I definitely consider it a myth…have a look at some interesting articles on the above link

answer please
help me
thank you

Cremation is told as Aryan mark , then why in central asia we find mostly remains of cemetry before period 1700 BC ?

Why central asian settlements ruined after 1800 - 1700 BC ? Is it possible that all current USA citizens start living on the moon and leave the original homeland ?
Then, why aryan civilization is not found in parent central asian area when the same aryan people are told to have done wonders in India ?

Rig-Veda geometry starts from Gangetic plains and then it moves towards north - west India ( opposite to aryan migration from NW ). Dasa of Rig-Veda is not south indians but iranians. We find Daha people in ancient iran. Dasaranjan war of Rig-Veda was source of rivalry between aryan ( i.e. noble , truth abiding ) and iranians.

Central asian aryan nomads did not bring any Iron age in India. In fact, it was India which was famous for Iron. Refer Damascus steel which was infact Indian steel ( or process was Indian ). When, nomad people didn’t have any superiority in terms of anything then what made them click ? Do you think that people of Green Land can impart such a change to USA people today.
Example of above mentioned aborinals & britishers is perfectly logical.

Indian knowledge was known as technically superior and hence arabs translted maths, algebra, trignometry, chemistry, metallurgy, astronomy related texts from Indians and then passed on that knowledge to European translators. IVC people used uniform bricks ratio ( still used the same ratio world over ), decimal system, weights & measure system over area bigger than western europe. They made dock comparing with current size and it required knowledge of astronomy. Average Indian uses astronomy much more than any people by way of Panchang.

Spain captured native americans by way of cruel invasion. Also, they were militarily superior than natives with gun powder & pistols. Where as central asia was never superior to India. Even so called aryan BMAC area of central asia is not having horse remains before 1700 - 1600 BC ( in tune with Indian subcontinent ).

I can elborate on many points, but illogical person will always think in `one way’ direction ( as if path from central asia to India was only `one way’ ) !

“And just like a dominant Spanish minority managed to make its own language the mother-tongue of much larger populations which are genetically predominantly Native American,”

but then he turns right around and assumes that the probability of AIT rests on the denial of such an impact by a minority upon a majority and that this denial should be held against AIT:

“Saying that India had a large population may not sound -very revolutionary, yet in the context of the AIT, it is.

The theory of the Aryan Invasions, complemented by the secondary theory of an earlier Dravidian invasion, assumes, as it were, that India was nearly empty. On the other hand, the steppes of Eastern Europe and Central Asia must have been a beehive of people.” (same text, 4.1)

In addition to his own examples of the colonization of the Americas, we may think of the Germanic invasions at the fall of the Roman Empire: The Romans and romanized Celts far outnumbered the invading ‘Germans’ (Goths, Vandals, Franks, etc.), but they were soft and weak and fought amongst themselves, while the Germans were ‘lean and mean’.

But more importantly, the fact that AIT is NOT based on the notion of a relatively empty India prior to the Aryan invasion is its defining feature, which is what I have been looking for when I asked if people could specify what it is that they are referring to when they say that they either accept or reject AIT:

it seems to me that there are three (but as we will see, really only two) fundamentally different possible positions:

Around 1500 BC,

(1) India was was relatively underpopulated compared to central Asia, and the populous Aryans migrated into a relatively empty India, and are responsible for almost all of Indian culture.

(2) There was a relatively sophisticated civilization in the Indus Valley, and a less sophisticated, barbaric, warlike people, the Aryans, swept down from the overlooking mountains, and established themselves as the new ruling class, and gradually became interested in the cultural activities that had preceeded their arrival.

(3) There was a relatively sophisticated civilization in the Indus Valley, that gradually expanded outward as its population grew, and this civilization distributed various elements of its culture piecemeal, as various emigrations took place.

I said that there were really only 2 positions here, because I don’t think anybody seriously upholds (1)

This gives us (2)= AIT; (3)=anti-AIT

This is the kind of fundamental argument I was looking for when I asked what the ‘fuss’ was all about. Haggling over which particular mountain range the Aryans came from doesn’t seem to touch on AIT vs anti-AIT (it seems to assume AIT), but that is much of what one hears about concerning the issue, which is only obfuscatory.

