tional ranking of these castes byvarna(defined below), occu-pation, and socioeconomic status. According to various San-skrit texts, Hindu populations were partitioned originally intofour categories orvarna: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vysya, and Sudra(Tambia 1973; Elder 1996). Those in eachvarnaperformedoccupations assigned to their category. Brahmins were priests;Kshatriya were warriors; Vysya were traders; and Sudra were toserve the three othervarna(Tambia 1973; Elder 1996). Eachvarnawas assigned a status; Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vysyawere considered of higher status than the Sudra because theBrahmin, Kshatriya, and Vysya are considered the twice-bornGenetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 1001www.genome.org

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castes and are differentiated from all other castes in the castehierarchy. This is the rationale behind classifying them as theupper group of castes (Tambia 1973).The Kapu and the Yadava are called once-born castes thathave traditionally been classified in the Sudra, the lowest ofthe original fourvarna. However, the status of the Sudra wasactually higher than that of a fifthvarna, the Panchama. Thisfifthvarnawas added at a later date to include the so-calleduntouchables, who were excluded from the other fourvarna(Elder 1996). The untouchablevarnaincludes the Mala andMadiga. The position of the Relli in the caste hierarchy issomewhat ambiguous, but they have usually been classified inthe lower caste group. Therefore, prior to the collection of anydata, males from eight different Telugu-speaking castes(n= 265) were ranked into upper (Niyogi and Vydiki Brah-min, Kshatriya, Vysya [n= 80]), middle (Telega and TurpuKapu, Yadava [n= 111]), and lower (Relli, Madiga, Mala[n= 74]) groups (Bamshad et al. 1998). This ranking has beenused by previous investigators (Krishnan and Reddy 1994).After obtaining informed consent,8 mL of whole bloodor 5 plucked scalp hairs were collected from each participant.Extractions were performed at Andhra University using estab-lished methods (Bell et al. 1981).MtDNA PolymorphismsThe mtDNA data consisted of 68, 116, and 73 HVR1 se-quences and 79, 159, and 72 restriction-site haplotypes fromlargely the same individuals in upper, middle, and lowercastes, respectively. These data were compared to data from143 Africans (15 Sotho-Tswana, 7 Tsonga, 14 Nguni, 24 San, 5Biaka Pygmies, 33 Mbuti Pygmies, 9 Alur, 18 Hema, and 18Nande), 78 Asians (12 Cambodians, 17 Chinese, 19 Japanese,6 Malay, 9 Vietnamese, 2 Koreans, and 13 Asians of mixedancestry), and 99 Europeans (20 unrelated males of the FrenchCEPH kindreds, 69 unrelated Utah males of Northern Euro-pean descent, and 10 Poles) (Jorde et al. 1995, 1997). Mito-chondrial sequence data from these 597 individuals are avail-able at: http://www.genome.org/supplemental/.in... addition to our samples, the phylogenetic analysesalso included data from 98 published HVR1 sequences fromtwo castes (48 Havlik and 43 Mukri), and a tribal population(7 Kadar) living in south-western India (Mountain et al. 1995)and restriction-site haplotypes from one caste (62 Lobana)from Northern India, three tribal populations from Northern(12 Tharu and 18 Bhoksa) and Southern (86 Lambadi) India,and 122 individuals from various caste populations in UttarPradesh (Kivisild et al. 1999). Phylogenetic relationships ofHVR1 sequences assigned to haplogroup M were estimated forIndians (this study), Turks (this study), Central Asian popula-tions (Comas et al. 1998), Mongolians (Kolman et al. 1996),Chinese (Horai et al. 1996), and Japanese (Horai et al. 1996;Seo et al. 1998).The mtDNA HVR1 sequence was determined by fluores-cent Sanger sequencing using a Dye terminator cycle sequenc-ing kit (Applied Biosystems) according to the manufacturer'sspecifications (Bamshad et al. 1998). Sequencing reactionswere resolved on an ABI 377 automated DNA sequencer, andsequence data were analyzed using ABI DNA analysis softwareandSEQUENCHERsoftware (Genecodes). To identify mtDNAhaplotypes and haplogroups (a group of haplotypes that sharesome sequence variants), major continent-specific genotypes(Torroni et al. 1994, 1996; Wallace 1995) for the followingpolymorphic mtDNA restriction sites were determined:HpaI3592,DdeI10394,... andHaeII9052.Y-Chromosome and Autosomal PolymorphismsY-chromosome-spec... STRs (DYS19, DYS288, DYS388,DYS389A, DYS390) were amplified using published condi-tions (Hammer et al. 1998). PCR products were separatedon an ABI 377 automated sequencer and scored using ABIGenotypersoftware. Y-chromosome STR data were collectedfrom 622 males including 280 South Indians,200 Africans(Seielstad et al. 1999; this study), 40 Asians, and 102 Europe-ans. Autosomal data were collected from 608 individuals in-cluding 265 South Indians, 155 Africans, 70 Asians, and 118Europeans.The Y-chromosome-specific biallelic polymorphismstested included: DYS188792, DYS194469, DYS211105,DYS221136, DYS257108, DYS287, M3, M4, M9, M12, M15,SRY4064, SRY10831.1, SRY10831.2, p12f2, PN1, PN2, PN3,RPS4Y711, and Tat (Hammer and Horai 1995; Hammer et al.1997, 1998, 2000; Underhill et al. 1997; Zerjal et al. 1997;Karafet et al. 1999). All individuals tested negative for the YAluinsert (DYS287). A complete description of the Y-chromosome STR loci can be found in Kayser et al. (1997). Atable of the biallelic Y-chromosome haplotype frequencies inthe upper, middle, and lower castes is available at http://www.genome.org/supplemental/.for... the Y-chromosome biallelic dataset, comparisonswere made to a different set of worldwide populations includ-ing: East Asians from Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam(n= 460); Western Europeans from Britain and Germany(n= 77); Southern Europeans from Italy and Greece (n= 148);and Eastern Europeans from Russia and Romania (n= 102)(M.F. Hammer, unpubl.). The complete dataset of Indiansconsisted of 55 Brahmin, 111 Yadava and Kapu, and 74 Relli,Mala, and Madiga.Autosomal polymorphisms were amplified using condi-tions specifically optimized for each system. Further informa-tion on these conditions is available at the Web site: http://www.genetics.utah.edu/swatkins/pu... orhttp://www.genome.org/supplemental.... With minor excep-tions caused by typing failures or other causes, the same in-dividuals from each population were used to create eachdataset (i.e., mtDNA, Y chromosome, and autosomal). Thecomplete dataset of genotypes from all 40 autosomal loci isavailable at: http://www.genome.org/supplemental/.stat... AnalysesGenetic distances for Y-chromosome STRs were estimated us-ing the method of Shriver et al. (1995), which assumes a step-wise mutation model. Genetic distances for mitochondrialand autosomal markers were calculated as pairwiseFSTdis-tances, using theARLEQUINpackage (Schneider et al. 1997).For autosomal polymorphisms, Nei's standard distances andtheir standard errors were estimated usingDISPAN(http://www.bio.psu.edu/IMEG); and 90% confidence intervals wereestimated by multiplying the standard error by 1.65. The sig-nificance of theFSTdistances between populations was esti-mated by generating a null distribution of pairwiseFSTdis-tances by permuting haplotypes between populations. Thep-value of the test is the proportion of permutations leadingto anFSTvalue larger than or equal to the observed one. Ge-notypic differentiation was estimated usingGENEPOP(Ray-mond and Rousset 1995) vers. 3.2 (http://www.cefe.cnrs-mop.fr/). The null hypothesis tested is that there is a randomBamshad et al.1002 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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distribution ofKdifferent haplotypes amongrpopulations(the contingency table). All potential states of the contin-gency table are explored with a Markov chain, and the prob-ability of observing a table less than or equally likely to theobserved sample configuration is estimated.Estimates of significance for the correlation between in-terindividual caste rank differences and interindividual auto-somal genetic distances were made by forming twonnma-trices, wherenis the number of individuals. For the first ma-trix, interindividual genetic distances were based on theproportion ofAluinsertions/deletions shared by each pair ofindividuals. To form the second matrix, each individual wasassigned a score according to his rank in the caste hierarchyfor caste groups (i.e., upper caste = 1, middle caste = 2, lowercaste = 3) and also for separate castes (i.e., Brahmin = 1, Ksha-triya = 2, Vysya = 3, Kapu = 4, Yadava = 5, Relli = 6, Mala = 7,and Madiga = 8). An interindividual matrix of score distanceswas formed by comparing the absolute value of the differencebetween the scores of each pair of individuals. The matrix ofgenetic distances was compared to 10,000 permuted matricesof score distances using a Mantel matrix comparison test(Mantel 1967).To illustrate phylogenetic relationships we constructedreduced median (Bandelt et al. 1995) and neighbor-joiningnetworks (Felsenstein 1989). Coalescence times were calcu-lated as in Forster et al. (1996), using the estimator , which isthe average transitional distance from the founder haplotype.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank all participants, the faculty and staff of AndhraUniversity for their discussion and technical assistance, aswell as Henry Harpending for comments and criticisms. Weacknowledge the contributions of an anonymous reviewerwho suggested that the Kshatriya and Vysya be analyzed sepa-rately from the other upper castes. Genetic distances betweenSTRs were estimated by the programDISTNEW, kindly pro-vided by L. Jin. This work was supported by NSF SBR-9514733,SBR-9700729, SBR-9818215, NIH grants GM-59290 and PHSMO1­00064, the Estonian Science Fund (1669 and 2887), andthe Newcastle University small grants committee.The publication costs of this article were defrayed in partby payment of page charges. This article must therefore behereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USCsection 1734 solely to indicate this fact.REFERENCESAnderson, S., Bankier, A.T, Barrell, B.G., de Bruijn, M.H., Coulson,A.R., Drouin, J., Eperon, I.C., Nierlich, D.P., Roe, B.A., Sanger, F.,et al. 1981. Sequence and organization of the humanmitochondrial genome.Nature290:457­465.Balak... V. 1978. A preliminary study of genetic distancesamong some populations of the Indian sub-continent.J. Hum.Evol.7:67­75.---. 1982. Admixture as an evolutionary force in populations ofthe Indian sub-continent. 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Evol.15:427­441.Hammer, M.F., Redd A.J., Wood, E.T., Bonner, M.R., Jarjanazi, H.,Karafet, T., Santachiara-Benerecetti, S., Oppenheim A., Jobling,M.A., Jenkins, T., et al. 2000. Jewish and middle easternnon-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosomebiallelic haplotypes.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.97:6769­6774.Horai, S., Murayama, K., Hayasaka, K., Matsubayashi, S., Hattori, Y.,Fucharoen, G., Harihara, S., Park, K.S., Omoto, K., and Pan, I.H.1996. mtDNA polymorphism in East Asian populations, withspecial reference to the peopling of Japan.Am. J. Hum. Genet.59:579­590.Jorde, L. B., Bamshad, M.J., Watkins, W.S., Zenger, R., Fraley, A.E.,Krakowiak, P.A., Carpenter, K.D., Soodyall, H., Jenkins, T., andRogers, A.R. 1995. Origins and affinities of modern humans: Acomparison of mitochondrial and nuclear genetic data.Am. J.Hum. Genet.57:523­538.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 1003www.genome.org

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Jorde, L.B., Rogers, A.R., Bamshad, M., Watkins, W.S., Krakowiak, P.,Sung, S., Kere, J., and Harpending, H.C. 1997. Microsatellitediversity and the demographic history of modern humans.Proc.Natl. Acad. Sci.94:3100­3103.Jorde, L.B., Watkins, W.S., Bamshad, M.J., Dixon, M.E., Ricker, C.E.,Seielstad, M.T., and Batzer, M.A. 2000. The distribution ofhuman genetic diversity: A comparison of mitochondrial,autosomal, and Y-chromosome data.Am. J. Hum. Genet.66:979­988.Karafet, T.M., Zegura, S.L., Posukh, O., Osipova, L., Bergen, A., Long,J., Goldman, D., Klitz, W., Harihara, S., de Knijff, P., et al. 1999.Ancestral Asian source(s) of New World Y-chromosome founderhaplotypes.Am. J. Hum. Genet.64:817­831.Kayser, M., de Knijff, P., Dieltjes, P., Krawczak, M., Nagy, M., Zerjal,T., Pandya, A., Tyler-Smith, C., and Roewer, L. 1997.Applications of microsatellite-based Y chromosome haplotyping.Electrophoresis18:... 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Genome Research www.genome.org



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sudeep m

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Of course yes. There is not only ethical but also scientific proofs available that we Indians are descendents of the Arayans & the Dravidians.



A recent genetic study conducted by the national geographic society(I had seen that episode) on number of people in India, involving there D.N.A. test. It showed remarkable results.



Consider first of all the Dravidians, who are believed to be the ancient inhibiters of India. When the Human race evolved @ Africa after certain time they tended to discover the world. It got Partitioned into 3 major Sources

1. African

2. European

3. Middle East & India



And it is believed ( after the study & research conducted by NGC)

that the initial human stream to India was a part of that stream whom we call dravidians as of now. I can say this 'cause in the report they showed significant genetic similarity between African & Indian race. Hence they concluded that there was no human life in India until the source came from africa, later which migrated to Sri Lanka, Australia, Indonasia etc.



Now let us talk about the Arayans. It is believed that they are the inhibits of the Mesopotamia civilization, what I initially had called as the Middle East Race ( though there is not a great deal of study supporting this thought). But somewhere I believe in 2500 B.C. they came to India through the golden path pf Mohenjodaro & Inhibited India.



As the report of the NGC suggests that there were no burst of Life

in India & who ever we are, we might be the descendents of either the Dravidians or the Aryan



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Episode Published on the National geographic channel



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PRI

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long ago only tribes used to live but slowly india saw the invasions.First came dravidians they were not a invaders but came here in search of green pastures for they were basicaly farmers so they needed land for it & also for their cattles they were peace loving people.they were highly developed in all sectins as its e.g are seen in MOHANJADARO & HARAPPA CIVILIZIANS. They were also creators of our basic indian cultures in art and other areas .they were farmers so they only relied on rice,vegetables,fruits,milk & its products i.e pure veg.Theyare the one who have developed grt indian langaues i.e TAMIL which is known to be their langauge,they were worshipers of idols forms of god/godess.they were very dominate till ARYANS came & invaded us.all is culture, habits, names,rituals r still seen & many things r still seen.

aryans were rutless invaders they came to india to invade it but seening its richness they stayed here.They drived away the DRAVIDIANS from their land .Fearing them dravidians came & settled down in south indian region giving its name as DRAVIDA NADU i.e country of dravidians.

aryans also had great culture which is seen today also as grt sanskrit language indians great vedas,puranms .

after that both this races devloped here giving us a grt culture which was a devplement of india in that era seeing that culture many of came to india in grt enthusiam & were surprised to see such develped country.



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4.9. THE EVIDENCE FROM PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY



4.9.1. Continuity between castes





Half a century ago, Dr. Ambedkar surveyed the existing data on the physical anthropology of the different castes in his book The Untouchables. He found that the received wisdom of a racial basis of caste was not supported by the data, e.g.: “The table for Bengal shows that the Chandal who stands sixth in the scheme of social precedence and whose touch pollutes, is not much differentiated from the Brahmin (…) In Bombay the Deshastha Brahmin bears a closer affinity to the Son-Koli, a fisherman caste, than to his own compeer, the Chitpavan Brahmin. The Mahar, the Untouchable of the Maratha region, comes next together with the Kunbi, the peasant. They follow in order the Shenvi Brahmin, the Nagar Brahmin and the high-caste Maratha. These results (…) mean that there is no correspondence between social gradation and physical differentiation in Bombay.”70





A remarkable case of differentiation in skull and nose indexes, noted by Dr. Ambedkar, was found to exist between the Brahmin and the (untouchable) Chamar of Uttar Pradesh.71 But this does not prove that Brahmins are foreigners, because the data for the U.P. Brahmin were found to be very close to those for the Khattri and the untouchable Chuhra of Panjab. If the U.P. Brahmin is indeed “foreign” to U.P., he is by no mean . s foreign to India, at least not more than the Panjab untouchables. This confirms the scenario which we can derive from the Vedic and ItihAsa-PurANa literature: the Vedic tradition was brought east from the Vedic heartland by Brahmins who were physically indistinguishable from the lower castes there, when the heartland in Panjab-Haryana at its apogee exported its culture to the whole Aryavarta (comparable to the planned importation of Brahmins into Bengal and the South around the turn of the Christian era). These were just two of the numerous intra-Indian migrations of caste groups.





Recent research has not refuted Ambedkar’s views. A press report on a recent anthropological survey led by Kumar Suresh Singh explains: “English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. ‘Biologically and linguistically, we are very mixed’, says Suresh Singh (…) The report says that the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (…) The sons-of-the-soil theory also stands demolished. The Anthropological Survey of India has found no community in India that can’t remember having migrated from some other part of the country.”72 Internal migration accounts for much of India’s complex ethnic landscape, while there is no evidence of a separate or foreign origin for the upper castes.





Among other scientists who reject the identification of caste (varNa) with race on physical-anthropological grounds, we may cite Kailash C. Malhotra:





“Detailed anthropometric surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions. On the basis of analysis of stature, cephalic and nasal index, H.K. Rakshit (1966) concludes that ‘the Brahmins of India are heterogeneous and suggest incorporation of more than one physical type involving more than one migration of people’.





“A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra on whom 18 metric, 16 scopic and 8 genetic markers were studied, revealed not only a great heterogeneity in both morphological and genetic characteristics but also showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes. P.P. Majumdar and K.C. Malhotra (1974) observed a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to OAB blood group system among 50 Brahmin samples spread over 11 Indian states. The evidence thus suggests that varna is a sociological and not a homogeneous biological entity.”73



4.9.2 Family traits





This general rejection of the racial basis of caste does not exclude that specific castes stand out in their environment by their phenotypical or genotypical characteristics. Firstly, any group that goes on breeding endogamously for generations will have “family traits” recognizable to the regular and sharp observer, at least to a statistically significant extent. This does not mean that these family traits (rarely distinctive enough to be called “racial” traits) are in any way the reason why one caste refuses to intermarry with another caste, as you would have in the case of racial discrimination.





Secondly, intra-Indian migrations have taken place so that certain caste groups stand out by retaining the physical characteristics of their source region’s population for quite a few generations. Thus, the Muslim invasions chased some Rajput castes from western India to the Nepalese borderland, and some Saraswat Brahmins from Kashmir to the Konkan region; geneticists ought to be able to find traces of that history.





It is well-known that the Brahmin communities of Bengal and South India originated in the physical importation of Brahmin families by kings who sought accession to the prestigious Vedic civilization and wanted to give extra religious legitimacy to their thrones. These Brahmin families were brought in from northwestern India where, for obvious geographical reason, people are whiter and closer to the European physical type than in Bengal or the South. (Even so, due to intermarriage and the incorporation of local priesthoods, numerous Brahmins in South India are simply black.) Apart from Brahmins, numerous other caste groups throughout India have histories of immigration, putting them in environments where they differed in genetic profile from their neighbours, e.g. the Dravidian-speaking Oraon tribals of Chotanagpur recall having migrated from Maharashtra along the Narmada river.





The Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra are often mentioned as a caste that stands out by its physical type. Their slightly more “Nordic” build and the occurrence of blue eyes among them look like the perfect evidence for the theory that the Brahmins are the descendents of the Nordic Aryans who invaded India in 1500 BC. In fact, it is only during the initial Islamic onslaught that the Chitpavans migrated from the Afghan borderland to their present habitat.





Nevertheless, the Chitpavan case shows that sometimes, such distinctive family traits do coincide with the difference between the higher or lower incidence of the distinctive traits of the white race, esp. the low pigmentation of the skin or, in this case, the eyes. The difference between castes can in some cases be expressed in terms of the respective distances between their average characteristics and those of the European type. And this is only to be expected given the basic fact that India is a large country with great variation in physical type and lying in the border zone between the major races. The rich biological variety in the Indian chapter of the human species is due to many factors, but so far the Aryan Invasion has not been shown to be one of them.



4.9.3. Mixing of castes





The genetic differential between castes has recently been confirmed in a survey in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.74 The main finding of the survey, conducted by human-geneticists Lynn B. Jorde (University of Utah) and Bhaskara B. Rao and J.M. Naidu (both with Andhra University), concerned the role of inter-caste marriages: men stay in their castes, while women sometimes go and live with a man from another, mostly higher caste. In spite of the definition of caste as an “endogamous group”, the fact is that there has always been a marginal mixing of castes as well. Likewise, even outside the marital framework, upper-class employers (in any society) have made passes at their maid-servants, while prostitutes got impregnated by their higher-class clients, all producing mixed offspring.





Factoring all these marginal mixed-caste births in, the cumulative effect over centuries is that the castes have mixed much more than the theory of caste would lead you to expect. Over many generations, this mixing had to lead to a thorough genetic kinship even between castes of very divergent origins. Given these known sociological facts, the scientists naturally found that genetic traits in the male line (Y chromosome) are stable, those in the female line (mitochondrial DNA) considerably less so. Because inter-caste marriages are mostly between “neighbouring” castes in the hierarchy, the genetic distance between highest and lowest is about one and a half times greater than that between high and middle or between middle and low.





However, none of this requires a policy of racial discrimination nor an Aryan invasion into India: the known history of internal migrations and the general facts about relations between higher and lower classes in all societies can easily account for it.75 Moreover, the observed differences between Indian communities are much smaller than those between Indians collectively and Europeans (or Africans etc.) collectively. A provisional table of the genetic distance between populations shows that North-Indians and South-Indians are indeed very close, much closer than “Aryan” North-Indians and “Aryan” Iranians are to each other.76





Both sides in the debate should realize that this evidence can cut both ways. If an Aryan or other invasion is assumed, this evidence shows that all castes are biologically the progeny of both invaders and natives, though perhaps in different proportions. Conversely, if the genetic distance between two castes is small, this still leaves open the possibility that the castes or their communal identities can nonetheless have divergent origins, even foreign versus native, although these are obscured to the geneticist by centuries of caste mixing.



4.9.4. Tribals and “Caucasians”





The one important general difference between two parts of the population is that between a number of tribes on the one hand, and some other tribes plus the non-tribals on the other. V. Bhalla’s mapping of genetic traits shows that the latter category roughly belongs to the Mediterranean subgroup of the Caucasian race (though by the superficial criterion of skin colour, it can differ widely from the type found in Italy or Greece). incidentally, the term Caucasian as meaning the white race was coined in 1795 by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who believed that the Caucasus region, particularly Georgia, “produces the most beautiful human race”, and that it was the most likely habitat of “the autochthonous, most original forms of mankind”.77 Thus, the typically Caucasian Rhesus-negative factor is “conspicuous by its absence” in the Mongoloid populations of India’s northeast, but the non-tribal populations “show a moderately high frequency of 15% to 20% but not as high as in Europe” of this genetic trait.78





Bhalla lists a number of specific genes which are characteristically strong or weak in given racial types, and finds that they do define certain ethnic sub-groups of India, esp. the Mongoloid tribals of the northeast, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, and the Australoids in the remaining tribal pockets of the south. Everywhere else, including in many tribal areas, the Mediterranean type is predominant, but the present battery of genetic markers was not able to distinguish between subtypes within this population, much less to indicate different waves of entry.





In fact, no “entry” of these Mediterranean Caucasians can be derived from the data, certainly not for the post-Harappan period. According to an older study, they were present even in South India in 2,000 BC at the latest: “The evidence of two racial types, the Mediterranean and the Autochthonous proto-Australoid, recognized in the study of the skeletal remains from the neolithic levels at Brahmagiri, Piklihal, Tekkalakota, Nevasa etc., seems to suggest that there was a thick population consisting mainly of these two races in South India around 2000 BC.”79





The Caucasian race was present in India (like in Europe and the Kurgan area) since hoary antiquity. Kailash Malhotra reports, starting with their geographical spread today: “The Caucasoids are found practically all over the country, though the preferred habitats have been river valleys and plains.”80





In the past, the Caucasian presence was also in evidence: “Although a large number of prehistoric sites have been excavated in India, only a few of them have yielded human osseous remains (…) None of the pre-Mesolithic sites have yielded skeletal material; the earliest remains are around 8,000 years old. An examination of the morphological features of skeletons from sites of the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and iron age periods reveals the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in all the periods, the absence of Mongoloids, and the existence of at least two types of Caucasoids, the dolichocephals and the brachycephals (…) The skeletal evidence thus clearly establishes the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in India for at least 8,000 years.”81





All that can be said, is that the population of India’s northeast is akin to that of areas to India’s north and east, that of the southeast to that of countries further southeast, and the bulk of the Indian population to that of areas to India’s west. Probably a large demographic expansion from India’s northwest to the east and south took place during and at the end of the Harappan period (2,000 BC). It is logical to infer that the populations of the Mediterranean type were more concentrated in the northwest prior to that time; but it does not follow that they came from the outside. India’s northwest simply happened to be the easternmost area of Caucasian habitation, just like India’s northeast happens to be the frontier of the Mongoloid type’s habitat.





For politically correct support in denying the racial divide between tribals and non-tribals, we may cite the Marxist scholar S.K. Chatterjee, who dismissed the notion of distinct races in India, be they Aryan, Dravidian, Mongoloid or Austro-Asiatic. He called the Indian people a “mixed people, in blood, in speech and in culture”.82





Though the Christian missionaries have been the champions of tribal distinctness, Christian author P.A. Augustine writes about the Bhil tribals: “The Bhils have long ceased to be a homogeneous people. In the course of millennia, various elements have fused to shape the community. During their long and tortuous history, other aboriginal groups which came under their sway have probably merged with them, losing their identity. One can see a wide range of physical types and complexion. The variation in complexion is very striking indeed, ranging between fair to quite dark-skinned (…) There is no consensus among scholars on the exact ethnic character of the Bhils, They have been alternatively described as proto-Australoid, Dravidian or Veddoid.”83 The same racial “impurity” counts for most Indians, tribal as well as non-tribal. While not by itself disproving the Aryan invasion, it should prove even to invasionists that all Indians are descendents of both indigenous and so-called invader populations.



4.9.5. Language and genetics





While it is wrong to identify a speech community with a physical type, it is also wrong to discard physical anthropology completely as a source of information on human migrations in pre-literate times. Lately, findings have been published which suggest that, for all the racial mingling that has taken place, there is still a broad statistical correlation between certain physical characteristics and nations, even language groups.





Thus, the percentage of individuals with the Rhesus-negative factor is the highest (over 25%) among the Basques, a nation in the French-Spanish borderland which has preserved a pre-IE language. Other pockets of high incidence of Rh-neg. (which is nearly non-existent among the Bantus, Austroloids and Mongoloids) are in the same part of the world: western Morocco, Scotland and, strangely, the Baltic area, or apparently those backwater regions least affected by immigrations of the first Neolithic farmers (from the Balkans and Anatolia), the Indo-Europeans, and in Morocco also the Arabs.





Another European nation which stands out, at least to the discerning eye of the population geneticist, is the Sami (Lapp) population of northern Scandinavia: when contrasted genetically with the surrounding populations, the Sami genetic make-up “points to kinship with the peoples of North Siberia” eventhough they now resemble the Europeans more than the native Siberians.84 This confirms the suspicion of an Asian origin for the Uralic-speaking peoples of which the Sami people is one.





Where a small group of people have spread out over a vast area and lived in isolation ever since, as has happened in large parts of America in the past 20,000 years, genetic differentiation and linguistic differentiation have gone hand in hand, and the borderline between genetic types usually coincides with a linguistic borderline: “Joseph Greenberg distinguishes three language families among the Native Americans: Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. (…) According to Christy Turner of Arizona University, Native American dental morphology indicates three groups, which coincide with Greenberg’s. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza from Stanford investigated a variegated set of human genes. His results equally point in the direction of Greenberg’s classification.”85





Linguistic difference between populations may coincide with genetic differences; and likewise, linguistic mixing may coincide with genetic mixing. A perfect illustration is provided by Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-Apartheid struggle and belonging to the Xhosa nation. His facial features are more Khoi (Hottentot) than Bantu, and his language, Xhosa, happens to be a Bantu language strongly influenced by the Khoi-San (Hottentot-Bushman) languages, most strikingly by adopting the click sounds. In this case, genetic mixing and linguistic mixing have gone hand in hand.





However, in and around the area of IE expansion, a notorious crossroads of migrating peoples, the remaining statistical correlation between genetic traits and language groups is less important than the evidence for the opposite phenomenon: languages spreading across genetic frontiers. In India, the only neat racial division which coincides with a linguistic borderline is between the mainland and the Andamans: though so-called Negrito features are dimly visible in the population of Orissa and surrounding areas, the pure Negrito type is confined to the Andamans, along with the Andamanese language group. For the rest, in India, like in Central Asia or Europe, i.e. in areas with lots of migration and interaction between diverse peoples, genetic and linguistic divisions only coincide by exception.





Thus, the Altaic languages are spoken by the Mongolians, eponymous members of the Mongoloid race, and by the Turks, who have mixed so thoroughly with their Persian, Armenian, Greek and Slavic neighbours that they now belong to the Caucasian race. The Hungarians are genetically closer to their Slavic and German neighbours than to their linguistic cousins in the Urals. India being the meeting-place (or rather, mixing-place) of Mongoloid, Caucasian and Austroloid racial strands, it is naturally impossible to identify the speakers of the different Indian language-groups with different races.





Asked whether there are “concordances between genetic data and languages”, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, the world’s leading population geneticist, explains: “Yes, very much so. Our genealogical tree [of genetic traits] corresponds remarkably well with the table of linguistic families. There are a few exceptions e.g. the Lapps, genetically rather European, have preserved the language they spoke in their Siberian-Uralic homeland. The Hungarians, similarly, speak an Uralic language while being predominantly European. In the late 9th century AD, the Magyar invaders in Hungary, then called Pannonia, imposed their language on the natives. (…) What counts from a genetic viewpoint, is the number of invaders relative to the natives. As the Hungarians were not very numerous, they left only a feeble genetic imprint on the population.”86 So, the replacement of native languages by those of less civilized but stronger invaders is a real possibility (it is also what the Greeks did to the Old Europeans), though it becomes less probable in proportion to the size and the cultural superiority of the native population.





The reason why the replacement of native languages by the languages of genetically distinguishable invaders remains relatively exceptional, is this: “In a traditional culture, language is transmitted vertically from parents to children, just like the genes. But in some conquests or in civilizations with schools, there is also horizontal transmission and substitution of languages. The Romans organized schools in their part of Europe and thereby managed to replace the native languages by their own. But this type of phenomenon is relatively recent. In 90% of its history, mankind consisted of hunter-gatherers speaking tribal languages. That is why the genetic tree has preserved a strong concordance with the linguistic tree.”87





A typical example are the Basques: “The Basque language is the direct descendent of a language which must have arrived along with modem mankind, say 30,000 years ago. It is [in Europe] the only pre-Indo-European language which has been preserved. Why? Probably because the Basque people had a very strong social cohesion. Genetically too, the Basques are different. They have mixed very little. All the other Europeans have lost their original language and adopted an Indo-European language.”88





So, the Basques are both biologically and linguistically the straight descendants of Old Europeans. Most other Europeans are biologically the progeny of the non-IE-speaking Old Europeans, with some admixture of the Asian tribes who originally brought the IE languages into Europe. These immigrants may have differed somewhat from the average European type, into which their smaller number got genetically drowned over the centuries. Linguistically, most non-Basque (and non-Uralic) Europeans are the progeny, through adoption, of the IE-speaking invaders.



