Aryan Invasion Hypothesis

civfanatic

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"Iran" does mean "Land of Aryans", but not in the sense of "Aryan" as an racial or ethnic term. The ancient Iranians used the word "Arya" the same way that the ancient Indians did, i.e. as a cultural term meaning "noble" or "high-born". It had no racial/ethnic meaning. The name "Eran/Iran" would therefore have the same meaning as "Aryavarta".

Even the ancient Greeks were aware of this term, and they used the name "Ariana" to refer to what is now eastern Iran. Here is a map by the Greek geographer Eratosthenes in the 2nd century B.C.E., which places "Ariana" as the landmass located west of India.
It seems that the term "Iran" (Eran) was in use as an ethnic self-designator at least since the Sassanian period (3rd-7th centuries C.E.).

From Encyclopedia Iranica:
The great trilingual inscription of ŠāpÅ«r I at the KaÊ¿ba-ye ZardoÅ¡t in Fārs, here preserved only in Parth. and Greek, but reconstructable with certainty also in Pers., contains for the first time the Pers. word Ä“rānÅ¡ahr (Parth. aryānÅ¡ahr), the king declaring in Persian [*ʾNH . . . ylʾnÅ¡try ḥwtʾy ḤWHm]/an. . .Ä“rānÅ¡ahr xwadāy hÄ“m/, Parth. ʾNH . . .ʾryʾnḥštr ḥwtwy ḤWYm/az. . .aryānÅ¡ahr xwadāy ahÄ“m/, Greek egō . . .tou Arianōn ethnous despotÄ“s eimi "I am lord of the kingdom (Gk. nation) of the Aryans" (Å KZ, Mid. Pers. [1], Parth. 1., Gk. 1.2; Back, p. 284-85). This formulation, following his title "king of kings of the Aryans," makes it seem very likely that Ä“rānÅ¡ahr properly denoted the empire, while Ä“rān was still understood, in agreement with its etymology (< OIr. *aryānām), as the (oblique) plural of the gentilic Ä“r (Parth. ary < Old Ir. arya-) "Aryan," i.e., "of the Iranians."
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eran-eransah

The key is the Greek translation of the Persian, which appears in the multilingual inscription of Shapur. The use of the Greek word ethnous, the basis of the English word "ethnicity" and meaning a "nation", is revealing. Shahanshah Shapur is proclaiming himself as the ruler of an Aryan "nation". The conclusion is that, by this time (3rd century C.E.), the word "Aryan" had evolved from its earlier, largely cultural meaning into an ethno-linguistic one referring to a distinct group of people (the Iranians, people of Eranshahr). In India, the usage of the cognate term "Arya" seems to have been largely restricted to the former, and never took on an ethnic/national meaning as it did in Iran.
 

panduranghari

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This was posted a long time ago in the forum. I think it might be a fake.
Anything inconvenient is fake.

Really.

I will prove its not inaccurate.

Records Frequently Asked Questions - UK Parliament

Macaulay's Minute, sometimes referred to as a speech given in Parliament or a minute presented to Parliament, is not a Parliamentary record so is not held by the Parliamentary Archives. Baron Macaulay, historian, essayist and poet, was an MP between 1830-1834, 1840-1847 and 1852-1857. His famous Minute on Indian Education is dated 2 February 1835, when he was not an MP. He had resigned his Parliamentary seat in early 1834 and sailed for India, as he had been made a member of the Supreme Council in India. The Minute was therefore presumably written for the Supreme Council, not the British Parliament.

The text of Macaulay's Minute can be found on many websiteS using a search engine such as Google and entering the title and name of the author. Alternatively, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography records that Macaulay's Minute was printed by G. O. Trevelyan in an appendix to his book The Competition Wallah (1864). The Parliamentary Archives cannot vouch for the authenticity of any of these websites, nor does it hold a copy of Trevelyan's book.
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17349?docPos=13

Macaulay left his mark on British administration, less in actual change than in memorable arguments on disputed issues. These have been taken as more typical of British attitudes to India than the work of more hardened but more obscure men. His most famous contribution, in which he joined Trevelyan, was to the controversy between orientalists and Anglicizers over the allocation of a sum of money to native students in higher education, one party favouring instruction in Sanskrit and Arabic, the other pressing for all instruction in English. Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education (2 February 1835) argued vigorously for the latter, on the grounds previously advanced by James Mill, that instruction in English would convey the findings of a more advanced culture and so the money would be more usefully spent. The Minute has become famous as a landmark in the dispute, but it owes its fame mainly to the fact that G. O. Trevelyan printed it in an appendix to his book The Competition Wallah (1864).
 

civfanatic

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Anything inconvenient is fake.