Elst’s article is a good example: he sometimes argues against AIT as though it were (1) (which it isn’t) and sometimes as if it were(2) (which it is, if I’m right above)

worse, his arguments against (2) work directly against him upon closer inspection. He points out later in the section on demographics that small groups of invaders attacking large civilizations tend to assimilate rather than impose their own culture. But I think this is exactly what AIT is saying: that the Aryans ‘took over’ the civilization that they found in the Indus valley, just as the germanic tribes ‘took over’ the remnants of Roman civ (which is the parallel he himself makes) But if we take into account the relativley dense population of the subcontinent compared to Europe that he himself has argued for (and which seems to fit in general), we see that where the Aryans were expanding into sparsely populated Europe, their language took root, while in densely populated India, the predecessor languages survived, the more so the further away from the GENERAL locus of the invasion, north (not necessarilly northwest; if we want to situate the point of origin of the Aryans as far east as Panjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, that doesn’t seem to affect the ‘essence’ of AIT.

If we go with his proposed model of the outward expansion of a 5000+yr-old Indus civ, we would expect their language to be evenly dispersed around its Indus valley epicenter, rather than only in the less pop areas.

another, epiphenomenal problem with the 4.1.1 section is that out of nowhere, he starts talking about the color of people’s skin, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes this a political issue, and yet he casually throws it in there with the drier issue of linguistics:

“And just like a dominant Spanish minority managed to make its own language the mother-tongue of much larger populations which are genetically predominantly Native American, so also the slightly darker emigrants from India may have passed on their language to the white people of Russia and Europe.”

All of this was written before looking at the link provided by Karma Dude; I will do that tomorrow, for now, gotta run.

Dan W, there is plenty of information out there on this whole debate. The points you have raised, have been raised before, and debated over and over.

The sad part is, most of this comes from either lack of information or misinformation. Here is a simple resource on facts about the archeological side of Ancient Indus Valley civilization

Invasion of the Bread People is a funny example of: to what extent people will go to debate this issue,

As for language, I am not an expert on Sanskrit, but the more I learn about it, the more it looks like a language made for a purpose. One event that really got me curious about Sanksrit, was when I was in college. I had a friend from Indonesia, and I was really surprised that I could kind of understand his language, because it had it’s roots in Sanskrit. I am from south India, and speak a Dravidian language, but even Malayalam has so much Sanskrit influence, that I am skeptical when someone claims that they can clearly make distinctions between Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages.

The funny part is, Robert Caldwell coined the term “Dravidian” from the Sanskrit dravida. I wonder if being a bishop had something to do with all this I am glad he did not find the word Asura instead. You know, we do worship asura’s in the south. The famous story of Mahabali is a good example of the less discussed Asuras of south India. What is even more interesting is the fact that the dravidian asuras are interpreted as being barbaric and demonic!!

The point I am trying to make is, there is a whole lot of information out there, and everything does not seem to fit in the little AIT box. So instead of starting with AIT, start with all the pieces of the puzzle, try putting it together, and then if it looks like AIT, then kudos to Max Muller for getting it right. If not, then atleast we know the TRUTH, and for me, that’s all it’s about. Like Rabindranath Tagore once said, “Facts are many, but truth is one”

It seems to me that a key part of the problem is defining what is included under the term ‘AIT’.

If this is taken to mean that there was no culture in the Indus valley more sophisticated than sticks and stones prior to an invasion of Swedish-looking people from the Caucasus or even further west, then it is clearly false.

If, on the other hand, ‘AIT’ is simply taken to mean that there was a people speaking proto-Indo-Aryan/Iranian/European that ‘originated’ somewhere in the mountains between the Hindu Kush and Turkey, and that these people spread their language, one way or another, from India to Ireland, then it is clearly true.

Instead of being beguiled into the false dilemma of either accepting AIT ‘in toto’ or rejecting in ‘in toto’, it seems to me that the task is rather to find the correct position between these 2 extremes.

In the same vein, If AIT is by definition only suported by speculations about ancient religious texts, then it is on shaky ground, although not necessarilly patently false. But at the very least, AIT is also based on linguistic data, which helps shore it up a bit.

re:
“Well, I don’t think it takes much to realize that AIT is all about race. Do white Europeans what to be known as decendants of brown Indians, or brown Indians want to be known as decendants of white Europeans?”:

If both parents are ‘white’, their children will be ‘white’. Likewise for any ‘race’. What is really at issue here would seem to be that modern-day Indians,like (almost?)all populations, are the product of ‘miscegenation’ at some level, whether this be ‘intraracial’ or ‘interracial’.
Again, I don’t see what the problem is or why anyone would not would not “want to be known as the descendents” of such a mixture.

