'Historian Romila Thapar's Dogmas'

[blank_quest]

Thapar in her work uses "Aryan" as a purely linguistic label. An "Aryan", in the Indian context, is anyone who speaks the IE languages. My extension, the term can also be used to describe the culture (elite culture in particular) of the IE-speaking peoples.

The problem is that many people, especially on the right-wing of the spectrum, are still stuck in the colonialist view of history and cannot differentiate between language and culture on the one hand, and "race" or ethnicity on the other.

Iranians take Aryan as their "race"( IIRC ) and in India Thapar considers it as an IE "language based" ! How to compare Aryans of two different places ? The theory of Soma Ras and connection of Persia to Aryans ?

 

[Sakal Gharelu Ustad]

Iranians take Aryan as their "race"( IIRC ) and in India Thapar considers it as an IE "language based" ! How to compare Aryans of two different places ? The theory of Soma Ras and connection of Persia to Aryans ?

'Race' is out of fashion in international circles now, thanks to Hitler. So had to be replaced by something!

 

[civfanatic]

Iranians take Aryan as their "race"( IIRC ) and in India Thapar considers it as an IE "language based" ! How to compare Aryans of two different places ? The theory of Soma Ras and connection of Persia to Aryans ?

The historical Iranian usage of the term "Aryan" is different from the historical Indian usage. I made a post on this topic a while ago, which I will reproduce below:
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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."

Ä’RÄ€N, Ä’RÄ€NÅ AHR – Encyclopaedia Iranica

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.

 

[GPM]

"England has to fulfill a double mission in India : one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of the old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundation of Western society in Asia "

Poor, poor British. Groaning under white man's burden. Groaning under wealth looted from India and agonising about how to start a westernised society.

And Marx applauds them, and Romilla applauds him.

In her interview with Karan Thapar (Hard Talk, March 2012) she insisted darkly that the only reason that Hindus favoured the indigenous origin of the Aryans was because they wanted to show that the late coming Muslims and Christians were outsiders, they came from the outside !

Haha. Were they not outsiders? By what stretch of "science" were they indigenous? They after all, never feel one with the ancient culture and heritage.
***
She was the foremost of "leading" historians who actually opposed the excavations at Ayodhya, lest it should disturb the main stream history!!

But the work was carried out and did prove the existence of a temple under the mosque.

 

[panduranghari]

Same old accusation, that certain historians wrote history as instructed by Nehruvians - a veiled inference of the mythical "Marxist Historian." More codswallop, in my esteemed opinion. Can we get a bit objective here? If there was no Aryan Migration or Invasion, how come India is so diverse? If this diversity is due to ANI and ASI, hailing from two different migrant groups from Africa, why isn't such diversity seen in Europe, Anatolia, Iraq and Iran, the last two of which would have fallen in the line of migration?

GENETIC BOTTLE NECK THEORY.

link

Population Bottlenecks and Expansions in Human Evolution
The genetic structure of human populations suggests four bottlenecks in our lineage. Stanley Ambrose has proposed that two bottlenecks may be related to past environmental changes. Marta Lahr has attributed bottlenecks to migrations of small populations across geographic barriers, a phenomenon variously referred to as the founder effect or colonization bottlenecks.

Bottleneck 1.
When traced backward in time, all human lineages coalesce to an ancestral lineage that lived in Africa about 130 thousand years ago. This date coincides with the end of the penultimate glacial period (190 to 130 thousand years ago). Populations were probably very small during this ice age. Expansion (bottleneck release) occurred during the last interglacial (130 to 71 thousand years ago), when warm climates and higher rainfall returned. Other lineages probably existed at that time, but they left no modern descendants.