4.9.6. The original “Aryan race”





Is there anything we can say about the ethnic identity of the nomads or migrants who spread the early IE languages, if only to help physical-anthropologists to recognize them when found at archaeological sites? Competent authorities have warned against the “semi-conscious prejudices on original genetic characteristics of the Indo-Europeans: they are supposed to be blond and blue-eyed”.89 This prejudice has even been reinforced recently by the discovery of blond-haired mummies of presumably IE-speaking people in the Xinjiang province of China.90





The fact that the IE speech community includes people of diverse race, from the dark-skinned Sinhalese to the white-skinned Scandinavians, definitely implies that the spread of the language cannot be equated with the spread of a racial type. Languages can and do migrate across racial boundaries. That the IE languages crossed racial frontiers during their expansion accords well with established perspectives on the spread of IE, e.g. by I.M. Diakonov:





“These expanding tribes met local, poor and hungry sparser populations, often consisting of hunters and cattle-breeders. The migrants started to merge with the local population, giving them their language and cultural achievements. But in some cases, the local population may have been larger in numbers than the migrants. In some historical situations the language of the minority, if it was widely used and understandable on a vast territory, could be accepted as lingua franca, and later as the common language, particularly if it was a language of cattle-breeders (cf. the examples of the Semites and the Turks). The area of the newly created population became itself a centre of population spread, and so on. Bloody conquests could take place in some instances; in others it was not the case, but the important thing to realize is that what migrated were languages, not peoples, although there had to be at least a handful of users of the languages, though not necessarily native speakers.”91





On the other hand, the fact that the PIE-speaking community must have been a fairly small ethnic group, living together and marrying mostly within the community, implies that they must have belonged collectively to a fairly precisely circumscribed physical type. Even if you throw together people from all races, after a few generations of interbreeding they will develop a common and distinctive physical type, with atavistic births of people resembling the pure type of one of the ancestral races becoming rarer and rarer. Therefore, in the days before intercontinental travel and migrations, a speech community was normally also a. kinship group (or, in strict caste societies, a conglomerate of kinship groups) presenting a fairly homogeneous physical type.





During the heyday of the racial theories, a handful of words in Greek sources were taken to mean that the ancient Indo-Europeans were fair-haired and had a tall Nordic-looking build. In Homer’s description, the Greek heroes besieging Troy were fair-haired. The Egyptians described the “Sea Peoples” from the Aegean region (and even their Libyan co-invaders, presumably Berber-speaking) as fair-haired. The Chinese described the Western (Tokharic) barbarians likewise.





However, the incidence of Nordic looks was not necessarily overwhelming. In classical Greek writings, the Thracians and Macedonians (most notably Alexander the Great), whose language belonged to an extinct Balkanic branch of the IE family, are mentioned as being fair-haired; apparently most Greeks were by then dark enough to notice this fair colour as a trait typical of their “barbaric” northern neighbours. The Armenians have a legend of their own king Ara the Blond and his eventful personal relationship with the Assyrian queen Sammuramat/Semiramis (about 810 BC), who is known to have fought Urartu (the pre-IE name of Armenia, preserved in the Biblical mountain name Ararat). The use of “the blond” as a distinctive epithet confirms the existence of fair-haired people in Armenia, but also their conspicuousness and relative rarity.





All this testimony, along with the Xinjiang mummies and the presence of Nordic looks in the IE-speaking (Dardic/Kafiri) tribes in the Subcontinent’s northwestern valleys, does suggest a long-standing association between some branches of the IE family and the genes which program their carriers to have fair hair and blue eyes. These traits give a comparative advantage for survival in cold latitudes: just as melanine protects against the excessive intake of ultraviolet rays in sunny latitudes, lack of melanine favours the intake of ultraviolet. This segment of the sunrays is needed in the production of vitamin D, which in turn is needed in shaping the bones; its deficiency causes rachitis and makes it difficult for women to birth - a decisive handicap in the struggle for life. The link between northern latitudes and the light colour of skin, hair and eyes in many IE-speaking communities only proves what we already knew: IE is spoken in fairly northern latitudes including Europe and Central Asia. Yet, none of this proves the fair-haired and blue-eyed point about the speakers of the original proto-language PIE.





Suppose, with the non-invasion theorists, that the original speakers of IE had been Indians with dark eyes and dark hair; then, according to I.M. Diakonov: “if this population had migrated together with the languages, blue-eyed Balts could not have originated from it. Blue eyes, as a recessive characteristic, are met everywhere from Europe to the Hindu Kush. But nobody can be blue-eyed if neither of his/her parents had blue-eyed ancestors, and a predominantly blue-eyed population cannot originate from ancestors with predominantly black eyes.”92





This allows for two possible scenarios. Either the PIE speakers were indeed blue-eyed and fair-haired: that is the old explanation, preferred by the Nazis.93 Or the blue-eyed people of Europe have not inherited their IE languages from their biological ancestors, but changed language at some point along the genealogical line, abandoning the pre-IE Old European language of their fair ancestors in favour of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic etc., based on the language of the invaders from Asia. The latter scenario would agree with I.M. Diakonov’s observation: “The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles’ migration of the tribes themselves.”94





That this is far from impossible is demonstrated by the Turks who, after centuries of mixing with subdued natives of West Asia and the Balkans, have effectively crossed the racial borderline from yellow to white. But against using this Turkish scenario as a simile for the story of IE dispersal, one could point out that some eastern Turkic people, such as the Kirghiz and the Yakut, are still very much Mongoloids. However, far from forming a contrast with the IE state of affairs, this makes the simile more splendid: if IE spread from a non-white to a white population, it also remained the language of numerous non-whites (though technically “Caucasians”), viz. the Indians. On the Eurasian continent, South-Asians still constitute more than half of the wider IE speech community; the Indian Republic alone has more IE speakers than the whole of Europe.





It is perfectly possible that the PIE language and culture were developed after a non-white group of colonists from elsewhere settled among and got racially immersed in a larger whitish population. As we saw in our speculations about IE-Austronesian kinship and about Puranic history, it is at least conceivable that Aryan culture in India started after “Manu” and his dark-skinned cohorts fled the rising sea level by moving up the Ganga and settling high and dry in the upper Ganga basin, whence their progeny conquered areas to the northwest with ever whiter-skinned and lighter-haired populations: the Saraswati basin, the upper Indus basin, the Oxus riverside, the peri-Caspian region. By the time these Indian colonists settled in eastern Europe with their Kurgans, their blackness had been washed off by generations of intermarriage with white people of the type attested by the Xinjiang mummies. (Likewise, their material culture had been thoroughly adapted to their new habitat, hence de-indianized.)





So, it is perfectly possible that the Aryan heartland lay farther to the southeast, and that, like eastern Europe in the later 5th millennium BC, the Panjab area a few centuries earlier was already a first area of colonization, bringing people of a new and whiter physical type into the expanding Aryan speech community which was originally darker. While the Panjabi is physically very similar to the European, the Bihari, Oriya or Nepali is markedly less so, and yet it is possible that he represents more closely the ultimate Proto-Indo-European.



4.9.7. The race of the Vedic Aryans





As for the Vedas, the only ones whom they describe as “golden-haired” are the resplendent lightning gods Indra and Rudra and the sun-god Savitar; not the Aryans or Brahmins. At the same time, several passages explicitly mention black hair when referring to Brahmins.95 These texts are considerably earlier than the enigmatic passage in Patanjali describing Brahmins as golden- or tawny-haired (piNgala and kapisha).96 Already one of Patanjali’s early commentators dismissed this line as absurd. To the passage from the grammarian Panini which describes Brahmins as “brown-haired”, A.A. Macdonnell notes (apparently against contemporary claims to the contrary): “All we can say is that the above-mentioned expressions do not give evidence of blonde characteristics of the ancient Brahmans.”97 Considering that Patanjali was elaborating upon the work of Panini, could it have anything to do with Panini’s location in the far northwest, where lighter hair must have been fairly common?





On the other hand, demons or Rakshasas, so often equated with the “dark-skinned aboriginals”, have on occasion been described as red- or tawny-haired (also piNgala or kapisha, the same as Patanjali’s Brahmins).98 Deviating from the usual Indian line that all these demon creatures are but supernatural entities, let us for once assume that they do represent hostile tribals racially distinct from the Vedic Aryans. In that case, reference can only be to certain northwestern tribals, among whom fair and red hair are found till today, indicating that they at least partly descended from a fair-haired population. If the Vedic Aryans were dark-haired and migrated from inside India to the northwest, these odd coloured hairs may have struck them as distinctive.





In modern Anglo-Hindu publications, such as the Amar Chitra KathA religious comics, Rakshasas are always depicted as dark-skinned, a faithful application of the AIT. Yet, there are instances in Vedic literature where “blackness” is imputed to people whom we know to have had the same (if not a lighter) skin colour than the Vedic Aryans: the Dasas and Dasyus, as Asko Parpola has shown, were the Iranian cousins and neighbours of the Vedic Aryans. Physical (as opposed to metaphorical) blackness or more generally skin colour was never a criterion by which the Vedic Aryans classified their neighbours and enemies; that precisely is why we have no direct testimony on the Vedic Aryans’ own skin or hair colour except through a few ambiguous, indirect and passing references.



4.9.8. Evidence of immigration?





A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola): “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”99 The inflow which they do find, around the turn of the Christian era, is apparently that of the well-known Shaka and Kushana invasions.





Kenneth A.R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data: “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.”100





Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan)101 culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India: “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”102





And so, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, one of the great pioneers of the AIT, may be right after all. Indeed, even he had remarked that “the anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappa remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day.”103 If anything Aryan really invaded, it was at any rate not an Aryan race.





There are no indications that the racial composition and distribution of the Indian population has substantially changed since the start of the IE dispersal, which cannot reasonably be placed much earlier than 6,000 BC. This means that even if the IE language is imported, as claimed by the AIT, the IE-speaking people in India are nevertheless biologically native to India. Or in practice: the use of the terms “aboriginal” and “indigenous” (AdivAsI) as designating India’s tribals, with the implication that the non-tribals are the non-indigenous progeny of invaders, has to be rejected and terminated, even if the Urheimat of the IE languages is found to lie outside India.





One of the ironies of Indian identity politics is that those most vocal in claiming an “aboriginal” identity may well be the only ones whose foreign origin has been securely established. The Adivasi movement is strongest in the areas where Christian missionaries were numerously present since the mid-19th century to nourish it, viz. in Chotanagpur and the North-East. Most tribals there speak languages belonging to the Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan families. Their geographical origin, unlike that of IE which is still being debated, is definitely outside India, viz. in Southeast Asia c.q. in northern China.





The Tibeto-Burmese tribals of Nagaland and other northeastern statelets are among India’s most recent immigrants. Many of those tribes have entered during the last millennium, which is very late by Indian standards. As for the Munda tribes in Chotanagpur, it is not even certain that the ancestors of the present tribes are the authors of the attested Neolithic cultures in their present habitat. In H.D. Sankalia’s words: “It is an unanswered but interesting question whether any of the Aboriginal tribes of these regions were the authors of the Neolithic culture.”104 Those who want to give the Austro-Asiatic peoples of India a proud heritage, will find more of it in China and Indochina than in India, e.g. in the Bronze age culture of 2300 BC in Thailand.





On the other hand, biologically the Indian Austro-Asiatics (unlike the Nagas) are much closer to the other Indians than to their linguistic cousins in the east. Exactly like the Indo-Aryans in the Aryan invasion hypothesis, they are predominantly Indian people speaking a foreign-originated language: “Whereas the now Dravidian-speaking tribals of Central and South India can be considered to be descendents of the original inhabitants of India, who gave up their original languages in favour of Dravidian, Tibeto-Chinese speaking tribals (Northeast India) and Austro-Asiatic speaking ones (East India) immigrated into India since ancient historical times. Most likely they came in several waves from Southern China (Tibeto-Chinese speakers) and from Southeast Asia (Austro-Asiatic speakers) respectively. Without doubt these immigrating groups met with ancient Indian populations, which were living already on their migration routes, and thus one cannot exclude some cultural and also genetic contacts between immigrants and original inhabitants of India, at least at some places.”105





In the case of Indo-Aryan, by contrast, its speakers have obviously also mixed with other communities, but its foreign origin has not been firmly established.



4.9.9. Conclusion





We may conclude with a recent status quaestionis by archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of Wisconsin University at Madison: “Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.”106





We repeat that physical anthropology is going through rapid developments due to the availability of new techniques, and we don't want to jump to conclusions in this moving field. But we notice that whatever new technique is applied and from whichever new angle the question is approached, it has so far consistently failed to yield evidence of the fabled Aryan Invasion..



Source(s):



http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books...



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Indians are decendents of 2 races which is very evident from the visible features itself.

It can be easily proved with DNA tests if conducted. But due to the fact that India has already so much to fight with that one more issue is not required to kill hundreds in the name of race now, religion, cast...



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Several of you may already be aware of the debate that has now been current for several years around the theory of “Aryan Invasion of India”. Based on archaeological evidence, new research and fresh examination of existing evidence (and ********* away the colonial bias of earlier interpretations), it now appears that the theory was fundamentally flawed and is difficult to justify in the light of new findings.



I was therefore very pleased when I read “The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy”, By David Frawley . It very articulately sets the argument for considering a revision of the whole theory and I have attempted a summary below. The original essay in its entirety can be accessed at http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/an...

For those of you who are not aware of the tremendous work that is being done by Dr Frawley, please have a look at http://www.vedanet.com/index.html...



As Dr Frawley says in his introduction, although many of the theories that British historians postulated had a colonial bias [1], they are still accepted by many Hindus, although “a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.” To quote further,



“One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.” Dr Frawley makes the point that colour was the dominant influence in European theories of race which projected Europeans as belonging to a “white” (and therefore superior) race who had the duty and obligation to bear the burden of the “dark” (therefore inferior) natives.



This mental bias was then transposed on the (mistaken) theory that the “fair-skinned” Aryans had “subjugated/conquered” the “dark-skinned” indigenous people who had subsequently migrated southwards.



Around the same time, research into Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages revealed surprisingly large similarities and it became obvious that Indo-European languages and Sanskrit shared a similar origin. It was of course automatically assumed that, “the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been ‘white’”. The Europeans of course could not even consider the possibility that “their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. (Further) As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invaders of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.”



This “racial interpretation” was carried further and applied to explain the reference in Vedas to the fight between “light” and “darkness”. This was “naturally” assumed to be a battle between light-skinned Aryans and dark-skinned Dravidians. The fact that most religions in the world (and most mythological references) speak about the battle between light and darkness (as a metaphor for good and evil) was conveniently ignored.



This projection of racism onto the ancient history of India was further extended to “explain” the caste system. The reference in Vedas to “Brahmins…(being) white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black” was misinterpreted from its original context of referring to “gunas” and was used to conclude that Brahmins were originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras [2]



The fact that this theory flew in the face of empirical evidence (where are the red and yellow-coloured castes in India?) was also conveniently ignored.



Dr Frawley then points out the extent to which the ideas were misinterpreted:

“The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such ’scholar- ship’ can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day. This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race?



Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have different colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saraswati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere? In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?



At the same time (circa 19th century), although several scholars (including Max Muller) did state that “Aryan” was not a racial term and there was no evidence of it being used as such (either in the Vedas or other ancient texts), these views were largely ignored.



As Dr Frawley states, “We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical characteristics. The term Aryan means “noble” or “spiritual”, and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.”



If one looks at recent archaeological evidence, the theory of “Aryan Invasion” becomes even less tenable.



Research on the racial profiles of the original Indus Valley[3] inhabitants shows similarities to the inhabitants of North India of the present day. In view of this, it is hard to imagine that any large scale or significant “invasion” took place into the region in the last 4000 years. Even if it did, it must have been so far back that it has no relevance (or bearing on) what we know today about Hindu (Indian) culture.



As Dr Frawley accurately points out, “the idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch.



The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically both the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharashtra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race.



Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy. Nor is the Caucasian race the “white” race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The pre-dominant Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color…”



Dr Frawley then examines the evidence and the theory of there being significant differences in religion, language and ancient texts between the two “races”, Aryan and Dravidian. In each case, he finds that either the theory is not based on empirical evidence and/or it uses selective observations to fit the conclusion of two different “races”.



To summarise, the theory of two distinct races (Aryan and Dravidian) is neither tenable on empirical evidence nor on religious, linguistic and “cultural” grounds.



He then suggests that people in the South should not consider themselves as “Dravids” and as being different and distinct from the ancient Vedic culture. Nor is there any reason for those in the North to believe that they are the true inheritors of the “Aryan legacy” for there is no such legacy and no evidence of any distinct, culturally superior race.



In his words, “What is necessary is to assert…(that)…the Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seeking). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.”



********



THE TRUE ARCHITECTS of HARRAPAN (SARASWATI RIVER) CIVILISATION



Next, Dr Frawley refers to a number of separate reports and research which indicates that the Indus Valley Civilization may have actually been established by the Dravidians and the Aryan Invasion theory may have been based on half-baked evidence and a blinkered view of progress made in ancient India long before the Christian era. Thus,



“Dravidians, whose descendents still live in Southern India, established the first city communities, in the Indus valley, introduced irrigation schemes, developed pottery and evolved a well ordered system of government.” (Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas, 1970)



Clyde Ahmad Winters, who has written extensively on Dravidian origins (has) commented, “Archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Dravidians were the founders of the Harappan culture which extended from the Indus Valley through northeastern Afghanistan, on into Turkestan. The Harappan civilization existed from 2600-1700 BC. The Harappan civilization was twice the size the Old Kingdom of Egypt. In addition to trade relations with Mesopotamia and Iran, the Harappan city states also had active trade relations with the Central Asian peoples.”



Professor Klaus Klostermaier in ‘Questioning the Aryan Invasion Theory and Revising Ancient Indian History’ (has) commented: “India had a tradition of learning and scholarship much older and vaster than the European countries that, from the sixteenth century onwards, became its political masters. Indian scholars are rewriting the history of India today. One of the major points of revision concerns the so called ‘Aryan invasion theory’, often referred to as ‘colonial-missionary’, implying that it was the brainchild of conquerors of foreign colonies who could not but imagine that all higher culture had to come from outside ‘backward’ India, and who likewise assumed that a religion could only spread through a politically supported missionary effort.While not buying into the more sinister version of this revision, which accuses the inventors of the Aryan invasion theory of malice and cynicism, there is no doubt that early European attempts to explain the presence of Indians in India had much to with the commonly held Biblical belief that humankind originated from one pair of humans- Adam and Eve to be precise …”



Hinduism Today concluded in Rewriting Indian History - Hindu Timeline: “Although lacking supporting scientific evidence, this (Aryan Invasion) theory, and the alleged Aryan-Dravidian racial split, was accepted and promulgated as fact for three main reasons.

· It provided a convenient precedent for Christian British subjugation of India.

· It reconciled ancient Indian civilisation and religious scripture with the 4000 BCE Biblical date of Creation.

· It created division and conflict between the peoples of India, making them vulnerable to conversion by Christian missionaries.”



“Scholars today of both East and West believe the Rig Veda people who called themselves Aryan were indigenous to India, and there never was an Aryan invasion. The languages of India have been shown to share common ancestry in ancient Sanskrit and Tamil. Even these two apparently unrelated languages, according to current “super-family” research, have a common origin: an ancient language dubbed Nostratic.”



Finally, Dr Frawley provides some background and an explanation of how the Aryan Invasion Theory was conceived and how it became the accepted wisdom.



In his own words, “One of the most interesting puzzles in archaeology, and one that hasn’t really been completely answered yet, concerns the story of the supposed Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent.



The story goes like this: The Aryans were a tribe of IndoEuropean-speaking, horse-riding nomads living in the arid steppes of Eurasia. Sometime around 1700 BC, the Aryans invaded the ancient urban civilizations of the Indus Valley, and destroyed that culture. The Indus Valley civilizations were far more civilized than any horse-back nomad, having had a written language, farming capabilities, and led a truly urban existence. Some 1,200 years after the supposed invasion, the descendants of the Aryans, so they say, wrote the classic Indian literature called the Vedic manuscripts.



Hitler, or more specifically, Hitler’s pet archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna (1958-1931), used this idea to put forward the Aryans as a master race of Indo-Europeans, who were supposed to be Nordic in appearance and directly ancestral to the Germans.



The problem is, most if not all of this story - “Aryans” as a cultural group, invasion from the arid steppes, Nordic appearance, the Indus Civilization being destroyed, and, certainly not least, the Germans being descended from them - may not be true at all.



The historical basis of this theory was an account of Indian culture by French missionary Abbe Dubois (1770 – 1848) who was driven by the need to fit what he saw with the Biblical myths of Noah and the Great Flood. He also authored some poorly translated versions of the existing literature.



His work was translated into English in 1897 by the East India Company, prefaced by Max Muller and became the basis of the Aryan Invasion Theory.



When excavations in Mohenjo-daro and other sites revealed a far advanced culture, instead of using this evidence to bury the Aryan Invasion Theory, it was ingenuously incorporated to confirm to the existing hypothesis.



Thus it was assumed that the Harappa civilisation must have been destroyed by an “invasion of people from Europe” who then went on to create the second great civilization of India.



Note that instead of admitting that the Aryan Invasion Theory may not be true and there may have been continuity in the civilization and culture for the past five thousand years, British historians used the evidence to confirm to the hypothesis of a superior race invading India.



As Dr Frawley says, “It turns out that there are serious problems with this argument. There are no references to an invasion in the Vedic manuscripts; and the word “Arya” means “superior being” as an honorific, not as a superior cultural group. Secondly, recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Indus civilization was shut down by droughts combined with a devastating flood, not a violent confrontation. Recent archaeological evidence also shows that most of the so-called “Indus River” valley peoples lived in the Sarasvati River, which is mentioned in the Vedic manuscripts as a homeland. And, there is no biological or archaeological evidence of a massive invasion of people of a different race.”



And he concludes by saying, “Born from a colonial mentality, corrupted by a Nazi propaganda machine, the Aryan invasion theory is finally undergoing radical reassessment by Indian archaeologists and their colleagues, using the Vedic documents themselves, additional linguistic studies, and physical evidence revealed through archaeological studies. Indian cultural history is an ancient and complex one, and one that only time will teach us.”



I would add to that by saying that we need to do more to make everyone aware of these biases in the “history” that continues to be taught in schools and colleges even today. And although a generation or two has grown up with this warped colonial-view of Indian history, it is never too late.



P.S. As I was summarising this, I was made aware of a recent change that the BBC made on its website in the section on Hinduism (see “The Aryan Invasion Theory - Why is the theory no longer accepted?” http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/... ).



I was very pleased to see that even the BBC is now coming around to the view that the “Theory of Aryan Invasion” was a result of poor research based on evidence that has since been discredited and based on misinterpretations of archaeological, linguistic and ethnological observations.



********



Footnotes:

[1] - in the sense that most of them sought to perpetuate colonial myths, an example being that ancient India had no art or culture to speak of and most of the developments in these areas happened with the advent of the Mughals



[2] - note that what these colours actually signify are “the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna).”



[3] – (Indus Valley culture) which should more properly be characterised as “Saraswati culture” since its centre was not Indus Valley but the ancient river “Saraswati” which dried up around 1900 BC





Fri 7 Oct 2005

Excerpts from “Rage and Pride” by Oriana Fallaci



Source(s):



http://hindudharma.wordpress.com/2005/10...



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dinoo c

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The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.



Thus there is no proof that we are descendents of aryan and dravidian race



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dawn g

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The earliest inhabitants of India were Austro-Asiatic hunter-gatherer tribes dating from 50,000 years ago, and spoke languages of the Austro-Asiatic family. In fact, languages from that family survive to this day in scattered pockets all over South Asia - Sora in Tamil Nadu; Nihali, a language isolate in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh and Burushaski (another language isolate) in Pakistan. The descendants of these people are known today as Adivasis or as Adi-Dravidas. The animist worship practices of the Adivasis are often wrongly subsumed under Hinduism.

The Dravidian Influx

Dravidians inflexed into India starting 9,000 years ago from a point of origin believed to be in modern-day Iraq. They spread all over modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh Unlike the hunter-gatherer Adivasis, the Dravidians were agriculturists. Since agriculture can support populations up to 50 times the size of hunter-gatherers, the Dravidians soon had bigger populations relative to the Adivasis.

To this day Dravidian language speaking communities exist all over India and even in Pakistan and Bangladesh. In fact, the biggest Dravidian language in Pakistan is Brahui - it is also spoken in parts of Afghanistan. The language uses the Nastaliq script and has a good body of literature in it.

Many of Hinduism's beliefs - especially the life-after-life cycles - as well as gods and goddesses originated among Dravidian and pre- Dravidian communities.

Till 2,000 years ago, a Dravidian speaking community existed in Basra in modern-day Iraq. Referred in the Bible as the Elamites, they were among the last Dravidian languages to become extinct in that part of the world.

The Aryan Influx

Starting 3,500 years ago, pastoral nomadic Aryan tribes originating from the Russian Steppes swept into South Asia. Their influx, which lasted centuries, was gradual compared with the human lifetime, but was swift on a historical time scale. Most likely the influx was peaceful; skirmishes were likely isolated ones.

If the Mohenjo-Daro civilization dates from before the Aryan influx, then in all likelihood it was Dravidian. If, however it peaked during the Aryan influx, it must doubtless have had Aryan influences.

In all likelihood, the Aryan agriculture technology was superior in some respects to the Dravidian technology. Aryan agricultural practices may have permitted them to support bigger populations than the Dravidian ones, hence the Aryan migrations in search of arable land.



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Naresh C

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I had prefer to be called an Indian without being labelled either of Aryan or dravidian race. This division is for politician and suits their evil designs.



We have serious problem like poverty, fundamentalism, power, road, lack of development etc to tackle.



In any case these topics have become only for discussions by historians with common man being preoccupied with meeting his day to day requirement of life. Both Aryan and Dravidian are facing the same common problem without race barrier.



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ravi k

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Yes



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HITLER

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YES .we r the decends of these cultures & race . 4500 yrs ago these races travelled below the himalayas & setelled 2 its south. the proofs r in the southern temples of rameshwaram.



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anjali

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The term aryan has been applied to those people who occupied the plains between the Caspian and Black Seas. The hypothesis is that they began to migrate around the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Some went north and northwest, some went westward settling in parts of the Middle East, while others traveled to India through the Indus Valley. Those that are said to have come into India were the “invading Aryans.”



The Vedic literature establishes a different scenario. They present evidence that ancient, pre-historical India covered a much broader area, and that the real Aryans were not invaders from the north into the Indus region, but were the original residents who were descendants of Vedic society that had spread over the world from the area of India. Let us remember that the term aryan has been confused with meaning light or light complexion. However, Aryan refers to Arya, or a clear consciousness toward God, not white or white people. In the Vedic sutras, the word aryan is used to refer to those who are spiritually oriented and of noble character. The Sanskrit word aryan is linguistically related to the word harijana (pronounced hariyana), meaning one related to God, Hari. Therefore, the real meaning of the name aryan refers to those people related to the spiritual Vedic culture. It has little to do with those immigrants that some researchers have speculated to be the so-called “invading Aryans.” Aryan refers to those who practice the Vedic teachings and does not mean a particular race of people. Therefore, anyone can be an Aryan by following the clear, light, Vedic philosophy, while those who do not follow it are non-Aryan. Thus, the name Aryan, as is generally accepted today, has been misapplied to a group of people who are said to have migrated from the north into India.



Some call these people Sumerians, but L. A. Waddell, even though he uses the name, explains that the name Sumerian does not exist as an ethnic title and was fabricated by the modern Assyriologists and used to label the Aryan people. And Dr. Hall, in his book Ancient History of the Near East, says that there is an anthropological resemblance between the Dravidians of India and the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, which suggests that the group of people called the Sumerians actually were of Indian descendants. With this information in mind, it is clear that the real Aryans were the Vedic followers who were already existing throughout India and to the north beyond the Indus region.



To help understand how the Aryan influence spread through the world, L. A. Waddell explains that the Aryans established the pre-historic trade routes over land and sea from at least the beginning of the third millennium B.C., if not much earlier. Wherever the Aryans went, whether in Egypt, France, England, or elsewhere, they imposed their authority and culture, much to the betterment of the previous culture of the area. They brought together scattered tribes and clans into national unity that became increasingly bright in their systems of social organization, trade, and art. In seeking new sources of metal, such as tin, copper, gold, and lead, the Aryans established ports and colonies among the local tribes that later developed into separate nations which took many of their traditions and cultural traits from the ruling Aryans. Of course, as trade with the Aryans diminished, especially after the Mahabharata War in India, variations in the legends and cultures became prominent. This accounts for the many similarities between the different ancient civilizations of the world, as well as those resemblances that still exist today.



Another consideration is that since the Aryans were centralized in the Gangetic plains and the Himalayan mountains, from there they could have spread east along the Brahmaputra River and over the plain of Tibet. The Chinese, in the form of the Cina tribe, also are likely to have originated here since they have the legend of the sacred mountain in the west with four rivers. The ancient Puranas explain that Manu and his sons ruled over the area, over as many lands north of Mount Meru and Kailas as south. Other Aryans could have easily gone down the Sarasvati and Sarayu into north India. Others went from the Indus into Kashmir and Afghanistan, and into Central Asia. Others went into the areas of Gujarat and Sind, and over through Persia and the Gulf region. This is how the Sumerian civilization was founded, along with Babylonia. From there they went farther into Turkey and Europe.



After spreading throughout South India, they continued down the Ganges by sea east into Malaysia and Indonesia, founding the ancient Vedic cultures there. By sea they continued to China, meeting the Aryans that were probably already there. From China and the orient, they sailed over the Pacific Ocean and finally reached and colonized the Americas. Plenty of evidence of this is presented in the following chapters.



We can see some of the affect of this spread out of India in regard to the term aryan. The name Harijana or Aryan evolved into Syriana or Syrians in Syria, and Hurrians in Hurri, and Arianna or Iranians in Iran. This shows that they were once part of Vedic society. A similar case is the name Parthians in Partha, another old country in Persia. Partha was the name of Krishna’s friend Arjuna, a Vedic Aryan, and means the son of King Prithu. So the name Parthian indicates those who are the descendants of King Prithu. Parthians also had a good relationship with the early Jews since the Jews used to buy grains from the Parthians. The Greeks referred to the Jews as Judeos, or Jah deos or Yadavas, meaning people of Ya or descendants of Yadu, one of the sons of Yayati. It is also regarded that the basis of the Kabbalah, the book of Jewish mystical concepts, as described in The Holy Kabbalah by Arthur Edward Waite, is linked with Kapila Muni, the Indian sage and incarnation of Krishna who established the analytical sankhya-yoga philosophy. Therefore, a connection between the early Jews and ancient Vedic culture is evident.



Another aspect of the connection between these various regions and the Vedic culture is explained in the Vedic literature. In the Rig-veda (10.63.1) Manu is the foremost of kings and seers. Manu and his family were survivors of the world flood, as mentioned in the Shatapatha Brahmana (1.8.1). Thus, a new beginning for the human race came from him, and all of humanity are descendants from Manu. The Atharva-veda (19.39.8) mentions where his ship descended in the Himalayas. One temple that signifies the location of where the ship of Manu first touched land after the flood is in Northern India in the hills of Manali. His important descendants are the Pauravas, Ayu, Nahusha, and Yayati. From Yayati came the five Vedic clans; the Purus, Anus, Druhyus, Turvashas, and Yadus. The Turvashas are related to India’s southeast, Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, and are the ancestors of the Dravidians and the Yavanas. Yadu is related to the south or southwest, Gujarat and Rajasthan, from Mathura to Dwaraka and Somnath. The Anus are related to the north, to Punjab, as well as Bengal and Bihar. The Druhyus are related to the west and northwest, such as Gandhara and Afghanistan. Puru is connected with the central Yamuna/Ganges region. All but Puru were known for having intermittently fallen from the Vedic dharma, and various wars in the Puranas were with these groups.



As explained by Shrikant Talageri in his book, The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal (pp. 304-5, 315, 367-368), from these descendants, the Purus were the Rigvedic people and developed Vedic culture in north central India and the Punjab along the Sarasvati (Rig-veda 7.96.2). The Anus of southern Kashmir along the Parushni or modern Ravi River (Rig-veda 7.18.13) spread over western Asia and developed the various Iranian cultures. The Druhyus northwest of the area of the Punjab and Kashmir spread into Europe and became the western Indo-Europeans, or the Druids and ancient Celts. A first group went northwest and developed the proto-Germanic dialect, and another group traveled farther south and developed the proto-Hellenic and Itallic-Celtic dialects. Other tribes included the Pramshus in western Bihar, and Ikshvakus of northern Uttar Pradesh.



Incidentally, according to legend, thousands of years ago Kashmir was a large lake surrounded by beautiful mountain peaks. It was here where the goddess Parvati stayed in her boat. One day she went to see Lord Shiva in the mountains. Then a great demon took possession of the lake. Kashyapa Muni, who was present at the time, called for the goddess to return. Together they chased the demon away and created an immense valley. It was called Kashyapa-Mira, and later shortened to Kashmir. This again shows the Vedic connection of this region.