Really.

I will prove its not inaccurate.
Huh. Why would it be "inconvenient" for me? I am no fan of Macaulay or the British Raj for that matter, but I am no fan of pseudo-history and distortions of facts either.

I have the full transcript of Macaulay's Minute in my hands right now. The phrase quoted in the picture appears nowhere.

Go through this:
http://homer.rice.edu/~nrohilla/macauley.pdf
 

blank_quest

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Huh. Why would it be "inconvenient" for me? I am no fan of Macaulay or the British Raj for that matter, but I am no fan of pseudo-history and distortions of facts either.

I have the full transcript of Macaulay's Minute in my hands right now. The phrase quoted in the picture appears nowhere.

Go through this:
http://homer.rice.edu/~nrohilla/macauley.pdf
But one thing is sure that the absence of "Humanities/Science" may have been in Indian Education System but it could not be "inferior" unless proven otherwise to the Western Counterpart.Long period of "Wars/Invasion/Disruption" can be the cause of "stalled growth" in Indian Humanities/Sciences.But still India was the Civilization that Developed Maths/Arts/Philosophy/Psychology/Yoga/Grammar etc. before the Dark ages of Europe.
 
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civfanatic

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But one thing is sure that the absence of "Humanities/Science" may have been in Indian Education System but it could not be "inferior" unless proven otherwise to the Western Counterpart.Long period of "Wars/Invasion/Disruption" can be the cause of "stalled growth" in Indian Humanities/Sciences.But still India was the Civilization that Developed Maths/Arts/Philosophy/Psychology/Yoga/Grammar etc. before the Dark ages of Europe.
Yeah, Macaulay's views on the Indian education system were biased and ethnocentric. What India needed in the 19th century was a renaissance of thought and reform of Sanskrit education, not a complete displacement by English.
 

blank_quest

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Yeah, Macaulay's views on the Indian education system were biased and ethnocentric. What India needed in the 19th century was a renaissance of thought and reform of Sanskrit education, not a complete displacement by English.
:rofl: :lawl:
 

Sakal Gharelu Ustad

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Mad Indian

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@SGU the articles look good. I will provide a colloquial translation of them after sometime, when I am free:). But basic premise is tat the Indian genome is well mixed that it is impossible to define the races within. Hence there can be no Aryan race.


@pmaitra dude, AMT is just as non sense as AIT because of the time line mismatch. And if se consider migration every one are migrants out of Africa so it is a stupid point any way. Open up your mind:rolleyes:
 
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pmaitra

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I suggest people to read "Land of Seven rivers" by Sanjeev Sanyal.

Some of the recent articles from genetics debunking the AIT/AMT. One of these is published in Nature.
The following articles (originally cited by you) do not debunk AIT/AMT. Please read them.

Good paper, but focuses on Y-haplogroup R1a1*. It does claim in the abstract that this haplogroup can be found all over Central Asia. Secondly, if you see figure 1, you will see, both Tibet and WB, Jharkhand, Orissa, etc., have more or less the same frequency. However, the people from Tibet look significantly different from those in those states. Surely, Y-haplogroup R1a1* is not the end of the story. The claim that all Indians are homegrown has a major loophole.


Figure 1 suggests people of Bihar and people of Belarus have high haplogroup R1a1a frequency. Does it explain why they look (dis)similar? No.

This article also gives a note on Indo-Europeans:
A final comment can be made concerning the relationship between
R1a phylogeography and contested origin of Indo-Europeans that is
generally, though not solely, attributed to either Anatolia, the South
Caucasus or the North Pontic-Caspian regions (Gray and Atkinson
56
and references therein). Haplogroup R1a1a occurs in all three of these
areas and beyond at informative frequencies (Figure 1).