Under any reasonable interpretation, AIT is not saying that Europeans descended from Indians or vice versa, but that there was a population that contibuted to some extent to the genetic composition of both groups,or at the very least to the languages of both groups, with many exceptions in both cases (Finnish, Hungarian, and of course the Dravidian languages). In Europe, in at least some cases, these ‘Aryans’ mixed with some pre-existing European peoples (e.g. Greece)[does Greece also have an AIT debate'?] There is the possibility that in some other cases, the Aryans were the first ones there. Likewise, in India, they mixed with the Dravididans, and possibly with some pre-Dravidian people.

Is that the concern? that some people might be much more ‘purely’ Aryan than others? Why would this be a problem? Because the Aryans ‘proved’ their ’superiority’ by invading other peoples’ territory 3000 Yrs ago? That seems silly. Peoples go through cycles of barbarism, civilization and decay all the time. Different peoples are superior in different ways at different times throughout their history. The barbarians are often better in war because of a bellicose, aggressive culture, while they might be inferior in terms of things like literature,architecture, painting, etc. And then they become civilized, become less aggressive and more sophistacated, and the cycle is repeated.

re:
“If vedic culture could spread east and south, as far as Bali and Fiji, why could it not have spread to the west? “:

It seems quite clear that to the extent that Vedic culture = Aryan culture,it DID in fact spread westward. Even if we accept the western-most suggested point of origin for the Aryan/Proto-Iranian-Indo Europeans, it would still have had to have spread from there to Ireland and Spain and sundry points in between. If we situate this point of origin further east, in Persia/Iran or the Hindu Kush, that would indicate that much more westward movement.

The bottom line is that instead of simply asserting the falseness of AIT as a whole, it would be more helpful if people made it clear which specific aspects of it that they are rejecting.

PS
(All of this was written before looking at the link provided by Karma Dude; I will do that tomorrow, for now, gotta run.)

Does a rose known by any other name not smell as sweet?

Well when some one like Hitler comes along and changes the connotation of a word, people are forced to change it. Just like Red Indians, being called Native Americans, blacks being called African American, so on. Now if things like this stayed sweet like a rose, then I guess your logic would apply!

I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Well I am making a fuss about it, because, I am an Indian, proud to be one, and passionate enough to want to know the truth about our past, especially when the current view is based on a FLAWED THEORY!?

The only racists are the revisonists

Well, I don’t think it takes much to realize that AIT is all about race. Do white Europeans what to be known as descendants of brown Indians, or brown Indians want to be known as descendants of white Europeans? I really don’t care much about the direction that debate goes, as long as we get to the truth about history.

The British example is a really bad one to use here, because it was not a theory deduced from a religious text?!? The AIT is more like taking the Bible, and basing the entire human history on that. If vedic culture could spread east and south, as far as Bali and Fiji, why could it not have spread to the west? Religious and cultural changes, have erased a lot of that history form the west, but I am sure if people look without the confines of AIT, a lot more truth will come out. Why be confined by a theory when looking at history?

I don’t want to repeat the discussion of why AIT is right or wrong, because my whole point is, find the truth. If a theory is flawed, take a different path, see if you can find what actually happened.

Now if you want to find more about why AIT is flawed, and where the debate stands, here is a good resource:
Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate

The commentator has highlighted the fact that no culture is monlithic and that languages and cultures have been imported through invasion or otherwise for countless centuries. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain and the subsequent subjugation of the native British is a very similar example of what happened in India:

ANGLO-SAXONS: Aryans
WELSH: Dravidians
CORNISH: Brahui

However, the proof of the Aryans as a race and nation is not evidenced necessarily in India but in IRAN- the land of the Aryans- just to the west……this is proof , if ever concrete proof were needed of the Aryan migration to the the Middle East and Indian subcontinent.

The only racists are the revisonists who reject the Aryan invasion theory and cling to this notion that India unlike all other nations has not imported anything.

Btw, the Indus Valley people were clearly more advanced and civilized than the Aryans : however the warlike Aryans were militarily superior.

I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Most of the languges spoken from the Indian subcontinent to the island of Ireland share a family resemblance. Today, they are usually called ‘Indo-European’, while in the 19th century AD they were referred to as ‘Aryan’. (Does a rose known by any other name not smell as sweet?) This language originated somewhere. Most of the saner-sounding commentaters variously suggest locations in the mountain ranges that stretch from the Hindu-Kush, through the Caucasus, into Turkey, surrounding the ‘fertile crescent’. What is so important about their precise location? Of course, I can understand people wanting to answer this question on a purely academic basis, but clearly, many people seem to think that much more is at stake than academics, but why?