Other tribes mentioned in the Vedic texts include the Kiratas, who are the mountain people of Tibet and Nepal, often considered impure for not practicing the Vedic dharma. The Vishnu Purana (4.3.18-21) also mentions the Shakas who are the Scythians of ancient Central Asia, the Pahlavas who are the Persians, and the Cinas who are the Chinese. They are all considered as fallen nobility or Kshatriyas who had been driven out of India during the reign of King Sagara.



To explain further, Yadu was the eldest of the five sons of Yayati. Yayati was a great emperor of the world and one of the original forefathers of those of Aryan and Indo-European heritage. Yayati divided his kingdom amongst his sons, who then started their own dynasties. Yayati had two wives, Devayani and Sharmistha. Yayati had two sons from Devayani: Yadu and Turvasu. Yadu was the originator of the Yadu dynasty called the Yadavas, later known as the Lunar Dynasty. From Turvasu came the Yavana or Turk dynasty. From Sharmistha, Yayati had three sons: Druhya, who started the Bhoja dynasty; Anu, who began the Mleccha or Greek dynasty; and Puru who started the Paurava dynasty, which is said to have settled along the Ravi River and later along the Sarasvati. Some say that this clan later went on to Egypt who became the Pharaohs and rulers of the area. These Aryan tribes, originating in India by King Yayati and mentioned in the Rig-veda and Vishnu and Bhagavat Puranas, spread all over the world.



The Yadava kingdom later became divided among the four sons of Bhima Satvata. From Vrishni, the youngest, descended Vasudeva, the father of Krishna and Balarama and their sister Pritha or Kunti. Kunti married the Yadava prince Pandu, whose descendants became the Pandavas. Kunti became the mother of Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna (Partha), the three elder Pandavas. The younger Pandavas were Nakula and Sahadeva, born from Pandu’s second wife Madri. After moving to the west coast of India, they lived at Dwaraka under the protection of Lord Krishna. Near the time of Krishna’s disappearance from earth, a fratricidal war broke out and most of the Pandavas were killed, who had grown to become a huge clan. Those that survived may have gone on to the Indus Valley where they joined or started another part of the advanced Vedic society. Others may have continued farther west into Egypt and some on to Europe, as previously explained.



This is further substantiated in the Mahabharata which mentions several provinces of southern Europe and Persia that were once connected with the Vedic culture. The Adi-parva (174.38) of the Mahabharata describes the province of Pulinda (Greece) as having been conquered by Bhimasena and Sahadeva, two of the Pandava brothers. Thus, the ancient Greeks were once a part of Bharata-varsa (India) and the Vedic civilization. But later the people gave up their affiliation with Vedic society and were, therefore, classified as Mlecchas. However, in the Vana-parva section of the Mahabharata it is predicted that this non-Vedic society would one day rule much of the world, including India. Alexander the Great conquered India for the Pulinda or Greek civilization in 326 B.C., fulfilling the prophecy.



The Sabha-parva and Bhisma-parva sections of the Mahabharata mention the province of Abhira, situated near what once was the Sarasvati River in ancient Sind. The Abhiras are said to have been warriors who had left India out of fear of Lord Parashurama and hid themselves in the Caucasion hills between the Black and Caspian Seas. Later, for a period of time, they were ruled by Maharaja Yudhisthira. However, the sage Markandaya predicted that these Abhiras, after they gave up their link with Vedic society, would one day rule India.



Another province mentioned in Mahabharata (Adi-parva 85.34) is that of the Yavanas (Turks) who were so named for being descendants of Maharaja Yavana (Turvasu), one of the sons of Maharaja Yayati, as previously explained. They also gave up Vedic culture and became Mlecchas. They fought in the battle of Kuruksetra against the Pandavas on behalf of Duryodhana and lost. However, it was predicted that they would one day return to conquer Bharata-varsa (India) and, indeed, this came to pass. Muhammad Ghori later attacked and conquered parts of India on behalf of Islam from the Abhira and Yavana or Turkish countries. Thus, we can see that these provinces in the area of Greece and Turkey (and the countries in between there and India) were once part of the Vedic civilization and had at one time not only political and cultural ties, but also ancestral connections. This is the Vedic version, of the origin of Aryan civilization and how its influence spread in various degrees throughout the world.

Answer 354

Continuity between castes:-





Half a century ago, Dr. Ambedkar surveyed the existing data on the physical anthropology of the different castes in his book The Untouchables. He found that the received wisdom of a racial basis of caste was not supported by the data, e.g.: “The table for Bengal shows that the Chandal who stands sixth in the scheme of social precedence and whose touch pollutes, is not much differentiated from the Brahmin (…) In Bombay the Deshastha Brahmin bears a closer affinity to the Son-Koli, a fisherman caste, than to his own compeer, the Chitpavan Brahmin. The Mahar, the Untouchable of the Maratha region, comes next together with the Kunbi, the peasant. They follow in order the Shenvi Brahmin, the Nagar Brahmin and the high-caste Maratha. These results (…) mean that there is no correspondence between social gradation and physical differentiation in Bombay.”70





A remarkable case of differentiation in skull and nose indexes, noted by Dr. Ambedkar, was found to exist between the Brahmin and the (untouchable) Chamar of Uttar Pradesh.71 But this does not prove that Brahmins are foreigners, because the data for the U.P. Brahmin were found to be very close to those for the Khattri and the untouchable Chuhra of Panjab. If the U.P. Brahmin is indeed “foreign” to U.P., he is by no mean . s foreign to India, at least not more than the Panjab untouchables. This confirms the scenario which we can derive from the Vedic and ItihAsa-PurANa literature: the Vedic tradition was brought east from the Vedic heartland by Brahmins who were physically indistinguishable from the lower castes there, when the heartland in Panjab-Haryana at its apogee exported its culture to the whole Aryavarta (comparable to the planned importation of Brahmins into Bengal and the South around the turn of the Christian era). These were just two of the numerous intra-Indian migrations of caste groups.





Recent research has not refuted Ambedkar’s views. A press report on a recent anthropological survey led by Kumar Suresh Singh explains: “English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. ‘Biologically and linguistically, we are very mixed’, says Suresh Singh (…) The report says that the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (…) The sons-of-the-soil theory also stands demolished. The Anthropological Survey of India has found no community in India that can’t remember having migrated from some other part of the country.”72 Internal migration accounts for much of India’s complex ethnic landscape, while there is no evidence of a separate or foreign origin for the upper castes.





Among other scientists who reject the identification of caste (varNa) with race on physical-anthropological grounds, we may cite Kailash C. Malhotra:





“Detailed anthropometric surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions. On the basis of analysis of stature, cephalic and nasal index, H.K. Rakshit (1966) concludes that ‘the Brahmins of India are heterogeneous and suggest incorporation of more than one physical type involving more than one migration of people’.





“A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra on whom 18 metric, 16 scopic and 8 genetic markers were studied, revealed not only a great heterogeneity in both morphological and genetic characteristics but also showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes. P.P. Majumdar and K.C. Malhotra (1974) observed a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to OAB blood group system among 50 Brahmin samples spread over 11 Indian states. The evidence thus suggests that varna is a sociological and not a homogeneous biological entity.”73



Family traits :-





This general rejection of the racial basis of caste does not exclude that specific castes stand out in their environment by their phenotypical or genotypical characteristics. Firstly, any group that goes on breeding endogamously for generations will have “family traits” recognizable to the regular and sharp observer, at least to a statistically significant extent. This does not mean that these family traits (rarely distinctive enough to be called “racial” traits) are in any way the reason why one caste refuses to intermarry with another caste, as you would have in the case of racial discrimination.





Secondly, intra-Indian migrations have taken place so that certain caste groups stand out by retaining the physical characteristics of their source region’s population for quite a few generations. Thus, the Muslim invasions chased some Rajput castes from western India to the Nepalese borderland, and some Saraswat Brahmins from Kashmir to the Konkan region; geneticists ought to be able to find traces of that history.





It is well-known that the Brahmin communities of Bengal and South India originated in the physical importation of Brahmin families by kings who sought accession to the prestigious Vedic civilization and wanted to give extra religious legitimacy to their thrones. These Brahmin families were brought in from northwestern India where, for obvious geographical reason, people are whiter and closer to the European physical type than in Bengal or the South. (Even so, due to intermarriage and the incorporation of local priesthoods, numerous Brahmins in South India are simply black.) Apart from Brahmins, numerous other caste groups throughout India have histories of immigration, putting them in environments where they differed in genetic profile from their neighbours, e.g. the Dravidian-speaking Oraon tribals of Chotanagpur recall having migrated from Maharashtra along the Narmada river.





The Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra are often mentioned as a caste that stands out by its physical type. Their slightly more “Nordic” build and the occurrence of blue eyes among them look like the perfect evidence for the theory that the Brahmins are the descendents of the Nordic Aryans who invaded India in 1500 BC. In fact, it is only during the initial Islamic onslaught that the Chitpavans migrated from the Afghan borderland to their present habitat.





Nevertheless, the Chitpavan case shows that sometimes, such distinctive family traits do coincide with the difference between the higher or lower incidence of the distinctive traits of the white race, esp. the low pigmentation of the skin or, in this case, the eyes. The difference between castes can in some cases be expressed in terms of the respective distances between their average characteristics and those of the European type. And this is only to be expected given the basic fact that India is a large country with great variation in physical type and lying in the border zone between the major races. The rich biological variety in the Indian chapter of the human species is due to many factors, but so far the Aryan Invasion has not been shown to be one of them.



Mixing of castes:-





The genetic differential between castes has recently been confirmed in a survey in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.74 The main finding of the survey, conducted by human-geneticists Lynn B. Jorde (University of Utah) and Bhaskara B. Rao and J.M. Naidu (both with Andhra University), concerned the role of inter-caste marriages: men stay in their castes, while women sometimes go and live with a man from another, mostly higher caste. In spite of the definition of caste as an “endogamous group”, the fact is that there has always been a marginal mixing of castes as well. Likewise, even outside the marital framework, upper-class employers (in any society) have made passes at their maid-servants, while prostitutes got impregnated by their higher-class clients, all producing mixed offspring.





Factoring all these marginal mixed-caste births in, the cumulative effect over centuries is that the castes have mixed much more than the theory of caste would lead you to expect. Over many generations, this mixing had to lead to a thorough genetic kinship even between castes of very divergent origins. Given these known sociological facts, the scientists naturally found that genetic traits in the male line (Y chromosome) are stable, those in the female line (mitochondrial DNA) considerably less so. Because inter-caste marriages are mostly between “neighbouring” castes in the hierarchy, the genetic distance between highest and lowest is about one and a half times greater than that between high and middle or between middle and low.





However, none of this requires a policy of racial discrimination nor an Aryan invasion into India: the known history of internal migrations and the general facts about relations between higher and lower classes in all societies can easily account for it.75 Moreover, the observed differences between Indian communities are much smaller than those between Indians collectively and Europeans (or Africans etc.) collectively. A provisional table of the genetic distance between populations shows that North-Indians and South-Indians are indeed very close, much closer than “Aryan” North-Indians and “Aryan” Iranians are to each other.76





Both sides in the debate should realize that this evidence can cut both ways. If an Aryan or other invasion is assumed, this evidence shows that all castes are biologically the progeny of both invaders and natives, though perhaps in different proportions. Conversely, if the genetic distance between two castes is small, this still leaves open the possibility that the castes or their communal identities can nonetheless have divergent origins, even foreign versus native, although these are obscured to the geneticist by centuries of caste mixing.



Tribals and “Caucasians” :-





The one important general difference between two parts of the population is that between a number of tribes on the one hand, and some other tribes plus the non-tribals on the other. V. Bhalla’s mapping of genetic traits shows that the latter category roughly belongs to the Mediterranean subgroup of the Caucasian race (though by the superficial criterion of skin colour, it can differ widely from the type found in Italy or Greece). incidentally, the term Caucasian as meaning the white race was coined in 1795 by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who believed that the Caucasus region, particularly Georgia, “produces the most beautiful human race”, and that it was the most likely habitat of “the autochthonous, most original forms of mankind”.77 Thus, the typically Caucasian Rhesus-negative factor is “conspicuous by its absence” in the Mongoloid populations of India’s northeast, but the non-tribal populations “show a moderately high frequency of 15% to 20% but not as high as in Europe” of this genetic trait.78





Bhalla lists a number of specific genes which are characteristically strong or weak in given racial types, and finds that they do define certain ethnic sub-groups of India, esp. the Mongoloid tribals of the northeast, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, and the Australoids in the remaining tribal pockets of the south. Everywhere else, including in many tribal areas, the Mediterranean type is predominant, but the present battery of genetic markers was not able to distinguish between subtypes within this population, much less to indicate different waves of entry.





In fact, no “entry” of these Mediterranean Caucasians can be derived from the data, certainly not for the post-Harappan period. According to an older study, they were present even in South India in 2,000 BC at the latest: “The evidence of two racial types, the Mediterranean and the Autochthonous proto-Australoid, recognized in the study of the skeletal remains from the neolithic levels at Brahmagiri, Piklihal, Tekkalakota, Nevasa etc., seems to suggest that there was a thick population consisting mainly of these two races in South India around 2000 BC.”79





The Caucasian race was present in India (like in Europe and the Kurgan area) since hoary antiquity. Kailash Malhotra reports, starting with their geographical spread today: “The Caucasoids are found practically all over the country, though the preferred habitats have been river valleys and plains.”80





In the past, the Caucasian presence was also in evidence: “Although a large number of prehistoric sites have been excavated in India, only a few of them have yielded human osseous remains (…) None of the pre-Mesolithic sites have yielded skeletal material; the earliest remains are around 8,000 years old. An examination of the morphological features of skeletons from sites of the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and iron age periods reveals the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in all the periods, the absence of Mongoloids, and the existence of at least two types of Caucasoids, the dolichocephals and the brachycephals (…) The skeletal evidence thus clearly establishes the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in India for at least 8,000 years.”81





All that can be said, is that the population of India’s northeast is akin to that of areas to India’s north and east, that of the southeast to that of countries further southeast, and the bulk of the Indian population to that of areas to India’s west. Probably a large demographic expansion from India’s northwest to the east and south took place during and at the end of the Harappan period (2,000 BC). It is logical to infer that the populations of the Mediterranean type were more concentrated in the northwest prior to that time; but it does not follow that they came from the outside. India’s northwest simply happened to be the easternmost area of Caucasian habitation, just like India’s northeast happens to be the frontier of the Mongoloid type’s habitat.





For politically correct support in denying the racial divide between tribals and non-tribals, we may cite the Marxist scholar S.K. Chatterjee, who dismissed the notion of distinct races in India, be they Aryan, Dravidian, Mongoloid or Austro-Asiatic. He called the Indian people a “mixed people, in blood, in speech and in culture”.82





Though the Christian missionaries have been the champions of tribal distinctness, Christian author P.A. Augustine writes about the Bhil tribals: “The Bhils have long ceased to be a homogeneous people. In the course of millennia, various elements have fused to shape the community. During their long and tortuous history, other aboriginal groups which came under their sway have probably merged with them, losing their identity. One can see a wide range of physical types and complexion. The variation in complexion is very striking indeed, ranging between fair to quite dark-skinned (…) There is no consensus among scholars on the exact ethnic character of the Bhils, They have been alternatively described as proto-Australoid, Dravidian or Veddoid.”83 The same racial “impurity” counts for most Indians, tribal as well as non-tribal. While not by itself disproving the Aryan invasion, it should prove even to invasionists that all Indians are descendents of both indigenous and so-called invader populations.



Language and genetics :-





While it is wrong to identify a speech community with a physical type, it is also wrong to discard physical anthropology completely as a source of information on human migrations in pre-literate times. Lately, findings have been published which suggest that, for all the racial mingling that has taken place, there is still a broad statistical correlation between certain physical characteristics and nations, even language groups.





Thus, the percentage of individuals with the Rhesus-negative factor is the highest (over 25%) among the Basques, a nation in the French-Spanish borderland which has preserved a pre-IE language. Other pockets of high incidence of Rh-neg. (which is nearly non-existent among the Bantus, Austroloids and Mongoloids) are in the same part of the world: western Morocco, Scotland and, strangely, the Baltic area, or apparently those backwater regions least affected by immigrations of the first Neolithic farmers (from the Balkans and Anatolia), the Indo-Europeans, and in Morocco also the Arabs.





Another European nation which stands out, at least to the discerning eye of the population geneticist, is the Sami (Lapp) population of northern Scandinavia: when contrasted genetically with the surrounding populations, the Sami genetic make-up “points to kinship with the peoples of North Siberia” eventhough they now resemble the Europeans more than the native Siberians.84 This confirms the suspicion of an Asian origin for the Uralic-speaking peoples of which the Sami people is one.





Where a small group of people have spread out over a vast area and lived in isolation ever since, as has happened in large parts of America in the past 20,000 years, genetic differentiation and linguistic differentiation have gone hand in hand, and the borderline between genetic types usually coincides with a linguistic borderline: “Joseph Greenberg distinguishes three language families among the Native Americans: Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. (…) According to Christy Turner of Arizona University, Native American dental morphology indicates three groups, which coincide with Greenberg’s. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza from Stanford investigated a variegated set of human genes. His results equally point in the direction of Greenberg’s classification.”85





Linguistic difference between populations may coincide with genetic differences; and likewise, linguistic mixing may coincide with genetic mixing. A perfect illustration is provided by Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-Apartheid struggle and belonging to the Xhosa nation. His facial features are more Khoi (Hottentot) than Bantu, and his language, Xhosa, happens to be a Bantu language strongly influenced by the Khoi-San (Hottentot-Bushman) languages, most strikingly by adopting the click sounds. In this case, genetic mixing and linguistic mixing have gone hand in hand.





However, in and around the area of IE expansion, a notorious crossroads of migrating peoples, the remaining statistical correlation between genetic traits and language groups is less important than the evidence for the opposite phenomenon: languages spreading across genetic frontiers. In India, the only neat racial division which coincides with a linguistic borderline is between the mainland and the Andamans: though so-called Negrito features are dimly visible in the population of Orissa and surrounding areas, the pure Negrito type is confined to the Andamans, along with the Andamanese language group. For the rest, in India, like in Central Asia or Europe, i.e. in areas with lots of migration and interaction between diverse peoples, genetic and linguistic divisions only coincide by exception.





Thus, the Altaic languages are spoken by the Mongolians, eponymous members of the Mongoloid race, and by the Turks, who have mixed so thoroughly with their Persian, Armenian, Greek and Slavic neighbours that they now belong to the Caucasian race. The Hungarians are genetically closer to their Slavic and German neighbours than to their linguistic cousins in the Urals. India being the meeting-place (or rather, mixing-place) of Mongoloid, Caucasian and Austroloid racial strands, it is naturally impossible to identify the speakers of the different Indian language-groups with different races.





Asked whether there are “concordances between genetic data and languages”, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, the world’s leading population geneticist, explains: “Yes, very much so. Our genealogical tree [of genetic traits] corresponds remarkably well with the table of linguistic families. There are a few exceptions e.g. the Lapps, genetically rather European, have preserved the language they spoke in their Siberian-Uralic homeland. The Hungarians, similarly, speak an Uralic language while being predominantly European. In the late 9th century AD, the Magyar invaders in Hungary, then called Pannonia, imposed their language on the natives. (…) What counts from a genetic viewpoint, is the number of invaders relative to the natives. As the Hungarians were not very numerous, they left only a feeble genetic imprint on the population.”86 So, the replacement of native languages by those of less civilized but stronger invaders is a real possibility (it is also what the Greeks did to the Old Europeans), though it becomes less probable in proportion to the size and the cultural superiority of the native population.





The reason why the replacement of native languages by the languages of genetically distinguishable invaders remains relatively exceptional, is this: “In a traditional culture, language is transmitted vertically from parents to children, just like the genes. But in some conquests or in civilizations with schools, there is also horizontal transmission and substitution of languages. The Romans organized schools in their part of Europe and thereby managed to replace the native languages by their own. But this type of phenomenon is relatively recent. In 90% of its history, mankind consisted of hunter-gatherers speaking tribal languages. That is why the genetic tree has preserved a strong concordance with the linguistic tree.”87





A typical example are the Basques: “The Basque language is the direct descendent of a language which must have arrived along with modem mankind, say 30,000 years ago. It is [in Europe] the only pre-Indo-European language which has been preserved. Why? Probably because the Basque people had a very strong social cohesion. Genetically too, the Basques are different. They have mixed very little. All the other Europeans have lost their original language and adopted an Indo-European language.”88





So, the Basques are both biologically and linguistically the straight descendants of Old Europeans. Most other Europeans are biologically the progeny of the non-IE-speaking Old Europeans, with some admixture of the Asian tribes who originally brought the IE languages into Europe. These immigrants may have differed somewhat from the average European type, into which their smaller number got genetically drowned over the centuries. Linguistically, most non-Basque (and non-Uralic) Europeans are the progeny, through adoption, of the IE-speaking invaders.



The original “Aryan race” :-





Is there anything we can say about the ethnic identity of the nomads or migrants who spread the early IE languages, if only to help physical-anthropologists to recognize them when found at archaeological sites? Competent authorities have warned against the “semi-conscious prejudices on original genetic characteristics of the Indo-Europeans: they are supposed to be blond and blue-eyed”.89 This prejudice has even been reinforced recently by the discovery of blond-haired mummies of presumably IE-speaking people in the Xinjiang province of China.90





The fact that the IE speech community includes people of diverse race, from the dark-skinned Sinhalese to the white-skinned Scandinavians, definitely implies that the spread of the language cannot be equated with the spread of a racial type. Languages can and do migrate across racial boundaries. That the IE languages crossed racial frontiers during their expansion accords well with established perspectives on the spread of IE, e.g. by I.M. Diakonov:





“These expanding tribes met local, poor and hungry sparser populations, often consisting of hunters and cattle-breeders. The migrants started to merge with the local population, giving them their language and cultural achievements. But in some cases, the local population may have been larger in numbers than the migrants. In some historical situations the language of the minority, if it was widely used and understandable on a vast territory, could be accepted as lingua franca, and later as the common language, particularly if it was a language of cattle-breeders (cf. the examples of the Semites and the Turks). The area of the newly created population became itself a centre of population spread, and so on. Bloody conquests could take place in some instances; in others it was not the case, but the important thing to realize is that what migrated were languages, not peoples, although there had to be at least a handful of users of the languages, though not necessarily native speakers.”91





On the other hand, the fact that the PIE-speaking community must have been a fairly small ethnic group, living together and marrying mostly within the community, implies that they must have belonged collectively to a fairly precisely circumscribed physical type. Even if you throw together people from all races, after a few generations of interbreeding they will develop a common and distinctive physical type, with atavistic births of people resembling the pure type of one of the ancestral races becoming rarer and rarer. Therefore, in the days before intercontinental travel and migrations, a speech community was normally also a. kinship group (or, in strict caste societies, a conglomerate of kinship groups) presenting a fairly homogeneous physical type.





During the heyday of the racial theories, a handful of words in Greek sources were taken to mean that the ancient Indo-Europeans were fair-haired and had a tall Nordic-looking build. In Homer’s description, the Greek heroes besieging Troy were fair-haired. The Egyptians described the “Sea Peoples” from the Aegean region (and even their Libyan co-invaders, presumably Berber-speaking) as fair-haired. The Chinese described the Western (Tokharic) barbarians likewise.





However, the incidence of Nordic looks was not necessarily overwhelming. In classical Greek writings, the Thracians and Macedonians (most notably Alexander the Great), whose language belonged to an extinct Balkanic branch of the IE family, are mentioned as being fair-haired; apparently most Greeks were by then dark enough to notice this fair colour as a trait typical of their “barbaric” northern neighbours. The Armenians have a legend of their own king Ara the Blond and his eventful personal relationship with the Assyrian queen Sammuramat/Semiramis (about 810 BC), who is known to have fought Urartu (the pre-IE name of Armenia, preserved in the Biblical mountain name Ararat). The use of “the blond” as a distinctive epithet confirms the existence of fair-haired people in Armenia, but also their conspicuousness and relative rarity.





All this testimony, along with the Xinjiang mummies and the presence of Nordic looks in the IE-speaking (Dardic/Kafiri) tribes in the Subcontinent’s northwestern valleys, does suggest a long-standing association between some branches of the IE family and the genes which program their carriers to have fair hair and blue eyes. These traits give a comparative advantage for survival in cold latitudes: just as melanine protects against the excessive intake of ultraviolet rays in sunny latitudes, lack of melanine favours the intake of ultraviolet. This segment of the sunrays is needed in the production of vitamin D, which in turn is needed in shaping the bones; its deficiency causes rachitis and makes it difficult for women to birth - a decisive handicap in the struggle for life. The link between northern latitudes and the light colour of skin, hair and eyes in many IE-speaking communities only proves what we already knew: IE is spoken in fairly northern latitudes including Europe and Central Asia. Yet, none of this proves the fair-haired and blue-eyed point about the speakers of the original proto-language PIE.





Suppose, with the non-invasion theorists, that the original speakers of IE had been Indians with dark eyes and dark hair; then, according to I.M. Diakonov: “if this population had migrated together with the languages, blue-eyed Balts could not have originated from it. Blue eyes, as a recessive characteristic, are met everywhere from Europe to the Hindu Kush. But nobody can be blue-eyed if neither of his/her parents had blue-eyed ancestors, and a predominantly blue-eyed population cannot originate from ancestors with predominantly black eyes.”92





This allows for two possible scenarios. Either the PIE speakers were indeed blue-eyed and fair-haired: that is the old explanation, preferred by the Nazis.93 Or the blue-eyed people of Europe have not inherited their IE languages from their biological ancestors, but changed language at some point along the genealogical line, abandoning the pre-IE Old European language of their fair ancestors in favour of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic etc., based on the language of the invaders from Asia. The latter scenario would agree with I.M. Diakonov’s observation: “The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles’ migration of the tribes themselves.”94





That this is far from impossible is demonstrated by the Turks who, after centuries of mixing with subdued natives of West Asia and the Balkans, have effectively crossed the racial borderline from yellow to white. But against using this Turkish scenario as a simile for the story of IE dispersal, one could point out that some eastern Turkic people, such as the Kirghiz and the Yakut, are still very much Mongoloids. However, far from forming a contrast with the IE state of affairs, this makes the simile more splendid: if IE spread from a non-white to a white population, it also remained the language of numerous non-whites (though technically “Caucasians”), viz. the Indians. On the Eurasian continent, South-Asians still constitute more than half of the wider IE speech community; the Indian Republic alone has more IE speakers than the whole of Europe.





It is perfectly possible that the PIE language and culture were developed after a non-white group of colonists from elsewhere settled among and got racially immersed in a larger whitish population. As we saw in our speculations about IE-Austronesian kinship and about Puranic history, it is at least conceivable that Aryan culture in India started after “Manu” and his dark-skinned cohorts fled the rising sea level by moving up the Ganga and settling high and dry in the upper Ganga basin, whence their progeny conquered areas to the northwest with ever whiter-skinned and lighter-haired populations: the Saraswati basin, the upper Indus basin, the Oxus riverside, the peri-Caspian region. By the time these Indian colonists settled in eastern Europe with their Kurgans, their blackness had been washed off by generations of intermarriage with white people of the type attested by the Xinjiang mummies. (Likewise, their material culture had been thoroughly adapted to their new habitat, hence de-indianized.)





So, it is perfectly possible that the Aryan heartland lay farther to the southeast, and that, like eastern Europe in the later 5th millennium BC, the Panjab area a few centuries earlier was already a first area of colonization, bringing people of a new and whiter physical type into the expanding Aryan speech community which was originally darker. While the Panjabi is physically very similar to the European, the Bihari, Oriya or Nepali is markedly less so, and yet it is possible that he represents more closely the ultimate Proto-Indo-European.



The race of the Vedic Aryans :-





As for the Vedas, the only ones whom they describe as “golden-haired” are the resplendent lightning gods Indra and Rudra and the sun-god Savitar; not the Aryans or Brahmins. At the same time, several passages explicitly mention black hair when referring to Brahmins.95 These texts are considerably earlier than the enigmatic passage in Patanjali describing Brahmins as golden- or tawny-haired (piNgala and kapisha).96 Already one of Patanjali’s early commentators dismissed this line as absurd. To the passage from the grammarian Panini which describes Brahmins as “brown-haired”, A.A. Macdonnell notes (apparently against contemporary claims to the contrary): “All we can say is that the above-mentioned expressions do not give evidence of blonde characteristics of the ancient Brahmans.”97 Considering that Patanjali was elaborating upon the work of Panini, could it have anything to do with Panini’s location in the far northwest, where lighter hair must have been fairly common?





On the other hand, demons or Rakshasas, so often equated with the “dark-skinned aboriginals”, have on occasion been described as red- or tawny-haired (also piNgala or kapisha, the same as Patanjali’s Brahmins).98 Deviating from the usual Indian line that all these demon creatures are but supernatural entities, let us for once assume that they do represent hostile tribals racially distinct from the Vedic Aryans. In that case, reference can only be to certain northwestern tribals, among whom fair and red hair are found till today, indicating that they at least partly descended from a fair-haired population. If the Vedic Aryans were dark-haired and migrated from inside India to the northwest, these odd coloured hairs may have struck them as distinctive.





In modern Anglo-Hindu publications, such as the Amar Chitra KathA religious comics, Rakshasas are always depicted as dark-skinned, a faithful application of the AIT. Yet, there are instances in Vedic literature where “blackness” is imputed to people whom we know to have had the same (if not a lighter) skin colour than the Vedic Aryans: the Dasas and Dasyus, as Asko Parpola has shown, were the Iranian cousins and neighbours of the Vedic Aryans. Physical (as opposed to metaphorical) blackness or more generally skin colour was never a criterion by which the Vedic Aryans classified their neighbours and enemies; that precisely is why we have no direct testimony on the Vedic Aryans’ own skin or hair colour except through a few ambiguous, indirect and passing references.



Evidence of immigration? :-





A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola): “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”99 The inflow which they do find, around the turn of the Christian era, is apparently that of the well-known Shaka and Kushana invasions.





Kenneth A.R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data: “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.”100





Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan)101 culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India: “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”102





And so, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, one of the great pioneers of the AIT, may be right after all. Indeed, even he had remarked that “the anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappa remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day.”103 If anything Aryan really invaded, it was at any rate not an Aryan race.





There are no indications that the racial composition and distribution of the Indian population has substantially changed since the start of the IE dispersal, which cannot reasonably be placed much earlier than 6,000 BC. This means that even if the IE language is imported, as claimed by the AIT, the IE-speaking people in India are nevertheless biologically native to India. Or in practice: the use of the terms “aboriginal” and “indigenous” (AdivAsI) as designating India’s tribals, with the implication that the non-tribals are the non-indigenous progeny of invaders, has to be rejected and terminated, even if the Urheimat of the IE languages is found to lie outside India.





One of the ironies of Indian identity politics is that those most vocal in claiming an “aboriginal” identity may well be the only ones whose foreign origin has been securely established. The Adivasi movement is strongest in the areas where Christian missionaries were numerously present since the mid-19th century to nourish it, viz. in Chotanagpur and the North-East. Most tribals there speak languages belonging to the Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan families. Their geographical origin, unlike that of IE which is still being debated, is definitely outside India, viz. in Southeast Asia c.q. in northern China.





The Tibeto-Burmese tribals of Nagaland and other northeastern statelets are among India’s most recent immigrants. Many of those tribes have entered during the last millennium, which is very late by Indian standards. As for the Munda tribes in Chotanagpur, it is not even certain that the ancestors of the present tribes are the authors of the attested Neolithic cultures in their present habitat. In H.D. Sankalia’s words: “It is an unanswered but interesting question whether any of the Aboriginal tribes of these regions were the authors of the Neolithic culture.”104 Those who want to give the Austro-Asiatic peoples of India a proud heritage, will find more of it in China and Indochina than in India, e.g. in the Bronze age culture of 2300 BC in Thailand.