Bottleneck 2.
A severe bottleneck around 70,000 years ago may have reduced the effective population size in Africa to only 5,000 females. This date coincides with the super-eruption of Toba, a volcano located in northern Sumatra. Toba blasted over 800 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash and millions of tons of sulfur gas into the atmosphere. The volcanic ash settled relatively quickly, but the sulfur formed a long-lasting stratospheric haze that reflected sunlight and may have caused rapid global cooling. Annual layers of ice in the Greenland ice sheet suggest that this haze lasted six years, causing a "volcanic winter." This was followed by 1,000 years of the coldest temperatures of the last ice age. Analysis of air trapped in these ice layers suggests that temperatures dropped 16 °C over Greenland during this "instant ice age." Drought and famine during this cataclysmic event undoubtedly decimated populations in most parts of Africa.

Bottleneck 3.
Analysis of Y chromosomes shows that all modern populations in southern Australasia can trace their ancestry to a small founding population from the Horn of northeast Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. Increases in windblown dust in Greenland ice indicate a rapid drop in sea level to more than 100 meters lower than at present. This would have greatly facilitated dispersal from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. Expansion around the perimeter of the Indian Ocean culminated in the colonization of Australia about 60,000 years ago.

Bottleneck 4.
Analyses of gene sequences provide evidence of a possible second exodus from Africa by a small founding population that traveled overlandvia the shoreline of the Red Sea. This colonization bottleneck occurred during a period of milder climate about 50,000 years ago, and also coincides with the appearance of advanced stone tool technologies. Expansion continued into Europe and northern Asia. All living humans outside of Africa can thus trace their ancestry to these colonizing populations.

The 3 lines originating from Africa, only one survived which reached India. The 2 going towards Israel and Sahara perished.

 

[panduranghari]

Iranians take Aryan as their "race"( IIRC ) and in India Thapar considers it as an IE "language based" ! How to compare Aryans of two different places ? The theory of Soma Ras and connection of Persia to Aryans ?

Come on not the same shit again.

http://defenceforumindia.com/forum/religion-culture/1403-aryan-invasion-theory-33.html#post598378

A related myth is the one according to which "Iran" means the "land of Aryans." This myth was propagated by Max Müller, who claimed in 1862 that the term airyanem vaejah found in the Avesta is the ancestor of "Iran" and means the "Aryan expanse." This myth became so widespread that serious scholars propagate it even to this day. Suffice it to look at a dictionary.
The now ubiquitous concept of the "Aryan race" first appeared in Iran in the 1890s. Mirza Agha Khan Kermani, one of the ideologues of a particularly bigoted version of Iranian nationalism, was the first to ever refer to it in writing. Interestingly, he spelled it àriyàn (آریان), a transliteration of the French aryen. Later, Sadegh Rezazadeh Shafagh came up with àriyàyi, the term now usually used in Persian. Hasan Priniya dwelt upon Aryans and the "science of race" in the textbooks he wrote for the first cohort of children to be mass schooled by the Pahlavi state in the 1930s.

Read more: Iranian Identity, the 'Aryan Race,' and Jake Gyllenhaal - Tehran Bureau | FRONTLINE | PBS

Perhaps its time for reconsideration of what really is Arya (n)?

 

[Virendra]

It was difficult to hold out even a decent nomadic lebensraum during the last Ice Age.
India's warm tropical climate was obviously a good bet.
And when the Ice Age splinters off, which way do you think people would go?From existing warm climate shelter to new freshly cleared suitable lands .. or vice versa?
From India to outside .. or vice versa ?

Regards,
Virendra

 

[Virendra]

About the Genetic diversity part of the debate.
The place where the haplotype diversity of a genetic component reaches maximum, is the place of origin of that genetic component.
The genetic component which spread beyond India, has far greater haplotype diversity in India than anywhere else in the world.
Why? Because of the development of lineages, castes, tribes etc making it a complex population structure.
Thus India is the origin for the genetic component that spread in Eurasia.
So a more diverse haplotype means the source instead .. not the destination of the component.
Even the theory of evolution says the same. For a population to survive and evolve over a long period, it must have genetic diversity between various sub populations.
Good point of think, keeping in mind that only one of the three 'Out of Africa' lines survived to sprout out to Eurasia; the Indian line that is.
And what happened in India? We have seen above.

Regards,
Virendra