Let me make a comparison. Any English person with any kind of education at all knows that his or her language and other cultural features are the products of several invasions from people who, at the time, lived in regions outside present-day England, and even outside the British Isles as a whole. There were the Celts, in this case known as Britons. Was present-day England unoccupied at the time of the arrival of the Celts, or was there another people already there? There are different answers to that question, but nobody seems to get emotional or political about it. Then, there were the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, and the Normands. (Just to add to the complexity, the Normands were descendents of Vikings that had settled in the north of France). Once again, nobody seems to think that this being the case is any kind of slight against English culture. Shakespeare (quoted or at least paraphrased above) was still Shakespeare.

So the Proto-Indo Europeans either spread their language and culture from the Caucasus or the Hindu Kush. Either way, it is clear that they left their mark on the vast swath of the earth between India and Ireland, and, in turn, on areas colonized by people from these lands, such as the Americas. It also seems likely that in some cases some kind of civilization preceeded the arrival of ‘Aryan’ language and culture. One of the likeliest scenarios for such a pre-existing civilization is India, with the Dravidians.

But why can’t Indians simply look at the Dravidians as being analogous to the Celtic Britons, and the Aryans, whether they were coming from near or far, as being analogous to the Anglo-Saxons? Why can’t the question as to which elements of Indian culture come from the Dravidians and which from the Aryans be left as a purely academic one, as it is in England, with respect to the Britons, Anglo-Saxons, and other groups?

still im sure pro AIT peoples can still make an arguement, they are very good at making facts up, and disallowing logic and real facts. on the other hand Juven is a respectable person, as i can see he argues well and values proper consultation - good on ya!

Very good article.

If the theory is so redundant, why young Indians still learn it from the textbooks? Is there any movement to change the text books?

Matt V, very logical thinking and makes sense.

Juven, I would be more than happy to post your article on here, I have sent you my email to your aol account.

“The Impracticability and Inconsistencies of the Indus Valley Civilization being the Derivative Source of the Aryan Occupation of India”

If you can provide me with the address of a website , I can send a copy of the writing to be published on your website. I will also provide my address etc. You can keep the copy. It is free if you want a copy. Thanks . Hope to hear from you.

A less advanced group of people. Who had yet reach the stage of agricultural revolution can in no way ‘conquer’ or take a land, change language and family groups. These People are Europeans, even just 3000 years ago europe was a dump, the only civilisations around was the Persian (Elamites) the Indian, the greek, chinese and egyptian, there was also semi semite groups who had the names of assyrians, controlled mesopotomia etc.

like i said nothing was in europe. The agricultural revolution did not hit germany/france/ england until 5000 years later after the central asian/persian groups started it.

we also know that the first humans came from africa, the cradle of civilisation spanned from greece to india and everything in between. And not until roman times europe started to slowly catch up to the extraordinary acheivements of the greeks, persian, egyptians and indians.

but 65 years ago something extraordinary is proposed, by Max Muller, a nazi, german with a aryan agenda… with only nazi conquest on his mind. He pulled out of thin air some remarkable evidence that the far less advanced europeans who still lived in caves, and hunted with stones managed to walk all that distance from europe - somehow knowing that land and people exsisted in india and iran, barge there way into these advanced nations, show them the tricks of the trade like horse riding (already invented by the persians) and other things and at the same time somehow changing the languages of these whole nations and breeding with everybody thus making them aryans like themselves.

if i ever proposed that the aboriginals of australia 400 years ago, sailed across the seas, landed in england with a small group, and somehow advanced england further with what they knew, at at the same time breeded with so many people that engalnd became predominantly aboriginal - most sane people would dismiss that and obviously think of it as ludicrous.

so how come the same thoughts are not emitted by certain european historians who would like a slice of ancient history by claiming to be the sole starters of 2 of the group of greatest civilisations ever on this planet.
my aboriginal example is very similiar to the same situation thousands of years ago, the european and really anybody above the caspian sea could be represented by the aboriginals of 400 years ago, and the empires of persia, india, the medes and the assyrians could be compared to the england of 200 years ago…. shokingly that was the contrast between the two groups.

i did not translate the avesta of vedas for this explenation, for me this was pure logic. There is far more arguements which i can put forward. Like the continious use of the word aryan, in particular in the persian scripts for describing themselves. Cyrus called himself aryan, herodotus persian arch nemisis in historical writing even reffered to the persians as aryans… the word has been in persian and indian scripts for thousands of years, yet in only arose in europe only a century ago.

Too me logically the aryans spurted from the indo-persian area, or possibly in central asia. I dont think the aryans came out of india primarily, but in the region dividing the elamo-dravidians and the indians.

but i can say this clearly - the aryans could not have possible came out of europe or the caucaus region. it makes absolutely no sense.

Matt . V