On the other hand, biologically the Indian Austro-Asiatics (unlike the Nagas) are much closer to the other Indians than to their linguistic cousins in the east. Exactly like the Indo-Aryans in the Aryan invasion hypothesis, they are predominantly Indian people speaking a foreign-originated language: “Whereas the now Dravidian-speaking tribals of Central and South India can be considered to be descendents of the original inhabitants of India, who gave up their original languages in favour of Dravidian, Tibeto-Chinese speaking tribals (Northeast India) and Austro-Asiatic speaking ones (East India) immigrated into India since ancient historical times. Most likely they came in several waves from Southern China (Tibeto-Chinese speakers) and from Southeast Asia (Austro-Asiatic speakers) respectively. Without doubt these immigrating groups met with ancient Indian populations, which were living already on their migration routes, and thus one cannot exclude some cultural and also genetic contacts between immigrants and original inhabitants of India, at least at some places.”105





In the case of Indo-Aryan, by contrast, its speakers have obviously also mixed with other communities, but its foreign origin has not been firmly established.



Conclusion :-



We may conclude with a recent status quaestionis by archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of Wisconsin University at Madison: “Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.”106





We repeat that physical anthropology is going through rapid developments due to the availability of new techniques, and we don't want to jump to conclusions in this moving field. But we notice that whatever new technique is applied and from whichever new angle the question is approached, it has so far consistently failed to yield evidence of the fabled Aryan Invasion

Answer 355

yes we're descendants of Aryans & Dravidian race as evident by the following:



The hypothesis of an aryan invasion is apparently based on the conflicts between light-skinned aryans and dark race of dasyus described in Vedic literature. This aspect is said to have been strengthened by the skeletal findings in the excavated sites in the Indus Valley. When the Rg Veda (2:20:10.) refers to "Indra, the slayer of Vritra, destroying the Krishna Yoni Dasyus", it is held as a proof that the "invading arryans" exterminating the "dar aboriginals". However, other references in the Rg Veda (10:1:11., 8:85:3., 2:3:9.) suggest that the Indians were a mixed race and also, no stigma was attached to any non-white complexion. Therefore to imagine the invading aryans to be a white race is suspicious. According to Saayana, the word dasyu derives from the word "das", i.e., "one who harms". The Rg Veda (6:22:10.) prays to Indra to give glory by which the dasyus can become arya's, that is, changing the dasyus to ideal and cultured human beings.



Many a scholar and historian have acknowledged the discrepancies, raised objections and rejected the theory of aryan invasion since its inception in the early 19th century. According to historian Wheeler (in his "Civilization of Indus Valley and Beyond"), "..the [Aryan Invasion] cannot be proved and may be quite incorrect".



Also, Murrow in his book "The Sanskrit Language" comments," For the Indo-Aryan invasion of India no direct evidence is available... In the text of the Rg Veda itself, although historical allusions are not uncommon, there is no reference anywhere to the fact of the migration, nor any definite indication that it was still remembered." Indian Vedic scholars like Dayanand Saraswati, B.G. Tilak and Sri Arvind had already rejected the aryan invasion theory based mostly on literary analysis. In spite of having no evidence to support this doctrine, it is amusing to know how academics held on to this dogma.



The unobservant reading of the Rg Veda and its subsequent misinterpretation led to the doctrines of "class" and "colour" struggles among the ancient Indians; an appropriate tool to justify marxist ideals and european racial theories. This doctrine of aryan invasion has been used as a perfect tool to divide the Hindu society and the Indian state. The north-indian aryans were then pit against the south-indian dravidians, high-castes against low-castes, mainstream Hindus against the tribals, Vedic orthodoxy against the "native" heterodox sects and later, to neutralize Hindu criticism of forced Islamic occupation as "Hindus themselves have entered the same way as Muslims have". Till today, the Marxist and "secularist" forces continue to promote this theory and extract propagandist capital out of it.



Recent advances in archaeological, linguistic and astronomical research have also compelled the abandoning of the current view of the aryan invasion and the falsely speculated antiquity of the Vedic civilization. The excavated ruins of the submerged city of Dwaraka by Dr. S.R.Rao and his team in 1985 (Marine Archaeological Unit), along the coast of Gujarat, provides authenticity for the existence of the Mahabharata civilization (3000 B.C.). Satellite data combined with field archaeological studies have discovered now disappeared river Saraswati, which appears extensively in the Vedic literature. The study also showed that the river flow discontinued much earlier than 3000 B.C. The deciphering of the Indus script by S.R.Rao shows a amazing affinity with the Sanskrit family and analysis of the seals have put forth numerous words and names from the Vedic age. It indeed becomes evident that the harappan culture was a part and parcel and continuation of an earlier Vedic age: an age that existed much prior to 3000 B.C.



As opposed to any racial connotation, the word "arya" is a honorific title and was used for people who were cultivated in mind and character, a person whose way of life aims at elevating the individual soul through a disciplined life to godhood(Mukhti). Sri Arvind in his celebrated book "The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings" explains : "..the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity,compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness of knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-aryan or anarya (colloq. anari). There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history.."



Rama and Krishna have been addressed as arya, as are many other people in the Rg Vedic era



The Rg Veda is not a work of the original and the descendants of the aryan nomads, but exhibits a great degree of philosophical thought and advanced knowledge about astronomy. The Rg Veda, Samhitas and other related Vedic literature have documented the seasons and related changes occurring over a certain epoch in time.



Astronomical configurations are also chronicled. The evaluation of these annals enable the determination of the periods when the particular configurations occured. Examinations of the recent archaeological findings also appear to support these datelines.



The analysis of astronomical references in the Taiteriya Brahman (3:1:15), where Brushaspati (Jupiter) crossed the Pushya constellation, gives a date of 4650 B.C. The Aiteriya Brahmana points to dates to the order of 6000 B.C. From the calculation of the vernal equinox cycle, the Taiteriya Samhita provides dates that reach as far as 22000 B.C (Ref: Vartak, Tilak).



In his book "Are the Gathas pre-vedic" H.S.Spencer quotes another scholar stating that "Dhanista was the first of the naskshatras in the Rg Vedic times and this takes us back to 21788 B.C., at least, to the origin of the Rg Veda."



According to Dr. B.M. Sidhartha, director of the Birla Science Center, "Rg Veda .. was a product of a well-settled civilization going back to 8000 B.C. and beyond on the basis of astronomical dating .. and supported by archaeological excavations in south eastern Turkey... the more antique date of 10,000 B.C. proposed for Rg Veda or Vedic culture seemed more plausible in view of the epi-paleolithic agricultural and proto-agricultural civilizations going back to the same period ..." (TOI, August 2, 1993). These datelines were already proposed by Tilak when he says, " The Vedic hymns were sung in post-glacial times (8000 B.C.) by poets who had inherited their knowledge or contents thereof from their antediluvian forefathers". B.G. Tilak has done some extraordinary work of deciphering the concealed astronomical allusions in the ancient Vedic texts.



The geological discovery of the mighty Vedic river Saraswati, which originally flowed somewhat parallel to Indus, dried up around 2000 B.C. Now the Rg Veda speaks of a mighty Saraswati and it is in much later literature that we hear of the disappearance of the river. It is definitely known that the Vedas are much older than the Mahabharata period (3100 B.C.) This establishes that the Rg Veda itself could not be later than the 4th millennium B.C. A paper presenting technical evidence concerning a newly discovered bronze idol states, " The life sized head has a hair style which the Vedas describe as being unique to Vasishtha, one of the Rishis who composed parts of Rg Veda ... Carbon 14 tests indicate that it was cast around 3700 B.C., with an error in either direction of upto 800 years .. an age also confirmed by independent metallurgical tests" (J. of Indo-European Studies, v.18, 1990, p.425-46). More and more archaeological findings are coming forth that place the Vedic age to remote antiquity.



An assessment of the Vedic literature thus provides a chronology of events in steps of 2000 years, starting from the early period of the Rg Veda (23,000 B.C.) upto the occurance of the Mahabharata War, a period when Vedvyas compiled the scattered Vedic knowledge into four parts. It is also worthy to note that the Indian history can be traced continuously from 29,000 B.C., when the great law-giver Swayambhuva Manu, flourished.



A majority of events available in the chronicles provide ages from the beginning of the Kali yuga, and as such, fixing this date becomes necessary. The precise moment for advent of the Kali Yuga (3102 B.C) has been reckoned based from references in the Mahabharata as well as from the literature provided by Varahamihira, Kalhana, Arya Bhatta, Vruddha Garga and also the Puranic annals. Count Bijornstierna in his "The Theogony of Hindus", has aptly summarized on the calculation of Kali Yuga Thus, "According to the astronomical calculations of the Hindus, the present period of the world, Kali Yugaa, commenced 3102 years before the birth of Christ, on 20th February, at 2 hours, 27 minutes and 30 seconds ..." However, for the sake of convenience in calculations, only 3102 B.C is assumed.



The current Varaaha Kalpa (one period of time) begins with the reign of Swayambhuva Manu, or the self-born Man, who revived and established the Veda. In this particular Kalpa, 14 Manu's will appear. The period of one chatur-yuga cycle, which begins with a Manu, comprises of 12000 human years. However, to denote the endlessness of Lord's creation, the Puraan have multiplied the above period by 360, to get 4320000 "divine" years. And further multiplying these by 71, the Manavantara period is calculated.



Therefore, going backwards from 3102 B.C., the beginning for this chaturyuga period (2400 for Dwaapar, 3600 for Treta and 4800 for Kruta = 10,800) would be 10,800 years before Kali, i.e., at 13902 B.C. approximately, a time when Vaivasvata Manu (leader of the present chatur-yuga) flourished. The Brahmanda Puraan (1:2:9) states that Swayambhuva Manu, the king for the current Kalpa, lived 71 (divya) yuga before (Kali yuga). One divya-yuga is 360 human years, and therefore Swayambhuva Manu's date is calculated to be about 31000 years before present (360*71 + 3102 + 1996). These datelines for Vaivasvata and Swayambhuva Manu are corroborated from the Matsya Puraan (129-76, 77) as well. B.G.Tilak in his "Orion" has calculated 29101 B.C., using astronomical data, as the time when Swayambhuva Manu existed, which tallies remarkably with the date suggested by the Puraan.



According to the Puraan's, 52 generations had elapsed between Swayambhuva and Vaivasvata, i.e, over a period of 15200 years. Each generation must therefore be 290 years long. Chakshusha Manu, the sixth descendent of Swayambhuva, is said to be 12 generations elder to Vaivasvata and therefore going backwards, his date can be calculated to be about (14000 + 12290) 17500 B.C. One very famous king Pruthu, from whom this earth "Pruthvi" derives its name, is known to be 5th in line from Chakshushu. His date therefore comes to roughly 16050 B.C.



The institution of Manu was to revive, re-establish and promote ethical and moral principles amongst humanity. They were the pace-setters of the time, a stature with which they even influenced the rulers of the time. The Puraan however do not record any Manu's appearing after Vaivasvata Manu. Their geographical locations are a matter of further research, however, the following section on "Vedic Homeland" may provide some clues in that regard.



The exact location and expanse of the Vedic culture is still a matter of speculation and discussion. As of today's theory, the span of ancient Vedic culture has primarily been limited to Punjab, the five-river region of northwest India. It is beyond any doubt that the Vedic culture existed in the land of Punjab, however, this fact does not exclude its existence elsewhere.



B.G.Tilak is his "The Arctic Home in the Vedas" has provided an incredible understanding and presentation of the Rg Vedic geography and argues for a polar home for the Vedic aryans before the advent of glaciation. Tilak notes, "in the early geological ages, when the Alps were low and the Himalayas not yet upheaved ... from geological evidence of fossil and fauna, we find that an equable climate and uniform climate prevailed over the whole surface of the globe .. it is now conclusively proved that before the advent of a glacial and inter-glacial periods a luxuriant forest vegetation ... flourished in the high latitude of the polar regions where the Sun goes below the horizon from November till march, thus showing that a warm climate prevailed in the Arctic regions in those days". Tilak quotes many passages from the Vedic as well as Avestan literature which show acquaintance with these polar characteristics. According to geological evidence the post-glacial epoch commenced in about 8000 B.C. The freshness of Siberian fossils also testify to this event.



When the original land near the arctic regions was found unsuitable for human habitation, the survivors of the glacial tragedy appear to have moved down to the south of their earlier home. The Vendidad contains a picturesque description of different regions to which these people seem to have moved. The Lord of the Avesta, Ahur Mazdeo (Asur Mahadeo) is said to have created sixteen such regions. The original population appears to have split into different groups which moved in different directions. Scholars concur that the verses in the Avesta are full of aryan glory, and are composed in the same meters as the Rg Veda. So the ancient Brahmanas and Parsis were two tribes of one nation, called the Aryas, both in the Vedaand Avesta. Of the sixteen lands, the "best region" created by the Lord was the Sapta-Sindhu region: a vast region stretching to the east and west of the river Sindhu (Indus, hence Arya-Varta).



The river Saraswati, Harahwati of Avesta, is regarded as the most central and is intimately mentioned in the Rg Veda, and even a cursory examination of the text suggests that the Vedics lived on the banks of the "great goddess stream". According to David Frawley (G, S & K, pp.73), it has now be found that Saraswati changed its course at least four times and originally flowed into the sea through what is now known as Rajasthan. The river Saraswati is also identified as the modern river Syr-Darya joining the Aral Sea to the North. For the river to change course four times must have taken at least a few thousands of years, until the river reduced to a insignificant tributary at the time of Mahabharata (3138 B.C.).



This takes the Vedic age to remote antiquity, at least to a few thousand years.



Most of the sites of the Indus-Valley Culture fall to the east of river Sindhu and appear to be found on the banks of the Saraswati, when the course of this river was already on its decline. It is stated in the Rg Veda (10:75:6) that river Kubha (Kabul) joins river Saraswati along with other rivers. It is therefore apparent that the Saraswati in the pre-Indus era must be flowing west from present-day Afghanistan-Iran area towards the west. Therefore based on the internal evidence appearing in the Rg Veda and Avesta, the central-land of the Vedic aryans can now be located in Afghanistan, Iran and other regions to their north and east. According to the Rg Veda (8:24:27), the land where the Vedics had their hey-day is a Sapta-Sindhu Pradesh or the Hapta-Hindu Pradesh of the Avesta.



There are references of people migrating to the east of Sindhu and not the other way around. Thus the land watered by the rivers Saraswati, Sindhu, Sharayu, Rasa, Oxus, Helmand and one more river to the west of Sindhu, territory covering regions to the west of Sindhu, was perhaps the home of the Vedic people for a long time.



The Vedics appear to have migrated on the banks of Sindhu after the mighty Saraswati began to desiccate. After having established their stronghold along the Sindhu region, they moved further to the east to the Ganga-Yamuna region and later to the South. Rishi Agastya, brother of Sage Vasistha, is reputed to be the first colonizer of the South. Also, the names and customs of Mittani and Hittite (Iraq, Turkey region) peoples to the west of river Sindhu show a close affinity to the Vedics. A clay tablet found near Ankara invokes gods like Indra, Varun, etc. The landmarks occurring in the Vedic lore, customs and language extend in the east from Ganga-Yamuna to Oxus river which joins the Aral sea in the west, which forms a considerable part of the globe. It should be realized that the Vedas are a heritage of mankind which record and preserve the human development for at least a few thousand years.



After the migration from the north, the Vedics settled in the Sapta-Sindhu region, which also included the present-day Iran. The incidents depicted in the Rg Veda, and even the language, thought and expression, shows a remarkable similarity with the Persian Avesta. It is of no dispute that the Zarathustran people of Iran (and also the Greeks) are closely linked or lived together with the Vedics in the past. However, another major event, as recorded in the Rg Veda, appears to have caused a further separation between the Vedics living in the Sapta-Sindhu region.



From the foregoing discussion, it is now realized that the Vedics, after leaving their original habitat in the North, spread downwards settling down in various parts of the earth. Right from Turkey and Egypt, the Vedics covered the region between the Caucasian mountains and Caspian Sea down to Syria, Palestine and the ancient Persian kingdoms of Babylon, Sumer, Ur, Kassite and towards Afghanistan, Azerbaizan and then crossing the Hindukush mountains towards east into the present day India.



An impetus to the spread and severance between the sapta-sindhu homeland of Vedics then came about after the Dasharadnya War - the spread towards Greece and northwards. Renfrew allows a date as early as 6000 B.C. for the migration of Vedic aryans into Europe ("The Origins of Indo- European Languages", Sc.Amer, Oct, 1989).



That the Vedics had migrated to Egypt is also suggested from the geographical references in the Puraan. S.M.Ali in his "Geography of the Puranas" writes that "they (Vedics) had knowledge of the geography of the then known world. It is clear from the reference to Nile in the Vayu Purana".



Also, Prof. Brugsch Bey writes aboutthe Egyptian civilization in "History of Egypt" (quoted by K.Venkatachalam in "Age of Buddha", p.76) that "We have a right to more than suspect that India, eight thousand years ago, sent a colony of emigrants who carried their arts and high civilization into what is now known to us as Egypt. The Egyptians came, according to their records, from a mysterious land (now known to lie on the shores of the Indian ocean) ... led by Amen, Hor, Hathor (Brahma, Hari, Rudra)..." These statements justify the "Aryam Krunwanto Vishwam" (We will spread the Arya culture through out the world) slogan of the Vedic people.



Tilak in "Orion" mentions that the Greeks, who were worshippers of the Sun (Mitra), separated from their Vedic brethren about 3500 B.C. These perhaps were the people who moved westwards from the Caspian sea (as the Greeks Herodotus and Strabo lay down, that this sea and the nearby mountain Caucasus got their names from Sage Kaspios, obviously a reference to Sage Kashyapa of the Rg Veda). Pococke writes in "India in Greece" (quoted in Age of Buddha, by K.Venkatachalam, p.75), "The early civilization, the early arts, the indubitably early literature of India are equally the civilization of, the arts, and literature of Egypt and of Greece; for geographical references conjoined to historical facts and religious practices, now prove beyond all dispute than the latter countries are the colonies of the former". The Greeks (and Egyptians) derived their cosmogony from the Hindus is apparent from their respective literature (Deshpandey, "Bharat: As seen and known by foreigners").



An assessment of the spread of the Vedic culture in conjunction with the study of the ancient literature, history, arts, philosophy, cosmogony, etc. of peoples worldwide inculcates sufficient doubt, and perhaps an cogent argument, to the pervasive influence of the Vedic aryan thought. Count Bjornstierna in his book "The Theogony of the Hindus" (p.168) rightly judges and summarizes, "No nation on earth can vie with the Hindus in respect of the antiquity of their religion. It is there (i.e. Aryavarta) we must seek the cradle for the brahmin religion but for the cradle of high civilization of the Hindus, which gradually extended itself in the west to Ethiopia, to Egypt, to Phoenicia, in the east to Siam, to China and to Japan, in the south to Ceylon, to Java and to Sumatra, and in the north to Persia, to Chaldia and to Colchis, whence it came to Greece and to Rome and at length to the remote abode of the Hyperboreans".



Charles Vallency quotes Sir William Jones as saying "It has been proved by clear evidence and plain reasoning that a powerful monarchy was established in Iran, long before the Assyrian or Pishdadi government; that it was in truth a Hindu monarchy ... that is subsisted many centuries.." (Collectania De Rebus Hibernicus, p.465). Pococke observes, "that a system of Hinduism pervaded the whole Babylonian and Assyrian empires" (India in Greece, p.178). It is obvious that west asia, as was observed earlier, was very much a part of the massive Vedic empire.



There are a number of references and admittances to the antiquity of the Vedic culture, that the Hindus were the parent of the literature and theogony of the world (W.D.Brown quoted in Bharat: As seen and known by foreigners", p.13), that the world thought was influenced by Hindu philosophy, and finally, according to Max Muller (in "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature") the Vedas are the oldest books in existence ... and it carries us back to times of which we have no records anywhere". The expanse and pervasiveness of the Vedic thought is simply amazing and remarkable. P.N.Oak in his celebrated book "World Vedic Heritage" provides an exhaustive account of the vedics worldwide.



The Vedics seem to have settled in northern (and even in the South) India long before the Dasharadnya War (7000 B.C.). Divodasa, father of Sudas, had an empire in the regions of Punjab. The mountains of Himalayas and the land of Kashmir are praised in the Rg Veda. The Vedic settlements on the fertile banks of the Saraswati-Sindhu rivers, and their influence has reached to the far-east and south of India as well.



A flourishing civilization along the banks of Indus (Sindhu) river, called the Indus-valley civilization, has been an enigma after its excavation in the early 20th century. In spite of the intensive research conducted, many questions about this civilization yet remain to be answered. However, it has been maintained that this advanced culture had a non-aryan identity, destroyed by the invading aryans. However, an examination of the artifacts located at the unearthed sites present an different opinion.



The ethnic identity of the SSC folks, whether they were aryans or non-aryans has been addressed. It is assumed that these cities succumbed to the invasions of the so-called aryans and that the Vedic god Indra carried out all the destruction. Archaeologist Dales points that there is no destruction level covering the latest period of Mohenjodaro, no sign of extensive burning, no armour-clad warriors and no weapons are conspicuously absent. He states, "Enemy of the Harappans was nature and abetted by Harappans themselves, who accelerated the spoliation of the landscape - Thus ended one of the three civilizations of antiquity. Indra and the barbarian hordes are exonerated" (quoted by Possehl in "Ancient Cities of the Indus", 1979). The invasion theory does not stand an anthropological scrutiny, since studies of the SSC population prove the genetic and somatic homogeneity of all. The Vedic literature even though details many other things, does not speak of any "formidable civilization" presenting an extensive fortified front to the aryan invaders. There was no aryan invasion and therefore no massacre of the population at Mohenjodaro.



In Mohenjodaro, a tablet dated 2600 B.C. is found which depicts Lord Krishna in his childhood days (Agrawal, V.S., "India in the days of Panini", 1953). This shows that Lord Krishna was popular at least prior to this date, and also that the Indus Valley culture was not destroyed by any outsiders. This culture was in continuity with the Vedic culture prevalent on the banks of river Saraswati and Sindhu from ancient times. The disappearance of these settlements seems to have caused by natural calamities, by earthquakes, flooding and perhaps, change in course of rivers.



The picture of the SSC that emerges is of huge dimensions, a superb religious-cultural and trade empire spanning area of continental sizes. Small settlements and a few city-centers of enormous size are also seen. These sites have been marked by a presence of planned township, typical pottery and other artifacts. At Mehrgrah, charred remains of wheat, barley and oats have been found along with milling stones. Among floral remains, the finding of cotton seeds forming part of cultivated crops is notable.



The motifs like Pipal leaf, which attained deification in the later stages of the Veda, and Swastika which are supposed to be religious are found in some pre-SS sites, suggesting a continuity of from the Vedic culture. Sacrificial fire-alters and geometric designs are found in most sites suggesting a Vedic religio-ritualistic lifestyle of the people. A full set of terracotta figures in Yogic and greeting postures in the Indian posture are found at Mohenjo-daro and Harapppa. One famous seal found at the sites is that of Pashupati, a human figure with headgear of horns in seated in a contemplative yogic posture and surrounded by animals. He has been identified as Rudra, the later Mahadeva. An Atharvavedic hymn (2:34), attributed to Pashupati himself, exactly describes this seal. Due to mutual cultural and trade contacts, these SSC seals, weights and beads have been found in Ur, Kish and some parts of Sumeria.



The most enigmatic and baffling aspect of the Saraswati-Sindhu culture has been their script. Due to a belief in aryans overriding the "dravida" culture, attempts have been made to decipher SS symbols into some form of a dravidian script. Recently, Dr.Rao has convincingly deciphered the script and it is a form of Sanskrit beyond any doubt, perhaps, a form of Brahmi from which the current devanagari script has evolved. This view is being accepted by many scholars. The conclusion appears to fit in the logic since the Harappa culture is only in continuance with the earlier Vedic culture. However, since there was continuous contact between the Vedic folks and Sumerians, Phoenicians, etc. is possible that the SS script contains alphabetics from the semitic scripts. The migration of indo-europeans along with the Indians from their common habitat explains the close relationship between different scripts.



The SSC culture was anything but a part and parcel of the earlier Vedic civilization, and also, an antecedent to the Hindu culture that followed. The Saraswati-Sindhu phase represents a stage of development, gathered from C-14 dating techniques of various objects at different sites, during the period between 3000 B.C. to about 2100 B.C. (Possehl, Ed., Ancient Cities of the Indus, 1979), a little later than the Mahabharata civilization.



The datelines for the Mahabharata age have been well researched by numerous scholars. For events prior to Mahabharat, only estimated dates are available and those like Ramayana , at least for now, can only be estimated from the Mahabharata epoch. It is with this consideration that the time for the Mahabharata era is established, even though Ramayanic era is known to have occurred prior to Mahabharat.



Here under is provided a chronological table of events from the beginning of this "Kalpa" right upto the rule of the Gupta dynasty, i.e., when Greek Alexander invaded the western borders of India. The Vedic culture continues to flourish in India, the cradle of human civilization, even today. However, only the events before the advent of Common Era are listed in the following table. It is noted that dates prior to the Mahabharata (3138 B.C.) are approximate, until further investigation puts forth any convincing evidence.



Event/Person/Text Datelines

Swayambhuva Manu 29,000 B.C.

Veda (early stages) 23,720 B.C.

Samhita (Taitiriya) 22,000 B.C.

Manu Chakshushu 17,500 B.C.

King Pruthu 16,050 B.C.

Manu Vaivasvata 14,000 B.C.

Indra-Skanda dialogue (Mahabharat) 13,000 B.C.

Glaciation period 8,000 B.C.

Dasharadnya War 7,000 B.C.

Ramayana 5,500 B.C.

Orion period 4,000 B.C.

Greeks separate 4,000 B.C.

Rajatarangini begins 3,450 B.C.

Gonanda-I of Kashmir 3,238 B.C.

Mahabharata 3,138 B.C.

Veda (last stages) 3,100 B.C.

Saptarsi era begins 3,076 B.C.

Saraswati-Sindhu Culture 3,000 B.C.

Gautam Siddharta born 1,887 B.C.

Gautam Siddharta Nirvana 1,807 B.C.

Mahaveer Jain born 1,862 B.C.

Chandragupta Maurya 1,534 B.C.

Ashoka Maurya 1,482 B.C.

Ashoka Gonanda 1,448 B.C.

Kanishka 1,294 B.C.

Kumarila Bhatta 557 B.C.

Vruddha Garga 550 B.C.

Aadi Shankaracharya born 509 B.C.

Harsha Vikramaditya 457 B.C.

Shatkarani Gautamiputra 433 B.C.

Chandragupta Gupta 327 B.C.

Shakari Vikramaditya 57 B.C.

Shalivahan 78 A.D.

Huen-Tsang 625 A.D.

Kalhana (Kashmiri historian) 1,148 A.D





The continuity of Vedic culture from the distant past until today is preserved in the Rg Veda. This world's most ancient text records the happenings of many peoples; sincerely and faithfully preserved by the ancient Hindus and passed on to their subsequent generations. The Puranas also hold many geographical and historical annals of great kings and heroes who assisted in ushering principles of truth and righteousness around the globe. It is only the Hindus who have preserved authentically the records of the bygone era, a matter that they have a right to be proud about.



It is hoped that the above exercise is sufficiently convincing to indicate the necessity to study, understand and decipher the language and expression in the ancient texts which may further deliver the secrets and accomplishments of the bygone civilizations. The mystery of the common traits in the cultures and literatures of the world may also be solved by recognizing the genesis and unity in the thought of all peoples; the Rg Veda belongs to all humanity, irrespective of class, colour or creed. It also renders an idea of the required magnitude of research, sincere and apolitical, imperative to evaluate the older version of Indian history and rewrite it, recognizing the latest developments in archaeological and literary findings.



The word "arya" was used for people who cultivated the mind and character. The "aryans" were the inhabitants of India for at leasta few thousand years in the past, who spoke Sanskrit and practised the Vedic culture along the banks of the rivers Saraswati and Sindhu. There was no invasion of the aryan-race in India, causing the destruction of property and massacre of the aboriginals and of the so-called Dravidian people. Hindus have maintained the oldestand most authentic records of the ancient world, in the Vedas and Puraan, and accordingly, the Dravidians were the early offshoots of the Vedic people through Sage Agastya. After separating from their original homeland in the arctic regions, and later, from the regions of Caspian Sea, the Vedics appear to have migrated across the globe. This explains the commonality and affinity of the most ancient languages with Sanskrit. The customs, expressions and traditions of the Greek, Iranians, Egyptians with that of the Vedics is also apparent from the evidence presented in the preceding article.



The annals of astronomical configurations in the Rg Veda and Samhitas indicate a date of 23000 B.C. when the early stages of the these texts were composed. The literary works on ancient India provide long lists of kings, their genealogies and ancestries. From these and other records, the date when Swayambhuva Manu, the first king of this Kalpa, flourished is calculated to be roughly 29000 B.C. It was in 5500 B.C roughly that the great Ramayanic civilization appears to have flourished and the great Mahabharata War was fought, as calculated from literary, archaeological and astronomical examinations, in 3138 B.C. The Sage Buddha attained Nirvana in 1807 B.C., after living a saintly life of 80 years propagating the Vedic tenets.



Chandragupta Maurya, the grandfather of Maurya Ashoka, with the assistance of Arya Chanakya captured power and was coronated as the emperor of India in 1534 B.C. The foremost of all philosophers and the greatest proponents of the Advaita school of thought, Aadi Shankaracharya, was born in 509 B.C. The end of the Andhra dynasty, and the rise of the Gupta dynasty began in 328 B.C. It was an era when Gupta Chandragupta, Sandrocottus of the Greeks, ruled India. The rule of the Guptas is recorded as the "Golden Age" in the history of India, when all the facets of civilization, art and architecture, polity and politics, wealth and wisdom flourished side by side.



Thus, even before the advent of Christ, the civilization and thought in India, the Vedic culture had reached a state of supreme high idealism which the arya people wanted to propagate and share with rest of the world. It may be matter of a few decades until fresh literary, archaeological and experimental evidence is brought out that may provide further insight into the culture of the ancients, seeking answers to the common history of humanity.

.

Answer 356

On examining the methods followed by communalists, it becomes evident that they use history as the justification for communal ideology. In early '20s and '30s it was argued that Hindus and Muslims constitute two separate nations and its justification was derived from historical misrepresentations. Later, Hindu communal ideologues like Savarkar and Golwalkar went on to manufacture partisan answers to the questions like: What is the Origin of our Nation? How did the Hindu nation come into existence? In this way, history was distorted to suit their political projects. As a logical trajectory of this method, Hindu communalists project and situate the ideal Hindu society in the ancient period, and then attribute the ills of society to Muslim invasions. This argument is invoked to also justify almost any and every restriction imposed on women and to account for what is perceived as a steady decline in the status of women from a condition of near-idyllic bliss that prevailed during the Vedic era.



Further, there is the effort to derive 'identity' of the nation from its ancient past. This is one situation how history is mystified. Many a time outdated theories continue to be resurrected and reiterated, despite the emergence and availability of newer evidence proving the contrary.







MYTH:



Aryans were the original inhabitants of this land in that the Harappan culture was an Aryan culture.





FACT:



The 'Theory of the Aryan race arose 150 years ago. It is not referred to in any of the earliest Indian texts, whether the texts are in Sanskrit or Persian. Neither the Puranas nor the Vedas nor any of the Persian historians referred to the Aryans as a racial group. It is an invention of European thinkers, particularly the French racist Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineu who preached the "natural" inequality of the races in the mid 19th century. He divided the European society into aristocracy, which is Aryan; the peasantry, which is non-Aryan. The 'add-on' to this category is 'semites', the Jews, the, traders. His thinking later formed the basis of future racist onslaughts in Europe.



This myth was later accepted wholesale by a nationalist like Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who further propounded the Theory of the Arctic Home of Vedas-- that the Aryans came from Arctic region, and later, on the way divided into two branches. One branch went to Europe and reverted back to barbarism, the other branch came to India and retained Aryan civilisation and revived Aryan culture all over the world. Similarly, but in a distinct vein, Keshub Chandra Sen, a religious reformer, had maintained that the British being the descendants of the Aryans, as were the upper caste Indians, the advent of the British to India was like meeting of parted cousins. Later, MS Golwalkar (Shri Guruji), the Sarsanghachalak (2nd Supreme Dictator) of the RSS, in his 'We and Our Nationhood Defined' presented a different interpretation of the Theory of the Aryan Race, to state that Hindus and Hindus alone were the original inhabitants of India. As per Guruji, "We, Hindus, have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land for over 8,000 or even 10,000 years, before this land was invaded by any foreign race and, therefore, this land came to be known as Hindustan, the land of Hindus".[Golwalkar, 1939]. Golwalkar considered Aryans and Hindus as synonymous and even asserted that the Aryans did not migrate to India but were indigenous to this land.