Here, I'll quote directly from the article, so that you can decide for yourself, and perhaps question yourself, why not all Indians look the same.
ANI ancestry is significantly higher in Indo-European than Dravidian speakers (P=0.013 by a 1-sided test)5,6,7,8,41, suggesting that the ancestral ASI may have spoken a Dravidian language before mixing with the ANI42. We also find significantly more ANI ancestry in traditionally upper than lower or middle caste groups (P=0.0025)5,6,7,8,41, and find that traditional caste level is significantly correlated to ANI ancestry even after controlling for language (P=0.0048), suggesting a relationship between the history of caste formation in India and ANI-ASI mixture.

We compared our autosomal estimates of ANI ancestry to Y chromosome and mtDNA haplogroup frequencies. Y chromosome analysis has shown that traditionally upper caste and Indo-European speaking groups have elevated frequencies of alleles that are also common in West Eurasians5,6. However, mtDNA analysis shows elevated frequencies of haplogroups common in West Eurasians only in northwest India7,8,43.

@pmaitra

One of the flawed premises behind AIT is that it assumes introduction of foreign culture (or elements of foreign culture) = invasion/migration of foreign people. But it is also possible that these elements of foreign culture could have been introduced to a native people without any large-scale movement of people, through a long process of acculturation. I'd like to hear your opinion on my post below, which I cross-posted from another thread.
It's all speculation. As I had said earlier, there is no conclusive evidence for any of the theories.

You have overlooked the point I made though - that not all Indians look the same. Does the Internal Migration Theory justify that? I think not.

[HR][/HR]

So gentlemen, I am not accusing you, and this could be a mere coincidence, but there seems to be an attempt in India to unify everyone under one identity by encouraging a new and scientifically unfounded theory that all Indians are homegrown. This new ideology is being peddled by a certain politico-religious group, to consolidate their grip on the psyche of all sub-continentals. Seeking to achieve unity is a virtue, but such attempts should never be made under unfounded theories and wishful thinking.
 
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blank_quest

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@pmaitra the SENSE in which AIT is SUGGESTED is bogus ... not because it can be proved but because Aryans can't be defined ( as a race?) ..
What is the meaning for Aryans ??
What exactly are we looking for ?
Why Aryan Chieftians are referred with Non-Indo-Aryan (just like Non-English-Elite) names like Balbutha and Bribu in Rig Veda ( Pg 187 , Ancient and Early Medieval India - Upinder Singh ) ..
What exactly is the Aryan thing?
Was it the Elite?
Was it a Race?
Was it the language?
Was it the Ethnicity?
what was it ?
and the date suggested for Rig veda ranges from 6000BC to 1000BC ..
dating from (Proto-History--> Writing undeveloped ;to History--> Written language developed ) ..
So it ranges from Neolithic (around 7000 BC) to about Iron age..
What can we say about what AIT was?
Why not to consider Turk/Afghan/Mughal Invasion as an Ethnic Invasion?(As it is so clear that it was)

Why do we need to feel that they(Mughals) are same as us then?
Why to say then that Mughals were Indians ?
Why two faced History? ( If Mughals then be silent and If Aryans then Ethnic hoopla :tsk: )
 
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civfanatic

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It's all speculation. As I had said earlier, there is no conclusive evidence for any of the theories.

You have overlooked the point I made though - that not all Indians look the same. Does the Internal Migration Theory justify that? I think not.
I doubt all Indians looked the same even in 4000 B.C.E. I am sure that even the IVC was a highly mixed, cosmopolitan culture that hosted a diverse array of ethnicities.

All because Indians don't look the same today, by no means implies that there was a large-scale movement of people into India around c.1500 B.C.E. There were plenty of migrations in later Indian history that introduced new genes and phenotypes into an already diverse gene pool. The Greek, Bactrian, Scythian, Hun, and Turk invasions must have all left some biological mark.

Moreover, if you want to use physical appearance as a support for AIT/AMT, can you differentiate a speaker of an IE language (say, a Bihari) from a speaker of a Dravidian language (say, a Telugu) based on physical appearance alone, with any degree of accuracy or consistency? I for one cannot.
 

pmaitra

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@pmaitra the SENSE in which AIT is SUGGESTED is bogus ... not because it can be proved but because Aryans can't be defined ( as a race?) ..
What is the meaning for Aryans ??
What exactly are we looking for ?
Why Aryan Chieftians are referred with Non-Indo-Aryan (just like Non-English-Elite) names like Balbutha and Bribu in Rig Veda ( Pg 187 , Ancient and Early Medieval India - Upinder Singh ) ..
What exactly is the Aryan thing?
Was it the Elite?
Was it a Race?
Was it the language?
Was it the Ethnicity?
what was it ?
The word "Aryan," as per Sanskrit definition does not indicate ethnicity; however, in this context, I used the term to refer to Indo-Europeans or Central Asians or whatever name you would prefer.


and the date suggested for Rig veda ranges from 6000BC to 1000BC ..
dating from (Proto-History--> Writing undeveloped ;to History--> Written language developed ) ..
So it ranges from Neolithic (around 7000 BC) to about Iron age..
What can we say about what AIT was?
Your question does not answer mine. Why do Indians have such diverse looks?