On Tilak's theory of 'Arctic Home of the Vedas’, Golwalkar had maintained that the "Arctic zone was originally that part of the world which is today called Bihar and Orissa, that later moved north east and, then, in a sometimes northward movement, it came to its present position... We do not hesitate in affirming that had this fact been discovered during the lifetime of Lokmanya Tilak, he would unhesitatingly have propounded the proposition that 'the Arctic Home of the Vedas' was verily in Hindustan itself and that it was not the Hindus who migrated to that land but the Arctic zone which emigrated to that land and left the Hindus in Hindustan". [Golwalkar, 1939, P 8]. However, S Yechuri states, "Even by the logic of his own argument, if the Arctic zone moved away from Bihar-Orissa, how could it leave the people behind who were inhabiting the land mass? When a landmass moves it move along with everything on it. People cannot be left hanging in a vacuum only to drop down when and where Golwalkar wishes"



Believing in the centrality of Aryans origin in this region, Hindutva ideologues are unrelenting, trying to pick the thread form one to other, distorting newer findings to fit into their construct. For instance, they have tried to link the Harappa and Mohen-jodaro cultures also to the Aryans thereby reversing the historically accepted sequence of events to state that the period of Rg Vedas ends by 3700 BC and is prior to Indus civilisation. Their ideologue Rajaram dates the beginning of Harappan civilisation to 3000 BC earlier than usual but accepts the agreed terminal date as 1900 BC. [Ratnagar, 1996]. As per Ratnagar, "there are too many radio carbon dates now available for the Harappan sites to make possible any radical revision of Harappan chronology". Unlike geo-morphologists and archaeologists who have worked in the field on the ancient process of desiccation of that river systems, this computer scientist, N Rajaram, is certain that Saraswati ran dry precisely in 1900 BC. So, the Rg Veda has to be earlier than 1900 BC. Moreover, the Harappan civilisation ended because Saraswati ceased to flow, that in turn having resulted from a 'calamitous drought' and–yes--the melting of ice caps following the ending of last Ice Age. [Rajaram, 1995]. Rajaram further states that when that happened the elite amongst the Aryans in a 'massive outflow' migrated to west via Iran. Among the significant outcomes of that movement is the origin of Egyptian pyramid in Vedic samasana-cit [Aryan Invasion of India, Rajaram, P 50].



The other 'school' on the origin of Aryans posited the view that they came from Asia. But, this immediately raised the question as to how can our ancestors have come from Asia, as this was the high point of imperialism and Asian countries were subject colonies. To get around this problem, they substituted it with the argument that Aryans were indigenous to India. This view is in line with the communal thinking which appropriates the indigenous status to itself and thereby the rightful status as theirs of the land.



Max Mueller, an Orientalist, applied this theory to India. Orientalists were a school of thought who were fighting a losing battle with the Utilitarians an ethical theory founded by an English moralist and writer on law, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). He held that the coming of British to India was a 'God sent' event meant to 'civilise' India. Orientalists intrusion in the Indian past was an effort to bring back the 'declining' social norms in their own fast changing society. They uncritically held the Ancient Indian society as the ideal one overlooking its inner contradictions and tensions. "They evolved a theory of the Indo-European homeland and of the common ancestry of the Sanskritik and Greek cultures. The Aryans were seen as a racial entity rather than a group of people who spoke related languages, and the dynamics of Aryan culture in India and Greek were sought to be related." [Thapar, 1994]. This viewpoint of idyllic ancient Indian society fitted well into the wishes of the orthodox Hindus, who wholeheartedly adopted the view.



Mueller also evolved the theory that there was an invasion of Aryans into north-western India and after subjugating the local Dasas they settled down in India, bringing with them their culture and civilisation--the Sanskrit language, Vedic religion, etc. Mueller saw this event as a kind of civilizing mission: that the Dasas were very primitive, not developed or advanced and the Aryans came to civilize them; that the upper castes in India, sometimes referred to as 'dvija' (twice born castes, Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya in the Varna system), are all descendants of Aryans, and so they are demarcated from lower castes. [Thapar].



In reaction, Christian missionaries wrote that the Aryans, the upper castes, oppressed the lower castes. Another reaction was from Hindutva ideologues who insisted that all caste Hindus are Aryas, and so coined the term Hindu Aryas. They further said that there was no invasion as they were indigenous people--India being their Pitrubhumi (Fatherland) and Punyabhumi (Holyland), and that they spread from India to all over Asia and Europe.



In line with the latest archaeological findings, and linguistic interpretations, Indian culture dates back to 6000 BC. Its most discernible manifestation is the Harappan Civilisation and also the most distinct and decipherable civilization of this region. It declined in the second millennium BC and completely disintegrated by 1500 BC when Aryas entered northwest of India. "The Aryans or Indo-Aryans descendants of the Indo-Europeans had remained for some time in Bactria (Northern Afghanistan). By about 1500 BC, however, they had migrated into northern India through the passes of the Hindu Kush mountains. At first they wandered across the plains of Punjab, searching for pastureland being predominantly a cattle breeding people. Finally they settled in small village communities in forests and gradually took to agriculture", [Romila Thapar, 1966], and went on to produce Rg Veda and other Vedic texts.



Contrary to the claims of Hindu communalists Vedic society is no longer regarded the foundation of Indian civilization because a very different civilisation, the Harappan Civilisation, had already preceded it and which was comparatively more advanced.



Hindutva historians argue that the Harappan Civilisation and Vedic Aryans are identical and now date the Vedas back to the period of Harappan Civilization which they maintain is the archaeological counterpart of the Vedic civilization. However, as borne out also by linguistic analysis the Harappan Civilisation was essentially an urban one, based on urban culture, while the Vedic civilization according to Vedic texts itself was predominantly a pastoral rural society with no mention of an urban culture.



When he wrote over a hundred years ago, Mueller had assumed that Vedic Sanskrit is the earliest and purest form of Sanskrit, and was a pure Aryan language. Today, however, the examination of its grammar proves that it is not "pure". Some elements of proto-Dravidian grammar are apparent in Vedic Sanskrit. There occurs a mixture in language with the arrival of Aryans and there are many words which are Indo-Aryan in origin, eg, Pangala word from a proto-Dravidian or Mundari language spoken by central Indian Adivasi area finds its place in Sanskrit). Thus there was a symbiosis of different people living side-by-side and with Sanskrit this intermingling goes on increasing with time.



Romila Thapar shows that "the language has come from outside, from Iran, probably brought by small groups of people for which we have archaeological evidence. These migrants were usually pastoralists or small-scale farmers, who over many hundred of years were bringing in new language, which was also changing in the process. Then when they settled in India, the language in India also undergoes change because of Indian connections. Therefore we argue that there may not have been an invasion. We don't have the archaeological evidence for a huge invasion as Max Mueller insists. But there were multiple migrations and there is evidence from archaeology for the migration. So in essence it is unimportant to go on saying: We are indigenous, because we can never prove it. We are in fact very mixed up. Aryan is not a race because we all use this term very loosely and speak about Aryan race and the Dravidian race; the terms do not refer to race but to the language used".



The myth of Aryan race identified language with race. Max Mueller observed that all those who spoke Aryan language (Sanskrit in India, Iranian in Iran, Greek, Latin, Gaelic, etc) belong to the same race. The monogenesis thesis traced back all 3 languages to India-European and peoples' biological origin was traced to a single race. The work on biological race which has been done over years shows that in terms of genetic make up, in terms of relationships of various groups, the area of northern India comprises of a huge, multiple variety of people, variety of races and one cannot talk, of a single race. "Therefore the notion that there was once a pure Aryan race and that every body that spoke a particular language belonged to that race is complete nonsense. These (Aryan, Dravidian) are not races. These are not biological races. These are language terms..." [Romila Thapar, 1996].











MYTH:



The Indus Script is Vedic script

FACT:



First and foremost, although excavation of ruins do indeed advance our understanding of civilisations they do not by the same token serve as keys to unraveling the secrets of ancient societies and civilisations. The masterkey, instead, to its secrets is its scripts inscribed primarily on seals including amulets and other objects.



As far as the seals with inscriptions on them of the Harappan sites are concerned there are approximately 3,500 inscribed texts, although the average number of signs in a text is less than 5. However, the most authentic pronouncement of this Harappan script is that it has not been fully deciphered. The script is an unknown script; written in anunknown language. It does not appear in a bi-lingual context; does not survive on any monument, and which must be deciphered from short texts. Decipherment has been a slow process of understanding the structure of the language by establishing the infernal logic of the script, by comparison with other scripts, and by comparative linguistics.



Innumerable claims have been made in the attempt to crack the decipherment of the Indus Script. None have been validated including the myth in question that the Vedic text. 'Nighantu of Yaska' has supposedly aided in cracking the 'Rosetta Stone' (the Rosetta Stone, discovered by Napolean's army in Egypt in 1799, was the key to the later decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs as it had the same text written in Greek hieroglyphs) of Hindu historians fail to state what exactly the 'Nighantu' contains (Is it a bilingual text, for example?).



Further, the 'Nighantu' (c700 BC) is a commentary that had been recorded to explain rituals and the etymology of certain unclear words in the Rg Veda. It has also no reference to scripts of any type.





The dating of the seals on which the script were inscribed–between 3000-2000 BC --is incorrect because the date of the early phase of the Harappan Civilisation itself is 3600 to 2600 BC, when no script was in existence, and the mature phase to 2600-1800 BC when there was a script. The Rg Veda was written between 1500 and 1000 BC.



Contrary to the claim, the Harappan script is instead considered by scholars like the Finnish scholar Asko Parpola to be a non-Aryan particularly Dravidian one. He maintains that the "...writing of the Harappa script is from right to left (like Urdu or the old Kharosthi-Comet Project) but since they are on seals, which are used for impressions, it appears that it is in the opposite direction....Secondly, if the Harappan civilisation was post-Vedic, why is there no evidence of the horse in the remains of the civilisation? We know from the Vedas that the horse was very important to that society. A number of animals are depicted on Indus seals, and the skeletal remains of a number of animals have also been found. But there is no evidence of the horse. Why?"

Answer 357

One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.







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Racial Theories



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.



Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).



About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.



Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding.







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Racial Interpretation of Vedas



Europeans Vedic interpreters used this same racial idea to explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna). To turn this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the red race and where is the yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas been a red race and the Vaishyas as yellow race?



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere.



The Term Aryan



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.



New Evidence on the Indus Culture



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.



The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.



This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion thoery or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.



Aryan and Dravidian Races



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.







North and South Indian Religions



Scholars dominated by the Aryan Dravidian racial idea have tried to make some Hindu gods Dravidian and other gods Aryan, even though there has been no such division within Hindu culture. This is based upon a superficial identifi- cation of deities with color i.e. Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which we have already shown the incorrectness of. In the Mahabharat, Krishna traces his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a famous Aryan people of the north and west of India, and there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers whose names meant dark (like Krishna Angiras or Shyava Atreya).



Others say that Shiva is a Dravidian god because Shaivism is more prominent in south than in north India. However, the most sacred sites of Shiva are Kailash in Tibet, Kashmir, and the city of Varanasi in the north. There never was any limitation of the worship of Shiva to one part of India.



Shiva is also said not to be a Vedic god because he is not prominent in the Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text, where deities like Indra, Agni and Soma are more prevalent than Rudra (the Vedic form of Shiva). However, Rudra-Shiva is dominent in the Atharva and Yajur Vedas, as well as the Brahmanas, which are also very old Vedic texts. And Vedic gods like Indra and Agni are often identi- fied with Rudra and have many similar characteristics (Indra as the dancer, the destroyer of the cities, and the Lord of power, for example). While some differences in nomenclature do exist between Vedic and Shaivite or Vedic and any other later teachings like the Vaishnava or Shakta - and we would expect a religion to undergo some development through time - there is nothing to show any division between Vedic and Shaivite traditions, and certainly nothing to show that it is a racial division. Shiva in fact is the deity most associated with Vedic ritual and fire offerings. He is adorned with the ashes, the bhasma, of the Vedic fire.



Early investigators also thought they saw a Shaivite element in the so-call ed Dravidian Indus Valey civilization, with the existence of Shivalinga like sacred objects, and seals resembling Shiva. However, further examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like fire-altars replete with all the tradi- tional offers as found in the Hindu Brahmanas, thus again refuting such simplistic divisions. The religion of the Indus (Saraswati) culture appears to include many Vedic as well as Puranic elements.



Some hold that Shaivism is a south Indian religion and the Vedic religion is north Indian. However, the greatest supporter of Vedanta, Shankaracharya, was a Dravidian Shaivite from Kerala. Meanwhile many south Indian kings have been Vaishnavites or worshippers of Vishnu (who is by the same confused logic considered to be a north Indian god). In short there is no real division of India into such rigid compartments as north and south Indian religions, though naturally regional variations do exist.







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Aryan and Dravidian Languages



The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do have important differences. Their ways of developing words and grammer are different. However, it is a misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan. The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European languages, which are materialistic in orientation, bacause Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the term is being used in a Western or European sense that we should remember is quite apart from its traditional Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the Sanskrit term does not have.



We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion. The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different language group than the other Europeans, but we do not speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being non-Europeans, nor do we consider that their religious beliefs must therefore be unrelated to those of the rest of Europe.



Even though Dravidian languages are based on a different model than Sanskrit there are thirty to seventy per cent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like Telugu and Tamil, which is much higher percentage than north Indian languages like Hindi. In addition both north and south Indian languages have a similar construction and phraseology that links them close together, which European languages often do not share. This has caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a Dravidian language. In short, the language compart- ments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as has been thought.



In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral letters, for example), which are not present in other Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there were already Drvidians in the same region as the Vedic people, and part of the same culture with them, or that Dravidian languages could also have been early off-shoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have been none other than Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the Rig Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text.







Indians in Vedic/Puranic Lore



Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana or Manu Samhita, have looked at the Dravidians as people outside of the Vedic culture. However, they do not look at them as indigenous or different people but as fallen descendants of Vedic kings, notably Vishwamitra. These same texts look upon some people of north India, including some groups from Bengal, as also outside of Vedic culture, even though such people were Indo-European in language.



Other texts like the Ramayana portray the Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha (modern Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama. The Vedic rishi Agastya is also often portrayed as one of the progenitors of the Dravid- ian peoples. Hence there appears to have been periods in history when the Dravidians or some portion of them were not looked on with favour by some followers of Vedic culture, but this was largely temporary.



If we look through the history of India, there has been some time when almost every part of India has been dominated for a period by unorthodox traditions like Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to mention outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or dominated by other foreign conquerors, like the Greeks, the Scythians (Shakas) or the Huns. That Gujarat was a once suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into another race or religion. That something similar happened to the Dravidians at some point in history does not require making something permanently non-Aryan about them. In the history of Europe for example, that Austria once went through a protestant phase, does not cause modern Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.



The kings of south India, like the Chola and Pandya dynsties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of all the Aryas, originally a south Indian king, Satyavrata. Hence there are not only traditions that make the Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but those that make the Aryans of north India descendants of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any differences between them appear to be secondary, and nothing like the great racial divide that the Aryan-Dravidian idea has promoted.







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Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic Culture



Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preser- ved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan. This again was not something part of the Aryan tradition of India, as part of the misinterpretation of the term Aryan fostered by European thought which often had a political or religi- ous bias, and which led to the Nazis. To equate such racism and violence with the Vedic and Hindu religion, the least aggressive of all religions, is a rather sad thing, not to say very questionable scholarship.



Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of north India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north. They need not feel that they are losing their culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.



Vedic and Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultral variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the develop- ment of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Meca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.



Meanwhile the people of north India also need not take this north-south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any Caucasian race group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.



It is also not necessary to turn various Vedic gods into Dravidian gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so-called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their gods. This only gives credence to what is superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, north or south, which is high or spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures within the greater tradition.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 358

The Controversy

------------------------------

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.







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Racial Theories



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.



Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).



About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.



Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding.







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Racial Interpretation of Vedas



Europeans Vedic interpreters used this same racial idea to explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna). To turn this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the red race and where is the yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas been a red race and the Vaishyas as yellow race?



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?







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The Term Aryan



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





New Evidence on the Indus Culture



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.



The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.



This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion thoery or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Aryan and Dravidian Races



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.







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North and South Indian Religions



Scholars dominated by the Aryan Dravidian racial idea have tried to make some Hindu gods Dravidian and other gods Aryan, even though there has been no such division within Hindu culture. This is based upon a superficial identifi- cation of deities with color i.e. Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which we have already shown the incorrectness of. In the Mahabharat, Krishna traces his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a famous Aryan people of the north and west of India, and there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers whose names meant dark (like Krishna Angiras or Shyava Atreya).



Others say that Shiva is a Dravidian god because Shaivism is more prominent in south than in north India. However, the most sacred sites of Shiva are Kailash in Tibet, Kashmir, and the city of Varanasi in the north. There never was any limitation of the worship of Shiva to one part of India.



Shiva is also said not to be a Vedic god because he is not prominent in the Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text, where deities like Indra, Agni and Soma are more prevalent than Rudra (the Vedic form of Shiva). However, Rudra-Shiva is dominent in the Atharva and Yajur Vedas, as well as the Brahmanas, which are also very old Vedic texts. And Vedic gods like Indra and Agni are often identi- fied with Rudra and have many similar characteristics (Indra as the dancer, the destroyer of the cities, and the Lord of power, for example). While some differences in nomenclature do exist between Vedic and Shaivite or Vedic and any other later teachings like the Vaishnava or Shakta - and we would expect a religion to undergo some development through time - there is nothing to show any division between Vedic and Shaivite traditions, and certainly nothing to show that it is a racial division. Shiva in fact is the deity most associated with Vedic ritual and fire offerings. He is adorned with the ashes, the bhasma, of the Vedic fire.



Early investigators also thought they saw a Shaivite element in the so-call ed Dravidian Indus Valey civilization, with the existence of Shivalinga like sacred objects, and seals resembling Shiva. However, further examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like fire-altars replete with all the tradi- tional offers as found in the Hindu Brahmanas, thus again refuting such simplistic divisions. The religion of the Indus (Saraswati) culture appears to include many Vedic as well as Puranic elements.



Some hold that Shaivism is a south Indian religion and the Vedic religion is north Indian. However, the greatest supporter of Vedanta, Shankaracharya, was a Dravidian Shaivite from Kerala. Meanwhile many south Indian kings have been Vaishnavites or worshippers of Vishnu (who is by the same confused logic considered to be a north Indian god). In short there is no real division of India into such rigid compartments as north and south Indian religions, though naturally regional variations do exist.







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Aryan and Dravidian Languages



The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do have important differences. Their ways of developing words and grammer are different. However, it is a misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan. The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European languages, which are materialistic in orientation, bacause Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the term is being used in a Western or European sense that we should remember is quite apart from its traditional Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the Sanskrit term does not have.



We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion. The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different language group than the other Europeans, but we do not speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being non-Europeans, nor do we consider that their religious beliefs must therefore be unrelated to those of the rest of Europe.



Even though Dravidian languages are based on a different model than Sanskrit there are thirty to seventy per cent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like Telugu and Tamil, which is much higher percentage than north Indian languages like Hindi. In addition both north and south Indian languages have a similar construction and phraseology that links them close together, which European languages often do not share. This has caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a Dravidian language. In short, the language compart- ments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as has been thought.



In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral letters, for example), which are not present in other Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there were already Drvidians in the same region as the Vedic people, and part of the same culture with them, or that Dravidian languages could also have been early off-shoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have been none other than Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the Rig Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text.







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Dravidians in Vedic/Puranic Lore



Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana or Manu Samhita, have looked at the Dravidians as people outside of the Vedic culture. However, they do not look at them as indigenous or different people but as fallen descendants of Vedic kings, notably Vishwamitra. These same texts look upon some people of north India, including some groups from Bengal, as also outside of Vedic culture, even though such people were Indo-European in language.



Other texts like the Ramayana portray the Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha (modern Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama. The Vedic rishi Agastya is also often portrayed as one of the progenitors of the Dravid- ian peoples. Hence there appears to have been periods in history when the Dravidians or some portion of them were not looked on with favour by some followers of Vedic culture, but this was largely temporary.



If we look through the history of India, there has been some time when almost every part of India has been dominated for a period by unorthodox traditions like Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to mention outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or dominated by other foreign conquerors, like the Greeks, the Scythians (Shakas) or the Huns. That Gujarat was a once suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into another race or religion. That something similar happened to the Dravidians at some point in history does not require making something permanently non-Aryan about them. In the history of Europe for example, that Austria once went through a protestant phase, does not cause modern Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.



The kings of south India, like the Chola and Pandya dynsties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of all the Aryas, originally a south Indian king, Satyavrata. Hence there are not only traditions that make the Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but those that make the Aryans of north India descendants of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any differences between them appear to be secondary, and nothing like the great racial divide that the Aryan-Dravidian idea has promoted.







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Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic Culture



Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preser- ved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan. This again was not something part of the Aryan tradition of India, as part of the misinterpretation of the term Aryan fostered by European thought which often had a political or religi- ous bias, and which led to the Nazis. To equate such racism and violence with the Vedic and Hindu religion, the least aggressive of all religions, is a rather sad thing, not to say very questionable scholarship.



Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of north India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north. They need not feel that they are losing their culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.



Vedic and Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultral variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the develop- ment of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Meca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.



Meanwhile the people of north India also need not take this north-south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any Caucasian race group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.



It is also not necessary to turn various Vedic gods into Dravidian gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so-called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their gods. This only gives credence to what is superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, north or south, which is high or spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures within the greater tradition.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.

Answer 359

The term aryan has been applied to those people who occupied the plains between the Caspian and Black Seas. The hypothesis is that they began to migrate around the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Some went north and northwest, some went westward settling in parts of the Middle East, while others traveled to India through the Indus Valley. Those that are said to have come into India were the “invading Aryans.”



The Vedic literature establishes a different scenario. They present evidence that ancient, pre-historical India covered a much broader area, and that the real Aryans were not invaders from the north into the Indus region, but were the original residents who were descendants of Vedic society that had spread over the world from the area of India. Let us remember that the term aryan has been confused with meaning light or light complexion. However, Aryan refers to Arya, or a clear consciousness toward God, not white or white people. In the Vedic sutras, the word aryan is used to refer to those who are spiritually oriented and of noble character. The Sanskrit word aryan is linguistically related to the word harijana (pronounced hariyana), meaning one related to God, Hari. Therefore, the real meaning of the name aryan refers to those people related to the spiritual Vedic culture. It has little to do with those immigrants that some researchers have speculated to be the so-called “invading Aryans.” Aryan refers to those who practice the Vedic teachings and does not mean a particular race of people. Therefore, anyone can be an Aryan by following the clear, light, Vedic philosophy, while those who do not follow it are non-Aryan. Thus, the name Aryan, as is generally accepted today, has been misapplied to a group of people who are said to have migrated from the north into India.



Some call these people Sumerians, but L. A. Waddell, even though he uses the name, explains that the name Sumerian does not exist as an ethnic title and was fabricated by the modern Assyriologists and used to label the Aryan people. And Dr. Hall, in his book Ancient History of the Near East, says that there is an anthropological resemblance between the Dravidians of India and the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, which suggests that the group of people called the Sumerians actually were of Indian descendants. With this information in mind, it is clear that the real Aryans were the Vedic followers who were already existing throughout India and to the north beyond the Indus region.



To help understand how the Aryan influence spread through the world, L. A. Waddell explains that the Aryans established the pre-historic trade routes over land and sea from at least the beginning of the third millennium B.C., if not much earlier. Wherever the Aryans went, whether in Egypt, France, England, or elsewhere, they imposed their authority and culture, much to the betterment of the previous culture of the area. They brought together scattered tribes and clans into national unity that became increasingly bright in their systems of social organization, trade, and art. In seeking new sources of metal, such as tin, copper, gold, and lead, the Aryans established ports and colonies among the local tribes that later developed into separate nations which took many of their traditions and cultural traits from the ruling Aryans. Of course, as trade with the Aryans diminished, especially after the Mahabharata War in India, variations in the legends and cultures became prominent. This accounts for the many similarities between the different ancient civilizations of the world, as well as those resemblances that still exist today.



Another consideration is that since the Aryans were centralized in the Gangetic plains and the Himalayan mountains, from there they could have spread east along the Brahmaputra River and over the plain of Tibet. The Chinese, in the form of the Cina tribe, also are likely to have originated here since they have the legend of the sacred mountain in the west with four rivers. The ancient Puranas explain that Manu and his sons ruled over the area, over as many lands north of Mount Meru and Kailas as south. Other Aryans could have easily gone down the Sarasvati and Sarayu into north India. Others went from the Indus into Kashmir and Afghanistan, and into Central Asia. Others went into the areas of Gujarat and Sind, and over through Persia and the Gulf region. This is how the Sumerian civilization was founded, along with Babylonia. From there they went farther into Turkey and Europe.



After spreading throughout South India, they continued down the Ganges by sea east into Malaysia and Indonesia, founding the ancient Vedic cultures there. By sea they continued to China, meeting the Aryans that were probably already there. From China and the orient, they sailed over the Pacific Ocean and finally reached and colonized the Americas. Plenty of evidence of this is presented in the following chapters.



We can see some of the affect of this spread out of India in regard to the term aryan. The name Harijana or Aryan evolved into Syriana or Syrians in Syria, and Hurrians in Hurri, and Arianna or Iranians in Iran. This shows that they were once part of Vedic society. A similar case is the name Parthians in Partha, another old country in Persia. Partha was the name of Krishna’s friend Arjuna, a Vedic Aryan, and means the son of King Prithu. So the name Parthian indicates those who are the descendants of King Prithu. Parthians also had a good relationship with the early Jews since the Jews used to buy grains from the Parthians. The Greeks referred to the Jews as Judeos, or Jah deos or Yadavas, meaning people of Ya or descendants of Yadu, one of the sons of Yayati. It is also regarded that the basis of the Kabbalah, the book of Jewish mystical concepts, as described in The Holy Kabbalah by Arthur Edward Waite, is linked with Kapila Muni, the Indian sage and incarnation of Krishna who established the analytical sankhya-yoga philosophy. Therefore, a connection between the early Jews and ancient Vedic culture is evident.



Another aspect of the connection between these various regions and the Vedic culture is explained in the Vedic literature. In the Rig-veda (10.63.1) Manu is the foremost of kings and seers. Manu and his family were survivors of the world flood, as mentioned in the Shatapatha Brahmana (1.8.1). Thus, a new beginning for the human race came from him, and all of humanity are descendants from Manu. The Atharva-veda (19.39.8) mentions where his ship descended in the Himalayas. One temple that signifies the location of where the ship of Manu first touched land after the flood is in Northern India in the hills of Manali. His important descendants are the Pauravas, Ayu, Nahusha, and Yayati. From Yayati came the five Vedic clans; the Purus, Anus, Druhyus, Turvashas, and Yadus. The Turvashas are related to India’s southeast, Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, and are the ancestors of the Dravidians and the Yavanas. Yadu is related to the south or southwest, Gujarat and Rajasthan, from Mathura to Dwaraka and Somnath. The Anus are related to the north, to Punjab, as well as Bengal and Bihar. The Druhyus are related to the west and northwest, such as Gandhara and Afghanistan. Puru is connected with the central Yamuna/Ganges region. All but Puru were known for having intermittently fallen from the Vedic dharma, and various wars in the Puranas were with these groups.



As explained by Shrikant Talageri in his book, The Aryan Invasion Theory: A Reappraisal (pp. 304-5, 315, 367-368), from these descendants, the Purus were the Rigvedic people and developed Vedic culture in north central India and the Punjab along the Sarasvati (Rig-veda 7.96.2). The Anus of southern Kashmir along the Parushni or modern Ravi River (Rig-veda 7.18.13) spread over western Asia and developed the various Iranian cultures. The Druhyus northwest of the area of the Punjab and Kashmir spread into Europe and became the western Indo-Europeans, or the Druids and ancient Celts. A first group went northwest and developed the proto-Germanic dialect, and another group traveled farther south and developed the proto-Hellenic and Itallic-Celtic dialects. Other tribes included the Pramshus in western Bihar, and Ikshvakus of northern Uttar Pradesh.



Incidentally, according to legend, thousands of years ago Kashmir was a large lake surrounded by beautiful mountain peaks. It was here where the goddess Parvati stayed in her boat. One day she went to see Lord Shiva in the mountains. Then a great demon took possession of the lake. Kashyapa Muni, who was present at the time, called for the goddess to return. Together they chased the demon away and created an immense valley. It was called Kashyapa-Mira, and later shortened to Kashmir. This again shows the Vedic connection of this region.



Other tribes mentioned in the Vedic texts include the Kiratas, who are the mountain people of Tibet and Nepal, often considered impure for not practicing the Vedic dharma. The Vishnu Purana (4.3.18-21) also mentions the Shakas who are the Scythians of ancient Central Asia, the Pahlavas who are the Persians, and the Cinas who are the Chinese. They are all considered as fallen nobility or Kshatriyas who had been driven out of India during the reign of King Sagara.



To explain further, Yadu was the eldest of the five sons of Yayati. Yayati was a great emperor of the world and one of the original forefathers of those of Aryan and Indo-European heritage. Yayati divided his kingdom amongst his sons, who then started their own dynasties. Yayati had two wives, Devayani and Sharmistha. Yayati had two sons from Devayani: Yadu and Turvasu. Yadu was the originator of the Yadu dynasty called the Yadavas, later known as the Lunar Dynasty. From Turvasu came the Yavana or Turk dynasty. From Sharmistha, Yayati had three sons: Druhya, who started the Bhoja dynasty; Anu, who began the Mleccha or Greek dynasty; and Puru who started the Paurava dynasty, which is said to have settled along the Ravi River and later along the Sarasvati. Some say that this clan later went on to Egypt who became the Pharaohs and rulers of the area. These Aryan tribes, originating in India by King Yayati and mentioned in the Rig-veda and Vishnu and Bhagavat Puranas, spread all over the world.



The Yadava kingdom later became divided among the four sons of Bhima Satvata. From Vrishni, the youngest, descended Vasudeva, the father of Krishna and Balarama and their sister Pritha or Kunti. Kunti married the Yadava prince Pandu, whose descendants became the Pandavas. Kunti became the mother of Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna (Partha), the three elder Pandavas. The younger Pandavas were Nakula and Sahadeva, born from Pandu’s second wife Madri. After moving to the west coast of India, they lived at Dwaraka under the protection of Lord Krishna. Near the time of Krishna’s disappearance from earth, a fratricidal war broke out and most of the Pandavas were killed, who had grown to become a huge clan. Those that survived may have gone on to the Indus Valley where they joined or started another part of the advanced Vedic society. Others may have continued farther west into Egypt and some on to Europe, as previously explained.



This is further substantiated in the Mahabharata which mentions several provinces of southern Europe and Persia that were once connected with the Vedic culture. The Adi-parva (174.38) of the Mahabharata describes the province of Pulinda (Greece) as having been conquered by Bhimasena and Sahadeva, two of the Pandava brothers. Thus, the ancient Greeks were once a part of Bharata-varsa (India) and the Vedic civilization. But later the people gave up their affiliation with Vedic society and were, therefore, classified as Mlecchas. However, in the Vana-parva section of the Mahabharata it is predicted that this non-Vedic society would one day rule much of the world, including India. Alexander the Great conquered India for the Pulinda or Greek civilization in 326 B.C., fulfilling the prophecy.



The Sabha-parva and Bhisma-parva sections of the Mahabharata mention the province of Abhira, situated near what once was the Sarasvati River in ancient Sind. The Abhiras are said to have been warriors who had left India out of fear of Lord Parashurama and hid themselves in the Caucasion hills between the Black and Caspian Seas. Later, for a period of time, they were ruled by Maharaja Yudhisthira. However, the sage Markandaya predicted that these Abhiras, after they gave up their link with Vedic society, would one day rule India.



Another province mentioned in Mahabharata (Adi-parva 85.34) is that of the Yavanas (Turks) who were so named for being descendants of Maharaja Yavana (Turvasu), one of the sons of Maharaja Yayati, as previously explained. They also gave up Vedic culture and became Mlecchas. They fought in the battle of Kuruksetra against the Pandavas on behalf of Duryodhana and lost. However, it was predicted that they would one day return to conquer Bharata-varsa (India) and, indeed, this came to pass. Muhammad Ghori later attacked and conquered parts of India on behalf of Islam from the Abhira and Yavana or Turkish countries. Thus, we can see that these provinces in the area of Greece and Turkey (and the countries in between there and India) were once part of the Vedic civilization and had at one time not only political and cultural ties, but also ancestral connections. This is the Vedic version, of the origin of Aryan civilization and how its influence spread in various degrees throughout the world.

Answer 360

Several of you may already be aware of the debate that has now been current for several years around the theory of “Aryan Invasion of India”. Based on archaeological evidence, new research and fresh examination of existing evidence (and ********* away the colonial bias of earlier interpretations), it now appears that the theory was fundamentally flawed and is difficult to justify in the light of new findings.



I was therefore very pleased when I read “The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy”, By David Frawley . It very articulately sets the argument for considering a revision of the whole theory and I have attempted a summary below. The original essay in its entirety can be accessed at http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/aryan/aryan_frawley_1.html

For those of you who are not aware of the tremendous work that is being done by Dr Frawley, please have a look at http://www.vedanet.com/index.html



As Dr Frawley says in his introduction, although many of the theories that British historians postulated had a colonial bias [1], they are still accepted by many Hindus, although “a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.” To quote further,



“One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter-skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southerners were a different race.” Dr Frawley makes the point that colour was the dominant influence in European theories of race which projected Europeans as belonging to a “white” (and therefore superior) race who had the duty and obligation to bear the burden of the “dark” (therefore inferior) natives.



This mental bias was then transposed on the (mistaken) theory that the “fair-skinned” Aryans had “subjugated/conquered” the “dark-skinned” indigenous people who had subsequently migrated southwards.



Around the same time, research into Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages revealed surprisingly large similarities and it became obvious that Indo-European languages and Sanskrit shared a similar origin. It was of course automatically assumed that, “the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been ‘white’”. The Europeans of course could not even consider the possibility that “their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. (Further) As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invaders of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.”



This “racial interpretation” was carried further and applied to explain the reference in Vedas to the fight between “light” and “darkness”. This was “naturally” assumed to be a battle between light-skinned Aryans and dark-skinned Dravidians. The fact that most religions in the world (and most mythological references) speak about the battle between light and darkness (as a metaphor for good and evil) was conveniently ignored.



This projection of racism onto the ancient history of India was further extended to “explain” the caste system. The reference in Vedas to “Brahmins…(being) white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black” was misinterpreted from its original context of referring to “gunas” and was used to conclude that Brahmins were originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras [2]



The fact that this theory flew in the face of empirical evidence (where are the red and yellow-coloured castes in India?) was also conveniently ignored.



Dr Frawley then points out the extent to which the ideas were misinterpreted:

“The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such ’scholar- ship’ can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day. This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race?



Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have different colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saraswati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere? In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?



At the same time (circa 19th century), although several scholars (including Max Muller) did state that “Aryan” was not a racial term and there was no evidence of it being used as such (either in the Vedas or other ancient texts), these views were largely ignored.



As Dr Frawley states, “We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical characteristics. The term Aryan means “noble” or “spiritual”, and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.”



If one looks at recent archaeological evidence, the theory of “Aryan Invasion” becomes even less tenable.



Research on the racial profiles of the original Indus Valley[3] inhabitants shows similarities to the inhabitants of North India of the present day. In view of this, it is hard to imagine that any large scale or significant “invasion” took place into the region in the last 4000 years. Even if it did, it must have been so far back that it has no relevance (or bearing on) what we know today about Hindu (Indian) culture.



As Dr Frawley accurately points out, “the idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch.



The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically both the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharashtra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race.



Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy. Nor is the Caucasian race the “white” race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The pre-dominant Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Caucasians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color…”



Dr Frawley then examines the evidence and the theory of there being significant differences in religion, language and ancient texts between the two “races”, Aryan and Dravidian. In each case, he finds that either the theory is not based on empirical evidence and/or it uses selective observations to fit the conclusion of two different “races”.



To summarise, the theory of two distinct races (Aryan and Dravidian) is neither tenable on empirical evidence nor on religious, linguistic and “cultural” grounds.



He then suggests that people in the South should not consider themselves as “Dravids” and as being different and distinct from the ancient Vedic culture. Nor is there any reason for those in the North to believe that they are the true inheritors of the “Aryan legacy” for there is no such legacy and no evidence of any distinct, culturally superior race.



In his words, “What is necessary is to assert…(that)…the Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seeking). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.”



********



THE TRUE ARCHITECTS of HARRAPAN (SARASWATI RIVER) CIVILISATION



Next, Dr Frawley refers to a number of separate reports and research which indicates that the Indus Valley Civilization may have actually been established by the Dravidians and the Aryan Invasion theory may have been based on half-baked evidence and a blinkered view of progress made in ancient India long before the Christian era. Thus,



“Dravidians, whose descendents still live in Southern India, established the first city communities, in the Indus valley, introduced irrigation schemes, developed pottery and evolved a well ordered system of government.” (Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas, 1970)



Clyde Ahmad Winters, who has written extensively on Dravidian origins (has) commented, “Archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Dravidians were the founders of the Harappan culture which extended from the Indus Valley through northeastern Afghanistan, on into Turkestan. The Harappan civilization existed from 2600-1700 BC. The Harappan civilization was twice the size the Old Kingdom of Egypt. In addition to trade relations with Mesopotamia and Iran, the Harappan city states also had active trade relations with the Central Asian peoples.”



Professor Klaus Klostermaier in ‘Questioning the Aryan Invasion Theory and Revising Ancient Indian History’ (has) commented: “India had a tradition of learning and scholarship much older and vaster than the European countries that, from the sixteenth century onwards, became its political masters. Indian scholars are rewriting the history of India today. One of the major points of revision concerns the so called ‘Aryan invasion theory’, often referred to as ‘colonial-missionary’, implying that it was the brainchild of conquerors of foreign colonies who could not but imagine that all higher culture had to come from outside ‘backward’ India, and who likewise assumed that a religion could only spread through a politically supported missionary effort.While not buying into the more sinister version of this revision, which accuses the inventors of the Aryan invasion theory of malice and cynicism, there is no doubt that early European attempts to explain the presence of Indians in India had much to with the commonly held Biblical belief that humankind originated from one pair of humans- Adam and Eve to be precise …”



Hinduism Today concluded in Rewriting Indian History - Hindu Timeline: “Although lacking supporting scientific evidence, this (Aryan Invasion) theory, and the alleged Aryan-Dravidian racial split, was accepted and promulgated as fact for three main reasons.

· It provided a convenient precedent for Christian British subjugation of India.

· It reconciled ancient Indian civilisation and religious scripture with the 4000 BCE Biblical date of Creation.

· It created division and conflict between the peoples of India, making them vulnerable to conversion by Christian missionaries.”



“Scholars today of both East and West believe the Rig Veda people who called themselves Aryan were indigenous to India, and there never was an Aryan invasion. The languages of India have been shown to share common ancestry in ancient Sanskrit and Tamil. Even these two apparently unrelated languages, according to current “super-family” research, have a common origin: an ancient language dubbed Nostratic.”



Finally, Dr Frawley provides some background and an explanation of how the Aryan Invasion Theory was conceived and how it became the accepted wisdom.



In his own words, “One of the most interesting puzzles in archaeology, and one that hasn’t really been completely answered yet, concerns the story of the supposed Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent.



The story goes like this: The Aryans were a tribe of IndoEuropean-speaking, horse-riding nomads living in the arid steppes of Eurasia. Sometime around 1700 BC, the Aryans invaded the ancient urban civilizations of the Indus Valley, and destroyed that culture. The Indus Valley civilizations were far more civilized than any horse-back nomad, having had a written language, farming capabilities, and led a truly urban existence. Some 1,200 years after the supposed invasion, the descendants of the Aryans, so they say, wrote the classic Indian literature called the Vedic manuscripts.



Hitler, or more specifically, Hitler’s pet archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna (1958-1931), used this idea to put forward the Aryans as a master race of Indo-Europeans, who were supposed to be Nordic in appearance and directly ancestral to the Germans.



The problem is, most if not all of this story - “Aryans” as a cultural group, invasion from the arid steppes, Nordic appearance, the Indus Civilization being destroyed, and, certainly not least, the Germans being descended from them - may not be true at all.



The historical basis of this theory was an account of Indian culture by French missionary Abbe Dubois (1770 – 1848) who was driven by the need to fit what he saw with the Biblical myths of Noah and the Great Flood. He also authored some poorly translated versions of the existing literature.



His work was translated into English in 1897 by the East India Company, prefaced by Max Muller and became the basis of the Aryan Invasion Theory.



When excavations in Mohenjo-daro and other sites revealed a far advanced culture, instead of using this evidence to bury the Aryan Invasion Theory, it was ingenuously incorporated to confirm to the existing hypothesis.



Thus it was assumed that the Harappa civilisation must have been destroyed by an “invasion of people from Europe” who then went on to create the second great civilization of India.



Note that instead of admitting that the Aryan Invasion Theory may not be true and there may have been continuity in the civilization and culture for the past five thousand years, British historians used the evidence to confirm to the hypothesis of a superior race invading India.



As Dr Frawley says, “It turns out that there are serious problems with this argument. There are no references to an invasion in the Vedic manuscripts; and the word “Arya” means “superior being” as an honorific, not as a superior cultural group. Secondly, recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Indus civilization was shut down by droughts combined with a devastating flood, not a violent confrontation. Recent archaeological evidence also shows that most of the so-called “Indus River” valley peoples lived in the Sarasvati River, which is mentioned in the Vedic manuscripts as a homeland. And, there is no biological or archaeological evidence of a massive invasion of people of a different race.”



And he concludes by saying, “Born from a colonial mentality, corrupted by a Nazi propaganda machine, the Aryan invasion theory is finally undergoing radical reassessment by Indian archaeologists and their colleagues, using the Vedic documents themselves, additional linguistic studies, and physical evidence revealed through archaeological studies. Indian cultural history is an ancient and complex one, and one that only time will teach us.”



I would add to that by saying that we need to do more to make everyone aware of these biases in the “history” that continues to be taught in schools and colleges even today. And although a generation or two has grown up with this warped colonial-view of Indian history, it is never too late.



P.S. As I was summarising this, I was made aware of a recent change that the BBC made on its website in the section on Hinduism (see “The Aryan Invasion Theory - Why is the theory no longer accepted?” http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml ).



I was very pleased to see that even the BBC is now coming around to the view that the “Theory of Aryan Invasion” was a result of poor research based on evidence that has since been discredited and based on misinterpretations of archaeological, linguistic and ethnological observations.



********



Footnotes:

[1] - in the sense that most of them sought to perpetuate colonial myths, an example being that ancient India had no art or culture to speak of and most of the developments in these areas happened with the advent of the Mughals



[2] - note that what these colours actually signify are “the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna).”



[3] – (Indus Valley culture) which should more properly be characterised as “Saraswati culture” since its centre was not Indus Valley but the ancient river “Saraswati” which dried up around 1900 BC





Fri 7 Oct 2005

Excerpts from “Rage and Pride” by Oriana Fallaci

Answer 361

4.9. THE EVIDENCE FROM PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY



4.9.1. Continuity between castes





Half a century ago, Dr. Ambedkar surveyed the existing data on the physical anthropology of the different castes in his book The Untouchables. He found that the received wisdom of a racial basis of caste was not supported by the data, e.g.: “The table for Bengal shows that the Chandal who stands sixth in the scheme of social precedence and whose touch pollutes, is not much differentiated from the Brahmin (…) In Bombay the Deshastha Brahmin bears a closer affinity to the Son-Koli, a fisherman caste, than to his own compeer, the Chitpavan Brahmin. The Mahar, the Untouchable of the Maratha region, comes next together with the Kunbi, the peasant. They follow in order the Shenvi Brahmin, the Nagar Brahmin and the high-caste Maratha. These results (…) mean that there is no correspondence between social gradation and physical differentiation in Bombay.”70





A remarkable case of differentiation in skull and nose indexes, noted by Dr. Ambedkar, was found to exist between the Brahmin and the (untouchable) Chamar of Uttar Pradesh.71 But this does not prove that Brahmins are foreigners, because the data for the U.P. Brahmin were found to be very close to those for the Khattri and the untouchable Chuhra of Panjab. If the U.P. Brahmin is indeed “foreign” to U.P., he is by no mean . s foreign to India, at least not more than the Panjab untouchables. This confirms the scenario which we can derive from the Vedic and ItihAsa-PurANa literature: the Vedic tradition was brought east from the Vedic heartland by Brahmins who were physically indistinguishable from the lower castes there, when the heartland in Panjab-Haryana at its apogee exported its culture to the whole Aryavarta (comparable to the planned importation of Brahmins into Bengal and the South around the turn of the Christian era). These were just two of the numerous intra-Indian migrations of caste groups.





Recent research has not refuted Ambedkar’s views. A press report on a recent anthropological survey led by Kumar Suresh Singh explains: “English anthropologists contended that the upper castes of India belonged to the Caucasian race and the rest drew their origin from Australoid types. The survey has revealed this to be a myth. ‘Biologically and linguistically, we are very mixed’, says Suresh Singh (…) The report says that the people of India have more genes in common, and also share a large number of morphological traits. ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (…) The sons-of-the-soil theory also stands demolished. The Anthropological Survey of India has found no community in India that can’t remember having migrated from some other part of the country.”72 Internal migration accounts for much of India’s complex ethnic landscape, while there is no evidence of a separate or foreign origin for the upper castes.





Among other scientists who reject the identification of caste (varNa) with race on physical-anthropological grounds, we may cite Kailash C. Malhotra:





“Detailed anthropometric surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions. On the basis of analysis of stature, cephalic and nasal index, H.K. Rakshit (1966) concludes that ‘the Brahmins of India are heterogeneous and suggest incorporation of more than one physical type involving more than one migration of people’.





“A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra on whom 18 metric, 16 scopic and 8 genetic markers were studied, revealed not only a great heterogeneity in both morphological and genetic characteristics but also showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes. P.P. Majumdar and K.C. Malhotra (1974) observed a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to OAB blood group system among 50 Brahmin samples spread over 11 Indian states. The evidence thus suggests that varna is a sociological and not a homogeneous biological entity.”73



4.9.2 Family traits





This general rejection of the racial basis of caste does not exclude that specific castes stand out in their environment by their phenotypical or genotypical characteristics. Firstly, any group that goes on breeding endogamously for generations will have “family traits” recognizable to the regular and sharp observer, at least to a statistically significant extent. This does not mean that these family traits (rarely distinctive enough to be called “racial” traits) are in any way the reason why one caste refuses to intermarry with another caste, as you would have in the case of racial discrimination.





Secondly, intra-Indian migrations have taken place so that certain caste groups stand out by retaining the physical characteristics of their source region’s population for quite a few generations. Thus, the Muslim invasions chased some Rajput castes from western India to the Nepalese borderland, and some Saraswat Brahmins from Kashmir to the Konkan region; geneticists ought to be able to find traces of that history.





It is well-known that the Brahmin communities of Bengal and South India originated in the physical importation of Brahmin families by kings who sought accession to the prestigious Vedic civilization and wanted to give extra religious legitimacy to their thrones. These Brahmin families were brought in from northwestern India where, for obvious geographical reason, people are whiter and closer to the European physical type than in Bengal or the South. (Even so, due to intermarriage and the incorporation of local priesthoods, numerous Brahmins in South India are simply black.) Apart from Brahmins, numerous other caste groups throughout India have histories of immigration, putting them in environments where they differed in genetic profile from their neighbours, e.g. the Dravidian-speaking Oraon tribals of Chotanagpur recall having migrated from Maharashtra along the Narmada river.





The Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra are often mentioned as a caste that stands out by its physical type. Their slightly more “Nordic” build and the occurrence of blue eyes among them look like the perfect evidence for the theory that the Brahmins are the descendents of the Nordic Aryans who invaded India in 1500 BC. In fact, it is only during the initial Islamic onslaught that the Chitpavans migrated from the Afghan borderland to their present habitat.





Nevertheless, the Chitpavan case shows that sometimes, such distinctive family traits do coincide with the difference between the higher or lower incidence of the distinctive traits of the white race, esp. the low pigmentation of the skin or, in this case, the eyes. The difference between castes can in some cases be expressed in terms of the respective distances between their average characteristics and those of the European type. And this is only to be expected given the basic fact that India is a large country with great variation in physical type and lying in the border zone between the major races. The rich biological variety in the Indian chapter of the human species is due to many factors, but so far the Aryan Invasion has not been shown to be one of them.



4.9.3. Mixing of castes





The genetic differential between castes has recently been confirmed in a survey in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.74 The main finding of the survey, conducted by human-geneticists Lynn B. Jorde (University of Utah) and Bhaskara B. Rao and J.M. Naidu (both with Andhra University), concerned the role of inter-caste marriages: men stay in their castes, while women sometimes go and live with a man from another, mostly higher caste. In spite of the definition of caste as an “endogamous group”, the fact is that there has always been a marginal mixing of castes as well. Likewise, even outside the marital framework, upper-class employers (in any society) have made passes at their maid-servants, while prostitutes got impregnated by their higher-class clients, all producing mixed offspring.





Factoring all these marginal mixed-caste births in, the cumulative effect over centuries is that the castes have mixed much more than the theory of caste would lead you to expect. Over many generations, this mixing had to lead to a thorough genetic kinship even between castes of very divergent origins. Given these known sociological facts, the scientists naturally found that genetic traits in the male line (Y chromosome) are stable, those in the female line (mitochondrial DNA) considerably less so. Because inter-caste marriages are mostly between “neighbouring” castes in the hierarchy, the genetic distance between highest and lowest is about one and a half times greater than that between high and middle or between middle and low.





However, none of this requires a policy of racial discrimination nor an Aryan invasion into India: the known history of internal migrations and the general facts about relations between higher and lower classes in all societies can easily account for it.75 Moreover, the observed differences between Indian communities are much smaller than those between Indians collectively and Europeans (or Africans etc.) collectively. A provisional table of the genetic distance between populations shows that North-Indians and South-Indians are indeed very close, much closer than “Aryan” North-Indians and “Aryan” Iranians are to each other.76





Both sides in the debate should realize that this evidence can cut both ways. If an Aryan or other invasion is assumed, this evidence shows that all castes are biologically the progeny of both invaders and natives, though perhaps in different proportions. Conversely, if the genetic distance between two castes is small, this still leaves open the possibility that the castes or their communal identities can nonetheless have divergent origins, even foreign versus native, although these are obscured to the geneticist by centuries of caste mixing.



4.9.4. Tribals and “Caucasians”





The one important general difference between two parts of the population is that between a number of tribes on the one hand, and some other tribes plus the non-tribals on the other. V. Bhalla’s mapping of genetic traits shows that the latter category roughly belongs to the Mediterranean subgroup of the Caucasian race (though by the superficial criterion of skin colour, it can differ widely from the type found in Italy or Greece). incidentally, the term Caucasian as meaning the white race was coined in 1795 by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who believed that the Caucasus region, particularly Georgia, “produces the most beautiful human race”, and that it was the most likely habitat of “the autochthonous, most original forms of mankind”.77 Thus, the typically Caucasian Rhesus-negative factor is “conspicuous by its absence” in the Mongoloid populations of India’s northeast, but the non-tribal populations “show a moderately high frequency of 15% to 20% but not as high as in Europe” of this genetic trait.78





Bhalla lists a number of specific genes which are characteristically strong or weak in given racial types, and finds that they do define certain ethnic sub-groups of India, esp. the Mongoloid tribals of the northeast, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands, and the Australoids in the remaining tribal pockets of the south. Everywhere else, including in many tribal areas, the Mediterranean type is predominant, but the present battery of genetic markers was not able to distinguish between subtypes within this population, much less to indicate different waves of entry.





In fact, no “entry” of these Mediterranean Caucasians can be derived from the data, certainly not for the post-Harappan period. According to an older study, they were present even in South India in 2,000 BC at the latest: “The evidence of two racial types, the Mediterranean and the Autochthonous proto-Australoid, recognized in the study of the skeletal remains from the neolithic levels at Brahmagiri, Piklihal, Tekkalakota, Nevasa etc., seems to suggest that there was a thick population consisting mainly of these two races in South India around 2000 BC.”79





The Caucasian race was present in India (like in Europe and the Kurgan area) since hoary antiquity. Kailash Malhotra reports, starting with their geographical spread today: “The Caucasoids are found practically all over the country, though the preferred habitats have been river valleys and plains.”80





In the past, the Caucasian presence was also in evidence: “Although a large number of prehistoric sites have been excavated in India, only a few of them have yielded human osseous remains (…) None of the pre-Mesolithic sites have yielded skeletal material; the earliest remains are around 8,000 years old. An examination of the morphological features of skeletons from sites of the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic and iron age periods reveals the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in all the periods, the absence of Mongoloids, and the existence of at least two types of Caucasoids, the dolichocephals and the brachycephals (…) The skeletal evidence thus clearly establishes the presence of Australoids and Caucasoids in India for at least 8,000 years.”81





All that can be said, is that the population of India’s northeast is akin to that of areas to India’s north and east, that of the southeast to that of countries further southeast, and the bulk of the Indian population to that of areas to India’s west. Probably a large demographic expansion from India’s northwest to the east and south took place during and at the end of the Harappan period (2,000 BC). It is logical to infer that the populations of the Mediterranean type were more concentrated in the northwest prior to that time; but it does not follow that they came from the outside. India’s northwest simply happened to be the easternmost area of Caucasian habitation, just like India’s northeast happens to be the frontier of the Mongoloid type’s habitat.





For politically correct support in denying the racial divide between tribals and non-tribals, we may cite the Marxist scholar S.K. Chatterjee, who dismissed the notion of distinct races in India, be they Aryan, Dravidian, Mongoloid or Austro-Asiatic. He called the Indian people a “mixed people, in blood, in speech and in culture”.82





Though the Christian missionaries have been the champions of tribal distinctness, Christian author P.A. Augustine writes about the Bhil tribals: “The Bhils have long ceased to be a homogeneous people. In the course of millennia, various elements have fused to shape the community. During their long and tortuous history, other aboriginal groups which came under their sway have probably merged with them, losing their identity. One can see a wide range of physical types and complexion. The variation in complexion is very striking indeed, ranging between fair to quite dark-skinned (…) There is no consensus among scholars on the exact ethnic character of the Bhils, They have been alternatively described as proto-Australoid, Dravidian or Veddoid.”83 The same racial “impurity” counts for most Indians, tribal as well as non-tribal. While not by itself disproving the Aryan invasion, it should prove even to invasionists that all Indians are descendents of both indigenous and so-called invader populations.



4.9.5. Language and genetics





While it is wrong to identify a speech community with a physical type, it is also wrong to discard physical anthropology completely as a source of information on human migrations in pre-literate times. Lately, findings have been published which suggest that, for all the racial mingling that has taken place, there is still a broad statistical correlation between certain physical characteristics and nations, even language groups.





Thus, the percentage of individuals with the Rhesus-negative factor is the highest (over 25%) among the Basques, a nation in the French-Spanish borderland which has preserved a pre-IE language. Other pockets of high incidence of Rh-neg. (which is nearly non-existent among the Bantus, Austroloids and Mongoloids) are in the same part of the world: western Morocco, Scotland and, strangely, the Baltic area, or apparently those backwater regions least affected by immigrations of the first Neolithic farmers (from the Balkans and Anatolia), the Indo-Europeans, and in Morocco also the Arabs.





Another European nation which stands out, at least to the discerning eye of the population geneticist, is the Sami (Lapp) population of northern Scandinavia: when contrasted genetically with the surrounding populations, the Sami genetic make-up “points to kinship with the peoples of North Siberia” eventhough they now resemble the Europeans more than the native Siberians.84 This confirms the suspicion of an Asian origin for the Uralic-speaking peoples of which the Sami people is one.





Where a small group of people have spread out over a vast area and lived in isolation ever since, as has happened in large parts of America in the past 20,000 years, genetic differentiation and linguistic differentiation have gone hand in hand, and the borderline between genetic types usually coincides with a linguistic borderline: “Joseph Greenberg distinguishes three language families among the Native Americans: Amerind, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. (…) According to Christy Turner of Arizona University, Native American dental morphology indicates three groups, which coincide with Greenberg’s. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza from Stanford investigated a variegated set of human genes. His results equally point in the direction of Greenberg’s classification.”85





Linguistic difference between populations may coincide with genetic differences; and likewise, linguistic mixing may coincide with genetic mixing. A perfect illustration is provided by Nelson Mandela, leader of the anti-Apartheid struggle and belonging to the Xhosa nation. His facial features are more Khoi (Hottentot) than Bantu, and his language, Xhosa, happens to be a Bantu language strongly influenced by the Khoi-San (Hottentot-Bushman) languages, most strikingly by adopting the click sounds. In this case, genetic mixing and linguistic mixing have gone hand in hand.





However, in and around the area of IE expansion, a notorious crossroads of migrating peoples, the remaining statistical correlation between genetic traits and language groups is less important than the evidence for the opposite phenomenon: languages spreading across genetic frontiers. In India, the only neat racial division which coincides with a linguistic borderline is between the mainland and the Andamans: though so-called Negrito features are dimly visible in the population of Orissa and surrounding areas, the pure Negrito type is confined to the Andamans, along with the Andamanese language group. For the rest, in India, like in Central Asia or Europe, i.e. in areas with lots of migration and interaction between diverse peoples, genetic and linguistic divisions only coincide by exception.





Thus, the Altaic languages are spoken by the Mongolians, eponymous members of the Mongoloid race, and by the Turks, who have mixed so thoroughly with their Persian, Armenian, Greek and Slavic neighbours that they now belong to the Caucasian race. The Hungarians are genetically closer to their Slavic and German neighbours than to their linguistic cousins in the Urals. India being the meeting-place (or rather, mixing-place) of Mongoloid, Caucasian and Austroloid racial strands, it is naturally impossible to identify the speakers of the different Indian language-groups with different races.





Asked whether there are “concordances between genetic data and languages”, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, the world’s leading population geneticist, explains: “Yes, very much so. Our genealogical tree [of genetic traits] corresponds remarkably well with the table of linguistic families. There are a few exceptions e.g. the Lapps, genetically rather European, have preserved the language they spoke in their Siberian-Uralic homeland. The Hungarians, similarly, speak an Uralic language while being predominantly European. In the late 9th century AD, the Magyar invaders in Hungary, then called Pannonia, imposed their language on the natives. (…) What counts from a genetic viewpoint, is the number of invaders relative to the natives. As the Hungarians were not very numerous, they left only a feeble genetic imprint on the population.”86 So, the replacement of native languages by those of less civilized but stronger invaders is a real possibility (it is also what the Greeks did to the Old Europeans), though it becomes less probable in proportion to the size and the cultural superiority of the native population.





The reason why the replacement of native languages by the languages of genetically distinguishable invaders remains relatively exceptional, is this: “In a traditional culture, language is transmitted vertically from parents to children, just like the genes. But in some conquests or in civilizations with schools, there is also horizontal transmission and substitution of languages. The Romans organized schools in their part of Europe and thereby managed to replace the native languages by their own. But this type of phenomenon is relatively recent. In 90% of its history, mankind consisted of hunter-gatherers speaking tribal languages. That is why the genetic tree has preserved a strong concordance with the linguistic tree.”87





A typical example are the Basques: “The Basque language is the direct descendent of a language which must have arrived along with modem mankind, say 30,000 years ago. It is [in Europe] the only pre-Indo-European language which has been preserved. Why? Probably because the Basque people had a very strong social cohesion. Genetically too, the Basques are different. They have mixed very little. All the other Europeans have lost their original language and adopted an Indo-European language.”88





So, the Basques are both biologically and linguistically the straight descendants of Old Europeans. Most other Europeans are biologically the progeny of the non-IE-speaking Old Europeans, with some admixture of the Asian tribes who originally brought the IE languages into Europe. These immigrants may have differed somewhat from the average European type, into which their smaller number got genetically drowned over the centuries. Linguistically, most non-Basque (and non-Uralic) Europeans are the progeny, through adoption, of the IE-speaking invaders.



4.9.6. The original “Aryan race”





Is there anything we can say about the ethnic identity of the nomads or migrants who spread the early IE languages, if only to help physical-anthropologists to recognize them when found at archaeological sites? Competent authorities have warned against the “semi-conscious prejudices on original genetic characteristics of the Indo-Europeans: they are supposed to be blond and blue-eyed”.89 This prejudice has even been reinforced recently by the discovery of blond-haired mummies of presumably IE-speaking people in the Xinjiang province of China.90





The fact that the IE speech community includes people of diverse race, from the dark-skinned Sinhalese to the white-skinned Scandinavians, definitely implies that the spread of the language cannot be equated with the spread of a racial type. Languages can and do migrate across racial boundaries. That the IE languages crossed racial frontiers during their expansion accords well with established perspectives on the spread of IE, e.g. by I.M. Diakonov:





“These expanding tribes met local, poor and hungry sparser populations, often consisting of hunters and cattle-breeders. The migrants started to merge with the local population, giving them their language and cultural achievements. But in some cases, the local population may have been larger in numbers than the migrants. In some historical situations the language of the minority, if it was widely used and understandable on a vast territory, could be accepted as lingua franca, and later as the common language, particularly if it was a language of cattle-breeders (cf. the examples of the Semites and the Turks). The area of the newly created population became itself a centre of population spread, and so on. Bloody conquests could take place in some instances; in others it was not the case, but the important thing to realize is that what migrated were languages, not peoples, although there had to be at least a handful of users of the languages, though not necessarily native speakers.”91





On the other hand, the fact that the PIE-speaking community must have been a fairly small ethnic group, living together and marrying mostly within the community, implies that they must have belonged collectively to a fairly precisely circumscribed physical type. Even if you throw together people from all races, after a few generations of interbreeding they will develop a common and distinctive physical type, with atavistic births of people resembling the pure type of one of the ancestral races becoming rarer and rarer. Therefore, in the days before intercontinental travel and migrations, a speech community was normally also a. kinship group (or, in strict caste societies, a conglomerate of kinship groups) presenting a fairly homogeneous physical type.





During the heyday of the racial theories, a handful of words in Greek sources were taken to mean that the ancient Indo-Europeans were fair-haired and had a tall Nordic-looking build. In Homer’s description, the Greek heroes besieging Troy were fair-haired. The Egyptians described the “Sea Peoples” from the Aegean region (and even their Libyan co-invaders, presumably Berber-speaking) as fair-haired. The Chinese described the Western (Tokharic) barbarians likewise.





However, the incidence of Nordic looks was not necessarily overwhelming. In classical Greek writings, the Thracians and Macedonians (most notably Alexander the Great), whose language belonged to an extinct Balkanic branch of the IE family, are mentioned as being fair-haired; apparently most Greeks were by then dark enough to notice this fair colour as a trait typical of their “barbaric” northern neighbours. The Armenians have a legend of their own king Ara the Blond and his eventful personal relationship with the Assyrian queen Sammuramat/Semiramis (about 810 BC), who is known to have fought Urartu (the pre-IE name of Armenia, preserved in the Biblical mountain name Ararat). The use of “the blond” as a distinctive epithet confirms the existence of fair-haired people in Armenia, but also their conspicuousness and relative rarity.





All this testimony, along with the Xinjiang mummies and the presence of Nordic looks in the IE-speaking (Dardic/Kafiri) tribes in the Subcontinent’s northwestern valleys, does suggest a long-standing association between some branches of the IE family and the genes which program their carriers to have fair hair and blue eyes. These traits give a comparative advantage for survival in cold latitudes: just as melanine protects against the excessive intake of ultraviolet rays in sunny latitudes, lack of melanine favours the intake of ultraviolet. This segment of the sunrays is needed in the production of vitamin D, which in turn is needed in shaping the bones; its deficiency causes rachitis and makes it difficult for women to birth - a decisive handicap in the struggle for life. The link between northern latitudes and the light colour of skin, hair and eyes in many IE-speaking communities only proves what we already knew: IE is spoken in fairly northern latitudes including Europe and Central Asia. Yet, none of this proves the fair-haired and blue-eyed point about the speakers of the original proto-language PIE.