Why not to consider Turk/Afghan/Mughal Invasion as an Ethnic Invasion?(As it is so clear that it was)
And when did I deny Turk/Afghan/Mughal invasion?

Why do we need to feel that they(Mughals) are same as us then?
Why to say then that Mughals were Indians ?
Why two faced History? ( If Mughals then be silent and If Aryans then Ethnic hoopla :tsk: )
Where do you see two faced history? Where do you see ethnic hoopla? We are discussing AIT, so why should I discuss the progeny of Chengiz Khan? The word "Mughal" is a Persianized version of the word "Mongol," and they orignated from - wait for it - perhaps from present day Mongolia, perhaps from present day Russia (Buryatia). However, by the time the Babur came to India, along with his retinue, and over the ages, they got assimilated with Indians. Is that something you would agree with?
 
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blank_quest

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The word "Aryan," as per Sanskrit definition does not indicate ethnicity; however, in this context, I used the term to refer to Indo-Europeans or Central Asians or whatever name you would prefer.
What is Indo-European ? is this an Ethnic group different from Indo's and Europeans ?
my questions is still unanswered! why discard "explicitly" with "ethnic-term" but use different term "Indo-European" that itself is "Ethnic" ?
Your question does not answer mine. Why do Indians have such diverse looks?
The Archaeology News Network: Scientists discover how epigenetic information could be inherited

And when did I deny Turk/Afghan/Mughal invasion?


Where do you see two faced history? Where do you see ethnic hoopla? We are discussing AIT, so why should I discuss the progeny of Chengiz Khan? The word "Mughal" is a Persianized version of the word "Mongol," and they orignated from - wait for it - perhaps from present day Mongolia, perhaps from present day Russia (Buryatia). However, by the time the Babur came to India, along with his retinue, and over the ages, they got assimilated with Indians. Is that something you would agree with?
I know that Mughals == Mongols; Why to see AIT as a Ethnic on Ethnic ? Why this divide ? Is Bihari an Ethnic group different from UPite ? How can closely knitted regions be divided into ethnicity? Can upper WB be "exactly" differentiated from Sikkim people on ethnic ground?
 

pmaitra

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I doubt all Indians looked the same even in 4000 B.C.E. I am sure that even the IVC was a highly mixed, cosmopolitan culture that hosted a diverse array of ethnicities.

All because Indians don't look the same today, by no means implies that there was a large-scale movement of people into India around c.1500 B.C.E. There were plenty of migrations in later Indian history that introduced new genes and phenotypes into an already diverse gene pool. The Greek, Bactrian, Scythian, Hun, and Turk invasions must have all left some biological mark.

Moreover, if you want to use physical appearance as a support for AIT/AMT, can you differentiate a speaker of an IE language (say, a Bihari) from a speaker of a Dravidian language (say, a Telugu) based on physical appearance alone, with any degree of accuracy or consistency? I for one cannot.
Sure, there was migration of Greeks, Bactrians, et al.. Our scriptures explicitly mention Saka, Yavan, Pahlav, etc..

Pahlavas are people of Persian-Hellenic origin. So there you go, we already have example of migration. We know for sure migration happened at some point. Would it be unreasonable to be open to the possibility that similar migration might have happened earlier as well?

I am still not sure what your point is. You keep saying there has been no evidence to prove AIT/AMT happened. Well, I never claimed there is sure shot evidence that AIT/AMT happened. Do you have evidence that it did not happen? I had already said that there is no conclusive evidence for any theory, and the existence of diverse appearances in India certainly leaves the possibility of a significant or large scale migration over a period of time. I know you probably won't agree with a large scale migration, but the diversity in India could not have been achieved by trickle-in effect.
 

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