Suppose, with the non-invasion theorists, that the original speakers of IE had been Indians with dark eyes and dark hair; then, according to I.M. Diakonov: “if this population had migrated together with the languages, blue-eyed Balts could not have originated from it. Blue eyes, as a recessive characteristic, are met everywhere from Europe to the Hindu Kush. But nobody can be blue-eyed if neither of his/her parents had blue-eyed ancestors, and a predominantly blue-eyed population cannot originate from ancestors with predominantly black eyes.”92





This allows for two possible scenarios. Either the PIE speakers were indeed blue-eyed and fair-haired: that is the old explanation, preferred by the Nazis.93 Or the blue-eyed people of Europe have not inherited their IE languages from their biological ancestors, but changed language at some point along the genealogical line, abandoning the pre-IE Old European language of their fair ancestors in favour of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Baltic, Proto-Slavic etc., based on the language of the invaders from Asia. The latter scenario would agree with I.M. Diakonov’s observation: “The biological situation among the speakers of modern Indo-European languages can only be explained through a transfer of languages like a baton, as it were, in a relay race, but not by several thousand miles’ migration of the tribes themselves.”94





That this is far from impossible is demonstrated by the Turks who, after centuries of mixing with subdued natives of West Asia and the Balkans, have effectively crossed the racial borderline from yellow to white. But against using this Turkish scenario as a simile for the story of IE dispersal, one could point out that some eastern Turkic people, such as the Kirghiz and the Yakut, are still very much Mongoloids. However, far from forming a contrast with the IE state of affairs, this makes the simile more splendid: if IE spread from a non-white to a white population, it also remained the language of numerous non-whites (though technically “Caucasians”), viz. the Indians. On the Eurasian continent, South-Asians still constitute more than half of the wider IE speech community; the Indian Republic alone has more IE speakers than the whole of Europe.





It is perfectly possible that the PIE language and culture were developed after a non-white group of colonists from elsewhere settled among and got racially immersed in a larger whitish population. As we saw in our speculations about IE-Austronesian kinship and about Puranic history, it is at least conceivable that Aryan culture in India started after “Manu” and his dark-skinned cohorts fled the rising sea level by moving up the Ganga and settling high and dry in the upper Ganga basin, whence their progeny conquered areas to the northwest with ever whiter-skinned and lighter-haired populations: the Saraswati basin, the upper Indus basin, the Oxus riverside, the peri-Caspian region. By the time these Indian colonists settled in eastern Europe with their Kurgans, their blackness had been washed off by generations of intermarriage with white people of the type attested by the Xinjiang mummies. (Likewise, their material culture had been thoroughly adapted to their new habitat, hence de-indianized.)





So, it is perfectly possible that the Aryan heartland lay farther to the southeast, and that, like eastern Europe in the later 5th millennium BC, the Panjab area a few centuries earlier was already a first area of colonization, bringing people of a new and whiter physical type into the expanding Aryan speech community which was originally darker. While the Panjabi is physically very similar to the European, the Bihari, Oriya or Nepali is markedly less so, and yet it is possible that he represents more closely the ultimate Proto-Indo-European.



4.9.7. The race of the Vedic Aryans





As for the Vedas, the only ones whom they describe as “golden-haired” are the resplendent lightning gods Indra and Rudra and the sun-god Savitar; not the Aryans or Brahmins. At the same time, several passages explicitly mention black hair when referring to Brahmins.95 These texts are considerably earlier than the enigmatic passage in Patanjali describing Brahmins as golden- or tawny-haired (piNgala and kapisha).96 Already one of Patanjali’s early commentators dismissed this line as absurd. To the passage from the grammarian Panini which describes Brahmins as “brown-haired”, A.A. Macdonnell notes (apparently against contemporary claims to the contrary): “All we can say is that the above-mentioned expressions do not give evidence of blonde characteristics of the ancient Brahmans.”97 Considering that Patanjali was elaborating upon the work of Panini, could it have anything to do with Panini’s location in the far northwest, where lighter hair must have been fairly common?





On the other hand, demons or Rakshasas, so often equated with the “dark-skinned aboriginals”, have on occasion been described as red- or tawny-haired (also piNgala or kapisha, the same as Patanjali’s Brahmins).98 Deviating from the usual Indian line that all these demon creatures are but supernatural entities, let us for once assume that they do represent hostile tribals racially distinct from the Vedic Aryans. In that case, reference can only be to certain northwestern tribals, among whom fair and red hair are found till today, indicating that they at least partly descended from a fair-haired population. If the Vedic Aryans were dark-haired and migrated from inside India to the northwest, these odd coloured hairs may have struck them as distinctive.





In modern Anglo-Hindu publications, such as the Amar Chitra KathA religious comics, Rakshasas are always depicted as dark-skinned, a faithful application of the AIT. Yet, there are instances in Vedic literature where “blackness” is imputed to people whom we know to have had the same (if not a lighter) skin colour than the Vedic Aryans: the Dasas and Dasyus, as Asko Parpola has shown, were the Iranian cousins and neighbours of the Vedic Aryans. Physical (as opposed to metaphorical) blackness or more generally skin colour was never a criterion by which the Vedic Aryans classified their neighbours and enemies; that precisely is why we have no direct testimony on the Vedic Aryans’ own skin or hair colour except through a few ambiguous, indirect and passing references.



4.9.8. Evidence of immigration?





A very recent study, not on crude skull types but on the far more precise genetic traits, confirms the absence of an immigration from Central Asia in the second millennium BC. Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola): “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”99 The inflow which they do find, around the turn of the Christian era, is apparently that of the well-known Shaka and Kushana invasions.





Kenneth A.R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data: “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. In short, there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the northwestern sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.”100





Kennedy also notes the anthropological continuity between the Harappan population and that of the contemporaneous Gandhara (eastern Afghanistan)101 culture, which in an Aryan invasion scenario should be the Indo-Aryan settlement just prior to the Aryan invasion of India: “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.”102





And so, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, one of the great pioneers of the AIT, may be right after all. Indeed, even he had remarked that “the anthropologists who have recently described the skeletons from Harappa remark that there, as at Lothal, the population would appear, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day.”103 If anything Aryan really invaded, it was at any rate not an Aryan race.





There are no indications that the racial composition and distribution of the Indian population has substantially changed since the start of the IE dispersal, which cannot reasonably be placed much earlier than 6,000 BC. This means that even if the IE language is imported, as claimed by the AIT, the IE-speaking people in India are nevertheless biologically native to India. Or in practice: the use of the terms “aboriginal” and “indigenous” (AdivAsI) as designating India’s tribals, with the implication that the non-tribals are the non-indigenous progeny of invaders, has to be rejected and terminated, even if the Urheimat of the IE languages is found to lie outside India.





One of the ironies of Indian identity politics is that those most vocal in claiming an “aboriginal” identity may well be the only ones whose foreign origin has been securely established. The Adivasi movement is strongest in the areas where Christian missionaries were numerously present since the mid-19th century to nourish it, viz. in Chotanagpur and the North-East. Most tribals there speak languages belonging to the Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan families. Their geographical origin, unlike that of IE which is still being debated, is definitely outside India, viz. in Southeast Asia c.q. in northern China.





The Tibeto-Burmese tribals of Nagaland and other northeastern statelets are among India’s most recent immigrants. Many of those tribes have entered during the last millennium, which is very late by Indian standards. As for the Munda tribes in Chotanagpur, it is not even certain that the ancestors of the present tribes are the authors of the attested Neolithic cultures in their present habitat. In H.D. Sankalia’s words: “It is an unanswered but interesting question whether any of the Aboriginal tribes of these regions were the authors of the Neolithic culture.”104 Those who want to give the Austro-Asiatic peoples of India a proud heritage, will find more of it in China and Indochina than in India, e.g. in the Bronze age culture of 2300 BC in Thailand.





On the other hand, biologically the Indian Austro-Asiatics (unlike the Nagas) are much closer to the other Indians than to their linguistic cousins in the east. Exactly like the Indo-Aryans in the Aryan invasion hypothesis, they are predominantly Indian people speaking a foreign-originated language: “Whereas the now Dravidian-speaking tribals of Central and South India can be considered to be descendents of the original inhabitants of India, who gave up their original languages in favour of Dravidian, Tibeto-Chinese speaking tribals (Northeast India) and Austro-Asiatic speaking ones (East India) immigrated into India since ancient historical times. Most likely they came in several waves from Southern China (Tibeto-Chinese speakers) and from Southeast Asia (Austro-Asiatic speakers) respectively. Without doubt these immigrating groups met with ancient Indian populations, which were living already on their migration routes, and thus one cannot exclude some cultural and also genetic contacts between immigrants and original inhabitants of India, at least at some places.”105





In the case of Indo-Aryan, by contrast, its speakers have obviously also mixed with other communities, but its foreign origin has not been firmly established.



4.9.9. Conclusion





We may conclude with a recent status quaestionis by archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer of Wisconsin University at Madison: “Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.”106





We repeat that physical anthropology is going through rapid developments due to the availability of new techniques, and we don't want to jump to conclusions in this moving field. But we notice that whatever new technique is applied and from whichever new angle the question is approached, it has so far consistently failed to yield evidence of the fabled Aryan Invasion..

Answer 362

The origins and affinities of the1 billion people living on the subcontinent of India have long been contested.This is owing, in part, to the many different waves of immigrants that have influenced the genetic structure ofIndia. In the most recent of these waves, Indo-European-speaking people from West Eurasia entered India fromthe Northwest and diffused throughout the subcontinent. They purportedly admixed with or displacedindigenous Dravidic-speaking populations. Subsequently they may have established the Hindu caste system andplaced themselves primarily in castes of higher rank. To explore the impact of West Eurasians on contemporaryIndian caste populations, we compared mtDNA (400 bp of hypervariable region 1 and 14 restriction sitepolymorphisms) and Y-chromosome (20 biallelic polymorphisms and 5 short tandem repeats) variation in265males from eight castes of different rank to750 Africans, Asians, Europeans, and other Indians. For maternallyinherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%­30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypesbelong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, thehighest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternallyinherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, theaffinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans,particularly East Europeans. These findings are consistent with greater West Eurasian male admixture with castesof higher rank. Nevertheless, the mitochondrial genome and the Y chromosome each represents only a singlehaploid locus and is more susceptible to large stochastic variation, bottlenecks, and selective sweeps. Thus, toincrease the power of our analysis, we assayed 40 independent, biparentally inherited autosomal loci (1 LINE-1and 39Aluelements) in all of the caste and continental populations (600 individuals). Analysis of these datademonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes aresignificantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trendtoward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians. Weconclude that Indian castes are most likely to be of proto-Asian origin with West Eurasian admixture resultingin rank-related and sex-specific differences in the genetic affinities of castes to Asians and Europeans.Shared Indo-European languages (i.e., Hindi and mostEuropean languages) suggested to linguists of the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries that contemporaryHindu Indians are descendants of primarily West Eur-asians who migrated from Europe, the Near East, Ana-tolia, and the Caucasus 3000­8000 years ago (Poliakov1974; Renfrew 1989a,b). These nomadic migrants may have consolidated their power by admixing with na-tive Dravidic-speaking (e.g., Telugu) proto-Asian popu-lations who controlled regional access to land, labor,and resources (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), and subse-quently established the Hindu caste hierarchy to legiti-mize and maintain this power (Poliakov 1974; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994). It is plausible that these West Eur-asian immigrants also appointed themselves topredominantly castes of higher rank. However, ar-chaeological evidence of the diffusion of material cul-ture from Western Eurasia into India has been limited(Shaffer 1982). Therefore, information on the geneticrelationships of Indians to Europeans and Asians couldcontribute substantially to understanding the originsof Indian populations.Previous genetic studies of Indian castes havefailed to achieve a consensus on Indian origins andaffinities. Various results have supported closer affinityof Indian castes either with Europeans or with Asians,and several factors underlie this inconsistency. First,erratic or limited sampling of populations has limitedinferences about the relationships between caste andcontinental populations (i.e., Africans, Asians, Europe-ans). These relationships are further confounded bythe wide geographic dispersal of caste populations. Ge-netic affinities among caste populations are, in part,inversely correlated with the geographic distance be-tween them (Malhotra and Vasulu 1993), and it islikely that affinities between caste and continentalpopulations are also geographically dependent (e.g.,different between North and South Indian caste popu-lations). Second, it has been suggested that castes ofdifferent rank may have originated from or admixedwith different continental groups (Majumder andMukherjee 1993). Third, the size of caste populationsvaries widely, and the effects of genetic drift on somesmall, geographically isolated castes may have beensubstantial. Fourth, most of the polymorphisms as-sayed over the last 30 years are indirect measurementsof genetic variation (e.g., ABO typing), have beensampled from only a few loci, and may not be selec-tively neutral. Finally, only rarely have systematiccomparisons been made with continental populationsusing a large, uniform set of DNA polymorphisms(Majumder 1999).To investigate the origin of contemporary castes,we compared the genetic affinities of caste populationsof differing rank (i.e., upper, middle, and lower) toworldwide populations. We analyzed mtDNA (hyper-variable region 1 [HVR1] sequence and 14 restriction-site polymorphisms [RSPs]), Y-chromosome (5 short-tandem repeats [STRs] and 20 biallelic polymor-phisms), and autosomal (1 LINE-1 and 39Aluinserts)variation in265 males from eight different Telugu-speaking caste populations from the state of AndhraPradesh in South India (Bamshad et al. 1998). Com-parisons were made to400 individuals from tribal andHindi-speaking caste and populations distributedacross the Indian subcontinent (Mountain et al. 1995;Kivisild et al. 1999) and to350 Africans, Asians, andEuropeans (Jorde et al. 1995, 2000; Seielstad et al.1999).RESULTSAnalysis of mtDNA Suggests a Proto-Asian Originof IndiansMtDNA HVR1 genetic distances between caste popula-tions and Africans, Asians, and Europeans are signifi-cantly different from zero (p< 0.001) and reveal that,regardless of rank, each caste group is most closely re-lated to Asians and is most dissimilar from Africans(Table 1). The genetic distances from major continen-tal populations (e.g., Europeans) differ among thethree caste groups, and the comparison reveals an in-triguing pattern. As one moves from lower to uppercastes, the distance from Asians becomes progressivelylarger. The distance between Europeans and lowercastes is larger than the distance between Europeansand upper castes, but the distance between Europeansand middle castes is smaller than the upper caste-European distance. These trends are the same whetherthe Kshatriya and Vysya are included in the uppercastes, the middle castes, or excluded from the analy-sis. This may be owing, in part, to the small sample size(n= 10) of each of these castes. Among the upper castesthe genetic distance between Brahmins and Europeans(0.10) is smaller than that between either the Kshatriyaand Europeans (0.12) or the Vysya and Europeans(0.16). Assuming that contemporary Europeans reflectWest Eurasian affinities, these data indicate that theamount of West Eurasian admixture with Indian popu-lations may have been proportionate to caste rank.Conventional estimates of the standard errors ofgenetic distances assume that polymorphic sites are in-dependent of each other, that is, unlinked. BecausemtDNA polymorphisms are in complete linkage dis-equilibrium (as are polymorphisms on the nonrecom-Table 1. MtDNA (HVR1 Sequence) Genetic Distancesbetween Caste Groups from Andhra Pradesh andContinental PopulationsCaste groupAfricansAsiansEuropeansUpper.179.037.100 (0.106)aMiddle.182.025.086 (0.084)bLower.163.023.113All castes.196.026.077aGenetic distance between upper castes and Europeans if theKshatriya and Vysya are excluded from the analysis.bGenetic distance between the middle castes and Europeans ifthe Kshatriya and Vysya are grouped in the middle castes.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 995www.genome.org

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bining portions of the Y chromosome), this assump-tion is violated. Alternatively, the mtDNA genome canbe treated as a single locus with multiple haplotypes.However, even if this assumption is made, mtDNA dis-tances do not differ significantly from one anothereven at the level of the three major continental popu-lations (Nei and Livshits 1989), the standard errors be-ing greater than the genetic distances. Consideringthat the distances between castes and continentalpopulations are less than those between different con-tinental populations, the estimated mtDNA geneticdistances between upper castes and Europeans versuslower castes and Europeans would not be significantlydifferent from each other. Therefore, to resolve furtherthe relationships of Europeans and Asians to contem-porary Indian populations, we defined the identities ofspecific mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes.The presence of the mtDNA restriction sitesDdeI10,394andAluI10,397defines a haplogroup (a groupof haplotypes that share some sequence variants), M,that was originally identified in populations that mi-grated from mainland Asia to Southeast Asia and Aus-tralia (Ballinger et al. 1992; Chen et al. 1995; Passarinoet al. 1996) and is found at much lower frequency inEuropean and African populations. Most of the com-mon haplotypes found in Telugu- and Hindi-speakingcaste populations belong to haplogroup M (Table 2)and do not differentiate into language-specific clustersin a phylogenetic reconstruction (Fig. 1). Furthermore,these Indian haplogroup-M haplotypes are distinctfrom those found in other Asian populations (Fig. 2)and indicate the existence of Indian-specific subsets ofhaplogroup M (e.g., M3). As expected if the lowercastes are more similar to Asians than to Europeans,and the upper castes are more similar to Europeansthan to Asians, the frequencies of M and M3 haplo-types are inversely proportional to caste rank (Table 2).Of the non-Asian mtDNA haplotypes found in In-dian populations, most are of West Eurasian origin(Table 2; Torroni et al. 1994; Richards et al. 1998).However, most of these Indian West-Eurasian haplo-types belong to an Indian-specific subset of hap-logroup U, that is, U2i (Kivisild et al. 1999), the oldestand second most common mtDNA haplogroup foundin Europe (Torroni et al. 1994). In agreement with theHVR1 results, the frequency of West Eurasian mtDNAhaplotypes is significantly higher in upper castes thanin lower castes (p< 0.05), the frequency of U2i haplo-types increasing as one moves from lower to highercastes. In addition, the frequency of mtDNA hap-logroups with a more recent coalescence estimate (i.e.,H, I, J, K, T) was fivefold higher in upper castes (6.8%)than in lower castes (1.4%). These haplotypes are de-rivatives of haplogroups found throughout Europe (Ri-chards et al. 1998), the Middle East (Di Rienzo andWilson 1991), and to a lesser extent Central Asia (Co-mas et al. 1998). Collectively, the mtDNA haplotypeevidence indicate that contemporary Indian mtDNAevolved largely from proto-Asian ancestors with WesternEurasian admixture accountingfor 20%­30% of mtDNA haplo-types.Y-Chromosome VariationConfirmsIndo-European AdmixtureGenetic distances estimatedfrom Y-chromosome STR poly-morphisms differ significantlyfrom zero (p< 0.001) and reveala distinctly different pattern ofpopulation relationships (Table3). In contrast to the mtDNAdistances, the Y-chromosomeSTR data do not demonstrate acloser affinity to Asians for eachcaste group. Upper castes aremore similar to Europeans thanto Asians, middle castes areequidistant from the twogroups, and lower castes aremost similar to Asians. The ge-netic distance between castepopulations and Africans is pro-Table 2. MtDNA Haplogroup Frequencies in Dravidic and Hindi-Speaking IndiansHaplogroupDravidic (%)Hindi (%)uppermiddlelowertotalAsian61 (5.5)64.6 (3.8)71.4 (5.3)65.7 (2.7)55.7 (2.9)A00000.3 (.32)B00000F00002.7 (.94)M61 (5.5)64.6 (3.8)71.4 (5.3)65.7 (2.7)52.7 (2.9)M318.6 (4.4)3.5 (1.5)1.4 (1.4)6.6 (1.4)6.0 (1.4)M-C00000.7 (.48)M-D00001.0 (.57)M-G00.9 (.74)00.4 (.36)0M-E01.8 (1.1)00.8 (.51)0West Eurasian23.7 (4.8)14.2 (2.8)7.1 (3.0)14.5 (2.0)27.4 (2.6)U2ib16.9 (4.2)9.7 (2.3)5.7 (2.7)10.3 (1.7)15.3 (2.1)W1.7 (1.5)000.4 (.36)3.7 (.29)H3.4 (2.0001.2 (.62)2.3 (.87)I00001.3 (.65)J00.9 (.75)00.4 (.36)0.7 (.48)K1.7 (1.5)000.4 (.36)0T02.7 (1.3)1.4 (1.4)1.7 (.73)1.7 (.75)X00000.7 (.48)Others15.3 (4.1)21.2 (1.3)21.4 (4.8)19.8 (2.3)16.7 (2.2)standard errors are in parentheses.aThese haplotypes belong to super-haplogroup R (ancestral to haplogroups B, F, H, T, J, V,and U) but do not belong to any previously recognized haplogroup.bU2i is differentiated from haplogroup U by the presence of a transition at np 16051.Bamshad et al.996 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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gressively larger moving from lower to middle to uppercaste groups (Table 3).Genetic distances estimated from Y-chromosomebiallelic polymorphisms differ significantly from zero(p< 0.05), and the patterns differ from the mtDNA re-sults even more strikingly than the Y-chromosomeSTRs. For Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphism data,each caste group is more similar to Europeans (Table 4),and as one moves from lower to middle to highercastes the genetic distance to Europeans diminishesprogressively. This pattern is further accentuated byseparating the European population into Northern,Southern, and Eastern Europeans; each caste group ismost closely related to Eastern Europeans. Moreover,the genetic distance between upper castes and EasternEuropeans is approximately half the distance betweenEastern Europeans and middle or lower castes. Theseresults suggest that Indian Y chromosomes, particu-larly upper caste Y chromosomes, are more similar toEuropean than to Asian Y chromosomes. This under-scores the close affinities between Hindu Indian andIndo-European Y chromosomes based on a previouslyreported analysis of three Y-chromosome polymor-phisms (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999b).Overall, these results indicate that the affinities ofIndians to continental populations varies according toFigure 1Phylogeny of haplogroup M in India. Phylogenetic relationships between HVR1 haplotypes were estimated by constructingreduced median networks. The size of each node is porportional to the haplotype frequency. Reticulations indicate parallel mutationalpathways or multiple mutations. The identities of HVR1 mutations (numbered according to the Cambridge reference sequence +16000;Anderson et al. 1981) that define major haplogroup subsets are depicted along selected internodes. The coalescence estimate of Indianhaplogroup-M haplotypes is 48,000 1500 yr, suggesting that Indian-specific mtDNA haplotypes split from a proto-Asian ancestor inthe late Pleistocene.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 997www.genome.org

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caste rank and depends on whether mtDNA or Y-chromosome data are analyzed. However, conclusionsdrawn from these data are limited because mtDNA andthe Y chromosome is each effectively a single haploidlocus and is more sensitive to genetic drift, bottlenecks,and selective sweeps compared to autosomal loci.These limitations of our analysis can be overcome, inpart, by analyzing a larger set of independent autoso-mal loci. Consequently, we assayed 1 LINE-1 and 39unlinkedAlupolymorphisms.Affinities to Europeans and Asians Stratifiedby Caste RankGenetic distances estimated from autosomalAluele-ments correspond to caste rank, the genetic distancebetween the upper and lower castes being more than2.5 times larger than the distance between upper andmiddle or middle and lower castes (upper to middle,0.0069; upper to lower, 0.018; middle to lower,0.0071). These trends are the same whether the Ksha-triya and Vysya are included in the upper castes, themiddle castes, or excluded from the analysis (data notshown). Furthermore, a neighbor-joining network ofgenetic distances between separate castes (Fig. 3)clearly differentiates castes of different rank into sepa-rate clusters. This is similar to the relationship betweengenetic distances and caste rank estimated fromTable 3. Y Chromosome (STRs) Genetic Distancesbetween Caste Groups from Andhra Pradesh andContinental PopulationsCaste groupAfricansAsiansEuropeansUpper.0166.0104.0092Middle.0156.0110.0108Lower.0131.0088.0108All castes.0151.0101.0102Figure 2Major subsets of haplogroup M. Phylogenetic relationships of HVR1 haplotypes assigned to haplogroup M were estimated for:(a) 343 Indians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a; this study); (b) 16 Turks and 78 Central Asians (Comas et al. 1998; this study); (c) 60Mongolians (Kolman et al. 1996); (d) 25 Ethiopians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a); (e) 56 Chinese (Horai et al. 1996; this study); (f) 103Japanese (Horai et al. 1996; Seo et al. 1998). The founding node of each network (M*) differs from the CRS (Anderson et al. 1981) bytransitions at np 10398, 10400, and 16223. The frequency of each subset of haplogroup M is indicated. Each phylogenetic network waspruned by eliminating branches containing haplotypes summing to a frequency of <5% (these branches were binned with the founderhaplotype, M*). The identities of HVR1 mutations (numbered according to the CRS 16,000; Anderson et al. 1981) that define majorhaplotype subsets are depicted along selected internodes.Bamshad et al.998 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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mtDNA (Bamshad et al. 1998). It is important to note,however, that the autosomal genetic distances are es-timated from 40 independent loci. This afforded us theopportunity to test the statistical significance of thecorrespondence between genetic distance and castestatus. The Mantel correlation between interindividualgenetic distances and distances based on social rankwas low but highly significant for individuals rankedinto upper, middle, and lower groups (r= 0.08;p< 0.001) and into eight separate castes (r= 0.07;p< 0.001). Given the resolving power of this autoso-mal dataset, we next tested whether we could reconcilethe results of the analysis of mtDNA and Y-chromosome markers in castes and continental popu-lations.Genotypic differentiation was significantly differ-ent from zero (p< 0.0001) between each pair of castepopulations and between each caste and continentalpopulation. Similar to the results of both the mtDNAand Y-chromosome analyses, the distance between up-per castes and European popu-lations is smaller than the dis-tance between lower castes andEuropeans (Table 5). However,in contrast to the mtDNA re-sults but similar to the Y-chromosome results, the affin-ity between upper castes andEuropeans is higher than thatof upper castes and Asians(Table 5). If the Kshatriya and Vysya are excluded fromthe analysis or included in the middle castes, the ge-netic distance between the upper caste (Brahmins) andEuropeans remains smaller than the distance betweenthe lower castes and Europeans and the distance be-tween upper castes and Asians (Table 5). Analysis ofeach caste separately reveals that the genetic distancebetween the Brahmins and Europeans (0.013) is lessthan the distance between Europeans and Kshatryia(0.030) or Vysya (0.020). Nevertheless, each separateupper caste is more similar to Europeans than toAsians.Because historical evidence suggests greater affin-ity between upper castes and Europeans than betweenlower castes and Europeans (Balakrishnan 1978, 1982;Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994), it is appropriate to use aone-tailed test of the difference between the corre-sponding genetic distances. The 90% confidence limitsof Nei's standard distances estimated between uppercastes and Europeans (0.006­0.016) versus lower castesand Europeans (0.017­0.037) do not overlap, indicat-ing statistical significance at the 0.05 level. Signifi-cance at 0.05 is not achieved if the Kshatriya and Vysyaare excluded. These results offer statistical support fordifferences in the genetic affinity of Europeans to castepopulations of differing rank, with greater Europeanaffinity to upper castes than to lower castes.DISCUSSIONPrevious genetic studies have found evidence to sup-port either a European or an Asian origin of Indiancaste populations, with occasional indications of ad-mixture with African or proto-Australoid populations(Chen et al. 1995; Mountain et al. 1995; Bamshad et al.1996, 1997; Majumder et al. 1999; Quintana-Murci etal. 1999a). Our results demonstrate that for biparen-tally inherited autosomal markers, genetic distancesbetween upper, middle, and lower castes are signifi-cantly correlated with rank; upper castes are more simi-lar to Europeans than to Asians; and upper castes aresignificantly more similar to Europeans than are lowercastes. This result appears to be owing to the amalgam-ation of two different patterns of sex-specific geneticvariation.The majority of Indian mtDNA restriction-sitehaplotypes belong to Indian-specific subsets (e.g., M3)Table 4. Y Chromosome (Bi-Allelic Polymorphisms) Genetic Distances betweenCaste Groups from Andhra Pradesh and Continental PopulationsaCaste groupAsiansEuropeansW. EuropeansS. EuropeansE. EuropeansUpper.388.135.265.168.073Middle.291.146.249.156.133Lower.376.173.283.189.155aIncludes comparisons to unpublished data of M.F.H.Figure 3Neighbor-joining network of genetic distancesamong caste communities estimated from 40Alupolymor-phisms. Distances between upper castes (U; Brahmin, Vysya,Kshatriya), middle castes (M; Yadava, Kapu), and lower castes (L;Mala, Madiga, Relli) are significantly correlated with social rank.Genetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 999www.genome.org

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of a predominantly Asian haplogroup M, although asubstantial minority of mtDNA restriction site haplo-types belong to West Eurasian haplogroups. A higherproportion of proto-Asian mtDNA restriction-site hap-lotypes is found in lower castes compared to middle orupper castes, whereas the frequency of West Eurasianhaplotypes is positively correlated with caste rank, thatis, is highest in the upper castes. For Y-chromosomeSTR variation the upper castes exhibit greatest similar-ity with Europeans, whereas the lower caste groups aremost similar to Asians. For Y biallelic polymorphismvariation, each caste group is more similar to Europe-ans than to Asians, and the affinity to Europeans isproportional to caste rank, that is, is highest in theupper castes.Importantly, five different types of data (mtDNAHVR1 sequence, mtDNA RSPs, Y-chromosome STRs, Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms, and autosomalAlupolymorphisms) support the same general pattern:relatively smaller genetic distances from Europeanpopulations as one moves from lower to middle to up-per caste populations. Genetic distances from Asianpopulations become larger as one moves from lower tomiddle to upper caste populations. It is especially note-worthy that the analysis of Y biallelic polymorphisms,which involved an independent set of comparativeAsian, European, and African populations, again indi-cated the same pattern. Additional support is offeredby the fact that the autosomal polymorphisms yieldeda statistically significant difference between the upper-caste­European and lower-caste­European genetic dis-tances. With additional loci, other differences (e.g., thedistances between different caste groups and Asians)may also reach statistical significance.The most likely explanation for these findings,and the one most consistent with archaeological data,is that contemporary Hindu Indians are of proto-Asianorigin with West Eurasian admixture. However, admix-ture with West Eurasian males was greater than admix-ture with West Eurasian females, resulting in a higheraffinity to European Y chromosomes. This supports anearlier suggestion of Passarinoet al. (1996), which was basedon a comparison of mtDNA andblood group results. Further-more, the degree of West Eur-asian admixture was propor-tional to caste rank. This expla-nation is consistent with eitherthe hypothesis that proportion-ately more West Eurasians be-came members of the uppercastes at the inception of thecaste hierarchy or that socialstratification preceded the WestEurasian incursion and thatWest Eurasians tended to insert themselves intohigher-ranking positions. One consequence is thatshared Indo-European languages may not reflect acommon origin of Europeans and most Indians, butrather underscores the transfer of language mediatedby contact between West Eurasians and native proto-Indians.West Eurasian admixture in Indian populationsmay have been the result of more than one wave ofimmigration into India. Kivisild et al. (1999) deter-mined the coalescence (50,000 years before present)of the Indian-specific subset of the West Eurasian hap-lotypes (i.e., U2i) and suggested that West Eurasian ad-mixture may have been much older than the pur-ported Dravidian and Indo-European incursions. Ouranalysis of Indian mtDNA restriction-site haplotypesthat do not belong to the U2i subset of West Eurasianhaplotypes (i.e., H, I, J, K, T) is consistent with morerecent West Eurasian admixture. It is also possible thathaplotypes with an older coalescence were introducedby Dravidians, whereas haplotypes with a more recentcoalescence belonged to Indo-Europeans. This hypoth-esis can be tested by a more detailed comparison toWest Eurasian mtDNA haplotypes from Iran, Anatolia,and the Caucasus. Alternatively, the coalescence datesof these haplotypes may predate the entry of West Eur-asians populations into India. Regardless of their ori-gin, West Eurasian admixture resulted in rank-relateddifferences in the genetic affinities of castes to Europe-ans and Asians. Furthermore, the frequency of WestEurasian haplotypes in the founding middle and uppercastes may be underestimated because of the upwardsocial mobility of women from lower castes (Bamshadet al. 1998). These women were presumably morelikely to introduce proto-Asian mtDNA haplotypesinto the middle and upper castes.Our analysis of 40 autosomal markers indicatesclearly that the upper castes have a higher affinity toEuropeans than to Asians. The high affinity of caste Ychromosomes with those of Europeans suggests thatthe majority of immigrating West Eurasians may haveTable 5. Autosomal Genetic Distancesabetween Caste Groups from AndhraPradesh and Continental PopulationsCaste groupAfricansAsiansEuropeansUpper.140 (0.074 .018).058 (0.024 .009).032b(.011 .003)Middle.149 (0.082 .018).032 (0.013 .005).057c(.020 .006)Lower.147 (0.083 .017).044 (0.017 .005).073 (.027 .006)All castes.147.039.045aNei standard distances standard errors are in parentheses.bIf the Kshatriya and Vysya are excluded, the genetic distance between the upper castes andEuropeans is 0.038.cIf the Kshatriya and Vysya are grouped in the middle castes, the genetic distance betweenthe middle castes and Europeans is 0.050.Bamshad et al.1000 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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been males. As might be expected if West Eurasianmales appropriated the highest positions in the castesystem, the upper caste group exhibits a lower geneticdistance to Europeans than the middle or lower castes.This is underscored by the observation that the Ksha-triya (an upper caste), whose members served as war-riors, are closer to Europeans than any other caste (datanot shown). Furthermore, the 32-bp deletion polymor-phism in CC chemokine receptor 5, whose frequencypeaks in populations of Eastern Europe, is found onlyin two Brahmin males (M. Bamshad and S.K. Ahuja,unpubl.). The stratification of Y-chromosome dis-tances with Europeans could also be caused by male-specific gene flow among caste populations of differentrank. However, we and others have demonstrated thatthere is little sharing of Y-chromosome haplotypesamong castes of different rank (Bamshad et al. 1998;Bhattacharyya et al. 1999).The affinity of caste populations to Europeans ismore apparent for Y-chromosome biallelic polymor-phisms than Y-chromosome STRs. This could be attrib-uted to the use of different European populations incomparisons using STRs and biallelic polymorphisms.Alternatively, it may reflect, in part, the effects of highmutation rates for the Y-chromosome STRs, whichwould tend to obscure relationships between caste andcontinental populations. A lack of consistent cluster-ing at the continental level has been observed in sev-eral studies of Y-chromosome STRs (Deka et al. 1996;Torroni et al. 1996; de Knijff et al. 1997). The autoso-malAluand biallelic Y-chromosome polymorphisms,in contrast, have a slower rate of drift than Y-chromosome STRs because of a higher effective popu-lation size, and their mutation rate is very low. Thus,the Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms and auto-somalAlumarkers may serve as more stable markers ofworldwide population affinities.Our analysis may help to explain why estimates ofthe affinities of caste groups to worldwide populationshave varied so widely among different studies. Analy-ses of recent caste history based on only mtDNA orY-chromosome polymorphisms clearly would suggestthat castes are more closely related to Asians or to Eu-ropeans, respectively. Furthermore, we attempted tominimize the confounding effect of geographic differ-ences between populations by sampling from a highlyrestricted region of South India. Because of the ubiq-uity of the caste system in India's history, it is reason-able to predict similar patterns in caste populationsliving in other areas. Indeed, any genetic result be-comes more compelling when it is replicated in otherpopulations. Therefore, comparable studies in castepopulations from other regions of India must be com-pleted to test the generality of these results.The dispersal and subsequent growth of Indianpopulations since the Neolithic Age is one of the mostimportant events to shape the history of South Asia.However, the origin and dispersal route of the aborigi-nal inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent is unclear.Our findings suggest a proto-Asian origin of the In-dian-specific haplogroup-M haplotypes. Hap-logroup-M haplotypes are also found at appreciable fre-quencies in some East African populations-18% ofEthiopians (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999a) and 16% ofKenyans (M. Bamshad and L.B. Jonde, unpubl.). Acomparison of haplogroup-M haplotypes from East Af-rica and India has suggested that this southern routemay have been one of the original dispersal pathwaysof anatomically modern humans out of Africa (Quin-tana-Murci et al. 1999a). Together, these data supportour previous suggestion (Kivisild et al. 1999) that Indiamay have been inhabited by at least two successive latePleistocene migrations, consistent with the hypothesisof Lahr and Foley (1994). It also adds to the growingevidence that the subcontinent of India has been amajor corridor for the migration of people betweenAfrica, Western Asia, and Southeast Asia (Cavalli-Sforzaet al. 1994).It should be emphasized that the DNA variationstudied here is thought to be selectively neutral andthus represents only the effects of population history.These results permit no inferences about phenotypicdifferences between populations. In addition, allelesand haplotypes are shared by different caste popula-tions, reflecting a shared history. Indeed, these find-ings underscore the longstanding appreciation that thedistribution of genetic polymorphisms in India ishighly complex. Further investigation of the spread ofanatomically modern humans throughout South Asiawill need to consider that such complex patterns maybe the norm rather than the exception.METHODSSample CollectionAll studies of South Indian populations were performed withthe approval of the Institutional Review Board of the Univer-sity of Utah, Andhra University, and the government of India.Adult males living in the district of Visakhapatnam, AndhraPradesh, were questioned about their caste affiliations andsurnames and the birthplaces of their parents. Those whowere unrelated to any other subject by at least three genera-tions were considered eligible to participate.We classified caste populations based upon the tradi-tional ranking of these castes byvarna(defined below), occu-pation, and socioeconomic status. According to various San-skrit texts, Hindu populations were partitioned originally intofour categories orvarna: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vysya, and Sudra(Tambia 1973; Elder 1996). Those in eachvarnaperformedoccupations assigned to their category. Brahmins were priests;Kshatriya were warriors; Vysya were traders; and Sudra were toserve the three othervarna(Tambia 1973; Elder 1996). Eachvarnawas assigned a status; Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vysyawere considered of higher status than the Sudra because theBrahmin, Kshatriya, and Vysya are considered the twice-bornGenetic Evidence on Caste OriginsGenome Research 1001www.genome.org

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castes and are differentiated from all other castes in the castehierarchy. This is the rationale behind classifying them as theupper group of castes (Tambia 1973).The Kapu and the Yadava are called once-born castes thathave traditionally been classified in the Sudra, the lowest ofthe original fourvarna. However, the status of the Sudra wasactually higher than that of a fifthvarna, the Panchama. Thisfifthvarnawas added at a later date to include the so-calleduntouchables, who were excluded from the other fourvarna(Elder 1996). The untouchablevarnaincludes the Mala andMadiga. The position of the Relli in the caste hierarchy issomewhat ambiguous, but they have usually been classified inthe lower caste group. Therefore, prior to the collection of anydata, males from eight different Telugu-speaking castes(n= 265) were ranked into upper (Niyogi and Vydiki Brah-min, Kshatriya, Vysya [n= 80]), middle (Telega and TurpuKapu, Yadava [n= 111]), and lower (Relli, Madiga, Mala[n= 74]) groups (Bamshad et al. 1998). This ranking has beenused by previous investigators (Krishnan and Reddy 1994).After obtaining informed consent,8 mL of whole bloodor 5 plucked scalp hairs were collected from each participant.Extractions were performed at Andhra University using estab-lished methods (Bell et al. 1981).MtDNA PolymorphismsThe mtDNA data consisted of 68, 116, and 73 HVR1 se-quences and 79, 159, and 72 restriction-site haplotypes fromlargely the same individuals in upper, middle, and lowercastes, respectively. These data were compared to data from143 Africans (15 Sotho-Tswana, 7 Tsonga, 14 Nguni, 24 San, 5Biaka Pygmies, 33 Mbuti Pygmies, 9 Alur, 18 Hema, and 18Nande), 78 Asians (12 Cambodians, 17 Chinese, 19 Japanese,6 Malay, 9 Vietnamese, 2 Koreans, and 13 Asians of mixedancestry), and 99 Europeans (20 unrelated males of the FrenchCEPH kindreds, 69 unrelated Utah males of Northern Euro-pean descent, and 10 Poles) (Jorde et al. 1995, 1997). Mito-chondrial sequence data from these 597 individuals are avail-able at: http://www.genome.org/supplemental/.In addition to our samples, the phylogenetic analysesalso included data from 98 published HVR1 sequences fromtwo castes (48 Havlik and 43 Mukri), and a tribal population(7 Kadar) living in south-western India (Mountain et al. 1995)and restriction-site haplotypes from one caste (62 Lobana)from Northern India, three tribal populations from Northern(12 Tharu and 18 Bhoksa) and Southern (86 Lambadi) India,and 122 individuals from various caste populations in UttarPradesh (Kivisild et al. 1999). Phylogenetic relationships ofHVR1 sequences assigned to haplogroup M were estimated forIndians (this study), Turks (this study), Central Asian popula-tions (Comas et al. 1998), Mongolians (Kolman et al. 1996),Chinese (Horai et al. 1996), and Japanese (Horai et al. 1996;Seo et al. 1998).The mtDNA HVR1 sequence was determined by fluores-cent Sanger sequencing using a Dye terminator cycle sequenc-ing kit (Applied Biosystems) according to the manufacturer'sspecifications (Bamshad et al. 1998). Sequencing reactionswere resolved on an ABI 377 automated DNA sequencer, andsequence data were analyzed using ABI DNA analysis softwareandSEQUENCHERsoftware (Genecodes). To identify mtDNAhaplotypes and haplogroups (a group of haplotypes that sharesome sequence variants), major continent-specific genotypes(Torroni et al. 1994, 1996; Wallace 1995) for the followingpolymorphic mtDNA restriction sites were determined:HpaI3592,DdeI10394,AluI10397,AluI13262,BamHI13366,AluI5176,HaeIII4830,AluI7025,HinfI12308,AccI14465,AvaII8249,AluI10032,BstOI13704, andHaeII9052.Y-Chromosome and Autosomal PolymorphismsY-chromosome-specific STRs (DYS19, DYS288, DYS388,DYS389A, DYS390) were amplified using published condi-tions (Hammer et al. 1998). PCR products were separatedon an ABI 377 automated sequencer and scored using ABIGenotypersoftware. Y-chromosome STR data were collectedfrom 622 males including 280 South Indians,200 Africans(Seielstad et al. 1999; this study), 40 Asians, and 102 Europe-ans. Autosomal data were collected from 608 individuals in-cluding 265 South Indians, 155 Africans, 70 Asians, and 118Europeans.The Y-chromosome-specific biallelic polymorphismstested included: DYS188792, DYS194469, DYS211105,DYS221136, DYS257108, DYS287, M3, M4, M9, M12, M15,SRY4064, SRY10831.1, SRY10831.2, p12f2, PN1, PN2, PN3,RPS4Y711, and Tat (Hammer and Horai 1995; Hammer et al.1997, 1998, 2000; Underhill et al. 1997; Zerjal et al. 1997;Karafet et al. 1999). All individuals tested negative for the YAluinsert (DYS287). A complete description of the Y-chromosome STR loci can be found in Kayser et al. (1997). Atable of the biallelic Y-chromosome haplotype frequencies inthe upper, middle, and lower castes is available at http://www.genome.org/supplemental/.For the Y-chromosome biallelic dataset, comparisonswere made to a different set of worldwide populations includ-ing: East Asians from Japan, Korea, China, and Vietnam(n= 460); Western Europeans from Britain and Germany(n= 77); Southern Europeans from Italy and Greece (n= 148);and Eastern Europeans from Russia and Romania (n= 102)(M.F. Hammer, unpubl.). The complete dataset of Indiansconsisted of 55 Brahmin, 111 Yadava and Kapu, and 74 Relli,Mala, and Madiga.Autosomal polymorphisms were amplified using condi-tions specifically optimized for each system. Further informa-tion on these conditions is available at the Web site: http://www.genetics.utah.edu/swatkins/pub/Alu_data.htm orhttp://www.genome.org/supplemental. With minor excep-tions caused by typing failures or other causes, the same in-dividuals from each population were used to create eachdataset (i.e., mtDNA, Y chromosome, and autosomal). Thecomplete dataset of genotypes from all 40 autosomal loci isavailable at: http://www.genome.org/supplemental/.Statistical AnalysesGenetic distances for Y-chromosome STRs were estimated us-ing the method of Shriver et al. (1995), which assumes a step-wise mutation model. Genetic distances for mitochondrialand autosomal markers were calculated as pairwiseFSTdis-tances, using theARLEQUINpackage (Schneider et al. 1997).For autosomal polymorphisms, Nei's standard distances andtheir standard errors were estimated usingDISPAN(http://www.bio.psu.edu/IMEG); and 90% confidence intervals wereestimated by multiplying the standard error by 1.65. The sig-nificance of theFSTdistances between populations was esti-mated by generating a null distribution of pairwiseFSTdis-tances by permuting haplotypes between populations. Thep-value of the test is the proportion of permutations leadingto anFSTvalue larger than or equal to the observed one. Ge-notypic differentiation was estimated usingGENEPOP(Ray-mond and Rousset 1995) vers. 3.2 (http://www.cefe.cnrs-mop.fr/). The null hypothesis tested is that there is a randomBamshad et al.1002 Genome Researchwww.genome.org

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distribution ofKdifferent haplotypes amongrpopulations(the contingency table). All potential states of the contin-gency table are explored with a Markov chain, and the prob-ability of observing a table less than or equally likely to theobserved sample configuration is estimated.Estimates of significance for the correlation between in-terindividual caste rank differences and interindividual auto-somal genetic distances were made by forming twonnma-trices, wherenis the number of individuals. For the first ma-trix, interindividual genetic distances were based on theproportion ofAluinsertions/deletions shared by each pair ofindividuals. To form the second matrix, each individual wasassigned a score according to his rank in the caste hierarchyfor caste groups (i.e., upper caste = 1, middle caste = 2, lowercaste = 3) and also for separate castes (i.e., Brahmin = 1, Ksha-triya = 2, Vysya = 3, Kapu = 4, Yadava = 5, Relli = 6, Mala = 7,and Madiga = 8). An interindividual matrix of score distanceswas formed by comparing the absolute value of the differencebetween the scores of each pair of individuals. The matrix ofgenetic distances was compared to 10,000 permuted matricesof score distances using a Mantel matrix comparison test(Mantel 1967).To illustrate phylogenetic relationships we constructedreduced median (Bandelt et al. 1995) and neighbor-joiningnetworks (Felsenstein 1989). Coalescence times were calcu-lated as in Forster et al. (1996), using the estimator , which isthe average transitional distance from the founder haplotype.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe thank all participants, the faculty and staff of AndhraUniversity for their discussion and technical assistance, aswell as Henry Harpending for comments and criticisms. Weacknowledge the contributions of an anonymous reviewerwho suggested that the Kshatriya and Vysya be analyzed sepa-rately from the other upper castes. Genetic distances betweenSTRs were estimated by the programDISTNEW, kindly pro-vided by L. Jin. This work was supported by NSF SBR-9514733,SBR-9700729, SBR-9818215, NIH grants GM-59290 and PHSMO1­00064, the Estonian Science Fund (1669 and 2887), andthe Newcastle University small grants committee.The publication costs of this article were defrayed in partby payment of page charges. This article must therefore behereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USCsection 1734 solely to indicate this fact.REFERENCESAnderson, S., Bankier, A.T, Barrell, B.G., de Bruijn, M.H., Coulson,A.R., Drouin, J., Eperon, I.C., Nierlich, D.P., Roe, B.A., Sanger, F.,et al. 1981. Sequence and organization of the humanmitochondrial genome.Nature290:457­465.Balakrishnan, V. 1978. A preliminary study of genetic distancesamong some populations of the Indian sub-continent.J. Hum.Evol.7:67­75.---. 1982. Admixture as an evolutionary force in populations ofthe Indian sub-continent. 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Answer 363

The British ruled India, as they did other lands, by a divide-and-conquer strategy. They promoted religious, ethnic and cultural divisions among their colonies to keep them under control. Unfortunately some of these policies also entered into the intellectual realm. The same simplistic and divisive ideas that were used for interpreting the culture and history of India. Regrettably many Hindus have come to believe these ideas, even though a deeper examination reveals they may have no real objective or scientific basis.



One of these ideas is that India is a land of two races - the lighter- skinned Aryans and the darker-skinned Dravidians - and that the Dravidians were the original inhabitants of India whom the invading Aryans conquered and dominated. From this came the additional idea that much of what we call Hindu culture was in fact Dravidian, and later borrowed by Aryans who, however, never gave the Dravidians proper credit for it. This idea has been used to turn the people of south India against the people of north India, as if the southern ers were a different race.





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Racial Theories



The Nineteenth century was the era of Europeans imperialism. Many Europeans did in fact believe that they belonged to a superior race and that their religion, Christianity, was a superior religion and all other religions were barbaric, particularly a religion like Hinduism which uses many idols. The Europeans felt that it was their duty to convert non-Christians, sometimes even if it required intimidation, force or bribery.



Europeans thinkers of the era were dominated by a racial theory of man, which was interpreted primarily in terms of color. They saw themselves as belonging to a superior 'white' or Caucasian race. They had enslaved the Negroid or 'black' race. As Hindus were also dark or 'colored', they were similarly deemed inferior. The British thus, not surprisingly, looked upon the culture of India in a similar way as having been a land of a light-skinned or Aryan race (the north Indians), ruling a dark or Dravidian race (the south Indians).



About this time in history the similarities betweeen Indo-European languages also became evident. Sanskrit and the languages of North India were found to be relatives of the languages of Europe, while the Dravidian languages of south India were found to be another language family. By the racial theory, Europeans natuarally felt that the original speakers of any root Indo-European language must have been 'white', as they were not prepared to recognize that their languages could have been derived from the darker-skinned Hindus. As all Hindus were dark compared to the Europeans, it was assumed that the original white Indo-European invadors of India must have been assimilated by the dark indigenous population, though they left their mark more on north India where people have a lighter complexion.



Though the Nazis later took this idea of a white Aryan superior race to its extreme of brutality, they did not invent the idea, nor were they the only ones to use it for purposes of exploitation. They took what was a common idea of nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe, which many other Europeans shared. They perverted this idea further, but the distortion of it was already the basis of much exploitation and misunderstanding.







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Racial Interpretation of Vedas



Europeans Vedic interpreters used this same racial idea to explain the Vedas. The Vedas speak of a battle between light and darkness. This was turned into a war between light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians. Such so-called scholars did not bother to examine the fact that most religions and mythologies including those of the ancient American Indians, Egyptians, Greeks and Persians have the idea of such a battle between light and darkness (which is the symbolic conflict between truth and falsehood), but we do not interpret their statements racially. In short, the Europeans projected racism into the history of India, and accused the Hindus of the very racism that they themselves were using to dominate the Hindus.



European scholars also pointed out that caste in India was originally defined by color. Brahmins were said to be white, Kshatriyas red, Vaishyas yellow, and Shudras black. Hence the Brahmins were said to have been originally the white Aryans and the Dravidians the dark Shudras. However, what these colors refer to is the gunas or qualities of each class. White is the color of purity (sattvaguna), dark that of impurity (tamoguna), red the color of action (rajoguna), and yellow the color of trade (also rajoguna). To turn this into races is simplistic and incorrect. Where is the red race and where is the yellow race in India? And when have the Kshatriyas been a red race and the Vaishyas as yellow race?



The racial idea reached yet more ridiculous proportions. Vedic passages speaking of their enemies (mainly demons) as without nose (a-nasa), were interpreted as a racial slur against the snub-nosed Dravidians. Now Dravidians are not snub-nosed or low nosed people, as anyone can see by examining their facial features. And the Vedic demons are also described as footless (a-pada). Where is such a footless and noseless race and what does this have to do with the Dravidians? Moreover Vedic gods like Agni (fire) are described as footless and headless. Where are such headless and footless Aryans? Yet such 'scholar- ship' can be found in prominent Western books on the history of India, some published in India and used in schools in India to the present day.



This idea was taken further and Hindu gods like Krishna, whose name means dark, or Shiva who is portrayed as dark, were said to have originally been Dravidian gods taken over by the invading Aryans (under the simplistic idea that Dravidians as dark-skinned people must have worshipped dark colored gods). Yet Krishna and Shiva are not black but dark blue. Where is such a dark blue race? Moreover the different Hindu gods, like the classes of Manu, have diffe- rent colors relative to their qualities. Lakshmi is portrayed as pink, Saras- wati as white, Kali as blue-black, or Yama, the God of death, as green. Where have such races been in India or elsewhere?



In a similar light, some scholars pointed out that Vedic gods like Savitar have golden hair and golden skin, thus showing blond and fair-skinned people living in ancient India. However, Savitar is a sun-god and sun-god are usually gold in color, as has been the case of the ancient Egyptian, Mayan, and Inca and other sun-gods. Who has a black or blue sun-god? This is from the simple fact that the sun has a golden color. What does this have to do with race? And why should it be racial statement in the Vedas but not elsewhere?







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The Term Aryan



A number of European scholars of the 19th century, such as Max Muller, did state that Aryan is not a racial term and there is no evidence that it ever was so used in the Vedas, but their views on this were largely ignored. We should clearly note that there is no place in Hindu literature wherein Aryan has ever been equated with a race or with a particular set of physical charac- teristics. The term Arya means "noble" or "spiritual", and has been so used by Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians as well as Hindus. Religions that have called themselves Aryan, like all of these, have had members of many different races. Race was never a bar for anyone joining some form of the Arya Dharma or teaching of noble people.



Aryan is a term similar in meaning to the Sanskrit word Sri, an epithet of respect. We could equate it with the English word Sir. We cannot imagine that a race of men named sir took over England in the Middle Ages and dominated a different race because most of the people in power in the country were called sir. Yet this is the kind of thinking that was superimposed upon the history of India.







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New Evidence on the Indus Culture



The Indus Civilization - the ancient urban culture of north India in the third millenniem BC - has been interpreted as Dravidian or non-Aryan culture. Though this has never been proved, it has been taken by many people to be a fact. However, new archaelogiocal evidence shows that the so-called Indus culture was a Vedic culture, centered not on the Indus but on the banks of the Saraswati river of Vedic fame (the culture should be renamed not the Indus but the "Saraswati Culture"), and that its language was also related to Sanskrit. The ancient Saraswati dried up around 1900 BC. Hence the Vedic texts that speaks so eloquently of this river must predate this period.



The racial types found in the Indus civilization are now found to have been generally the same as those of north India today, and that there is no evidence of any significant intrusive population into India in the Indus or post-Indus era.



This new information tends to either dismiss the Aryan invasion thoery or to place it back at such an early point in history (before 3000 BC or even 6000 BC), that it has little bearing on what we know as the culture of India.







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Aryan and Dravidian Races



The idea of Aryan and Dravidian races is the product of an unscientific, culturally biased form of thinking that saw race in terms of color. There are scientifically speaking, no such things as Aryan or Dravidian races. The three primary races are Caucasian, the Mangolian and the Negroid. Both the Aryans and Dravidians are related branches of the Caucasian race generally placed in the same Mediterranean sub-branch. The difference between the so-called Aryans of the north and Dravidians of the south is not a racial division. Biologically bo th the north and south Indians are of the same Caucasian race, only when closer to the equator the skin becomes darker, and under the influence of constant heat the bodily frame tends to become a little smaller. While we can speak of some racial differences between north and south Indian people, they are only secondary.



For example, if we take a typical person from Punjab, another from Maharash- tra, and a third from Tamilnadu we will find that the Maharashtrians generally fall in between the other two in terms of build and skin color. We see a gradual shift of characteristics from north to south, but no real different race. An Aryan and Dravidian race in India is no more real than a north and a south European race. Those who use such terms are misusing language. We would just as well place the blond Swede of Europe in a different race from the darker haired and skinned person of southern Italy.



Nor is the Caucasian race the "white" race. Caucasians can be of any color from pure white to almost pure black, with every shade of brown in between. The predominent Caucasian type found in the world is not the blond-blue-eyes northern European but the black hair, brown-eyed darker skinned Mediterranean type that we find from southern Europe to north India. Similarly the Mongolian race is not yellow. Many Chinese have skin whiter than many so-called Cauca- sians. In fact of all the races, the Caucasian is the most variable in its skin color. Yet many identification forms that people fill out today in the world still define race in terms of color.







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North and South Indian Religions



Scholars dominated by the Aryan Dravidian racial idea have tried to make some Hindu gods Dravidian and other gods Aryan, even though there has been no such division within Hindu culture. This is based upon a superficial identifi- cation of deities with color i.e. Krishna as black and therefore Dravidian, which we have already shown the incorrectness of. In the Mahabharat, Krishna traces his lineage through the Vedic line of the Yadus, a famous Aryan people of the north and west of India, and there are instances as far back as the Rig Veda of seers whose names meant dark (like Krishna Angiras or Shyava Atreya).



Others say that Shiva is a Dravidian god because Shaivism is more prominent in south than in north India. However, the most sacred sites of Shiva are Kailash in Tibet, Kashmir, and the city of Varanasi in the north. There never was any limitation of the worship of Shiva to one part of India.



Shiva is also said not to be a Vedic god because he is not prominent in the Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic text, where deities like Indra, Agni and Soma are more prevalent than Rudra (the Vedic form of Shiva). However, Rudra-Shiva is dominent in the Atharva and Yajur Vedas, as well as the Brahmanas, which are also very old Vedic texts. And Vedic gods like Indra and Agni are often identi- fied with Rudra and have many similar characteristics (Indra as the dancer, the destroyer of the cities, and the Lord of power, for example). While some differences in nomenclature do exist between Vedic and Shaivite or Vedic and any other later teachings like the Vaishnava or Shakta - and we would expect a religion to undergo some development through time - there is nothing to show any division between Vedic and Shaivite traditions, and certainly nothing to show that it is a racial division. Shiva in fact is the deity most associated with Vedic ritual and fire offerings. He is adorned with the ashes, the bhasma, of the Vedic fire.



Early investigators also thought they saw a Shaivite element in the so-call ed Dravidian Indus Valey civilization, with the existence of Shivalinga like sacred objects, and seals resembling Shiva. However, further examination has also found large numbers of Vedic like fire-altars replete with all the tradi- tional offers as found in the Hindu Brahmanas, thus again refuting such simplistic divisions. The religion of the Indus (Saraswati) culture appears to include many Vedic as well as Puranic elements.



Some hold that Shaivism is a south Indian religion and the Vedic religion is north Indian. However, the greatest supporter of Vedanta, Shankaracharya, was a Dravidian Shaivite from Kerala. Meanwhile many south Indian kings have been Vaishnavites or worshippers of Vishnu (who is by the same confused logic considered to be a north Indian god). In short there is no real division of India into such rigid compartments as north and south Indian religions, though naturally regional variations do exist.







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Aryan and Dravidian Languages



The Indo-European languages and the Dravidian do have important differences. Their ways of developing words and grammer are different. However, it is a misnomer to call all Indo-European languages Aryan. The Sanskrit term Aryan would not apply to European languages, which are materialistic in orientation, bacause Aryan in Sanskrit means spiritual. When the term Aryan is used as indicating certain languages, the term is being used in a Western or European sense that we should remember is quite apart from its traditional Sanskrit meaning, and implies a racial bias that the Sanskrit term does not have.



We can speak of Indo-European and Dravidian languages, but this does not necessarily mean that Aryan and Dravidian must differ in culture, race or religion. The Hungarians and Finns of Europe are of a different language group than the other Europeans, but we do not speak of them as of a Finnish race, or the Finns as being non-Europeans, nor do we consider that their religious beliefs must therefore be unrelated to those of the rest of Europe.



Even though Dravidian languages are based on a different model than Sanskrit there are thirty to seventy per cent Sanskrit words in south Indian languages like Telugu and Tamil, which is much higher percentage than north Indian languages like Hindi. In addition both north and south Indian languages have a similar construction and phraseology that links them close together, which European languages often do not share. This has caused some linguists even to propose that Hindi was a Dravidian language. In short, the language compart- ments, like the racial ones, are not as rigid as has been thought.



In fact if we examine the oldest Vedic Sanskrit, we find similar sounds to Dravidian languages (the cerebral letters, for example), which are not present in other Indo-European tongues. This shows either that there were already Drvidians in the same region as the Vedic people, and part of the same culture with them, or that Dravidian languages could also have been early off-shoots of Sanskrit, which was the theory of the modern rishi, Sri Aurobindo. In addition the traditional inventor of the Dravidian languages was said to have been none other than Agastya, one of the most important rishis of the Rig Veda, the oldest Sanskrit text.







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Dravidians in Vedic/Puranic Lore



Some Vedic texts, like the Aitareya Brahmana or Manu Samhita, have looked at the Dravidians as people outside of the Vedic culture. However, they do not look at them as indigenous or different people but as fallen descendants of Vedic kings, notably Vishwamitra. These same texts look upon some people of north India, including some groups from Bengal, as also outside of Vedic culture, even though such people were Indo-European in language.



Other texts like the Ramayana portray the Dravidians, the inhabitants of Kishkindha (modern Karnataka), as allies of Aryan kings like Rama. The Vedic rishi Agastya is also often portrayed as one of the progenitors of the Dravid- ian peoples. Hence there appears to have been periods in history when the Dravidians or some portion of them were not looked on with favour by some followers of Vedic culture, but this was largely temporary.



If we look through the history of India, there has been some time when almost every part of India has been dominated for a period by unorthodox traditions like Buddhist, Jain or Persian (Zoroastrian), not to mention outside religions like Islam or Christianity, or dominated by other foreign conquerors, like the Greeks, the Scythians (Shakas) or the Huns. That Gujarat was a once suspect land to Vedic people when it was under Jain domination does not cause us to turn the Gujaratis into another race or religion. That something similar happened to the Dravidians at some point in history does not require making something permanently non-Aryan about them. In the history of Europe for example, that Austria once went through a protestant phase, does not cause modern Austrians to consider that they cannot be Catholics.



The kings of south India, like the Chola and Pandya dynsties, relate their lineages back to Manu. The Matsya Purana moreover makes Manu, the progenitor of all the Aryas, originally a south Indian king, Satyavrata. Hence there are not only traditions that make the Dravidians descendants of Vedic rishis and kings, but those that make the Aryans of north India descendants of Dravidian kings. The two cultures are so intimately related that it is difficult to say which came first. Any differences between them appear to be secondary, and nothing like the great racial divide that the Aryan-Dravidian idea has promoted.







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Dravidians as Preservers of Vedic Culture



Through the long and cruel Islamic assault on India, south India became the land of refuge for Vedic culture, and to a great extent remains so to the present day. The best Vedic chanting, rituals and other traditions are preser- ved in south India. It is ironic therefore that the best preservers of Aryan culture in India have been branded as non-Aryan. This again was not something part of the Aryan tradition of India, as part of the misinterpretation of the term Aryan fostered by European thought which often had a political or religi- ous bias, and which led to the Nazis. To equate such racism and violence with the Vedic and Hindu religion, the least aggressive of all religions, is a rather sad thing, not to say very questionable scholarship.



Dravidians do not have to feel that Vedic culture is any more foreign to them than it is to the people of north India. They need not feel that they are racially different than the people of the north. They need not feel that they are losing their culture by using Sanskrit. Nor need they feel that they have to assert themselves against north India or Vedic culture to protect their real heritage.



Vedic and Hindu culture has never suppressed indigenous cultures or been opposed to cultral variations, as have the monolithic conversion religions of Christianity and Islam. The Vedic rishis and yogis encouraged the develop- ment of local traditions. They established sacred places in all the regions in which their culture spread. They did not make everyone have to visit a single holy place like Meca, Rome or Jerusalem. Nor did they find local or tribal deities as something to be eliminated as heathen or pagan. They respected the common human aspiration for the Divine that we find in all cultures and encouraged diversity and uniqueness in our approach to it.



Meanwhile the people of north India also need not take this north-south division as something fundamental. It is not a racial difference that makes the skin of south Indians darker but merely the effect of climate. Any Caucasian race group living in the tropics for some centuries or millennia would eventually turn dark. And whatever color a person's skin may be has nothing to do with their true nature according to the Vedas that see the same Self or Atman in all.



It is also not necessary to turn various Vedic gods into Dravidian gods to give the Dravidians equality with the so-called Aryans in terms of the numbers or antiquity of their gods. This only gives credence to what is superficial distinction in the first place. What is necessary is to assert what is truly Aryan in the culture of India, north or south, which is high or spiritual values in character and action. These occur not only in the Vedas but also the Agamas and other scriptures within the greater tradition.



The Aryans and Dravidians are part of the came culture and we need not speak of them as separate. Dividing them and placing them at odds with each other serves the interests of neither but only serves to damage their common culture (which is what most of those who propound these ideas are often seek- ing). Perhaps the saddest thing is that modern Indian politicians have also used this division to promote their own ambitions, though it is harmful to the unity of the country.