Aryan Migration theory—evidence for and against it in the Vedas

Question

Aryan Migration theory is a hotly contested topic. The proponents of the theory cite Vedic verses which talk of ancestors recording their memories of a cold desolate homeland and their fear of fauna like foxes therein (Central Asia) and also the importance of pole star in the their marriage rituals. They also talk of the similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and similarities between Zoroastrian and Brahmin customs and traditions—especially the similarity between the Brahmin Yagnopavita and Zoroastrian Sudreh and word by word similarities between some Zend Avestan and Vedic verses.

The supporters of Out of India theory (OIT) on the other hand suggest that the presence of names of rivers like Saraswati, Ganga, Yamuna, etc in the Vedas are indicative of an early Indian ancestry.

Among the Migration theorists there are different variations—that it was a peaceful and gradual migration, like immigration and cultural diffusion; that it was violent and pushed Dravidians southward; that Aryans were nomads in Central Asia and composed the Vedas and developed high culture only after they came to India; etc.

Without dwelling into the multitude of investigative tools like genetic evidence, archaeology, linguistics, etc and sticking only to the Vedas, where do the verses point to in terms of our ancestry?

Answer 1

David Frawley and Michel Danino have formulated compelling arguments against the "Aryan Invasion Theory". Dr. Frawley's book is entitled, "In Search of the Cradle of Civilization". His collaboraters were Georg Feuerstein (a scholar regarding the history of Yoga) and Subhash Kak (a scholar researching the archaeo-astronomy of the Vedic texts).

Dr. Edwin Bryant's book (cited above) presents both sides of the debate. During a personal email communication with me during the Spring of 2016, he did state that the current Indus Valley Civilization (whose language system is still open to debate and speculation) most likely is of Vedic origin. This last piece of evidence would shift the debate in favor of the "OIT" theory.

The mighty Bal Gangadhar Tilak composed a book entitled, "Arctic Home in the Vedas" (published in 1903). In this manuscript, he proposes the North Pole as the original homeland of the Aryans (during the pre-glacial period); they eventually departed from the North Pole circa 8000 BCE due to the ice deluge. This is an interesting theoretical variation in the debate.

Traditional Acharyas and Spiritual Pillars like Dayanand Saraswati (Arya Samaj), Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and more recently the late Pandurang Shastri Athavale (founder of the Swadhyaya movement) have always decried the tendency of the Western historians to posit an Aryan invasion. More recent evidence (including genetic evidence) has now shifted the debate away from an Aryan invasion.

Please visit these books to obtain a greater understanding of this fascinating debate.

EDIT:

Link to YouTube playlist: Exploring Indian Civilization by Michel Danino, IIT Kanpur

Answer 2

The Vedas are set in the framework of the geography of the Indian subcontinent. This is clearly obvious through the innumerable references to geographical features.

For example, the River Hymn (Nadi Suktam) RV 10.75 lists all the major rivers of northern India in precise order from east to west.

RV 10.75.5:

इमं मे गङ्गे यमुने सरस्वति शुतुद्रि स्तोमं सचता परुष्ण्या । असिक्न्या मरुद्वृधे वितस्तयार्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ॥

O Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Shutudri, Parushni, Asikni, Marudvrdha, Vitasta, Arjikiya, Sushoma - please grace this yajna.

The river Sarasvati was also personified as a goddess and she is still with us spiritually although her physical form has dried up. The Sarasvati was the center of Vedic civilization. She is mentioned more than 70 times in the Rig Veda, whereas Ganga is mentioned 2 times.

The land between the Sarasvati and Drshadvati rivers (i.e. Kurukshetra) was considered the most sacred spot on earth, created specially by the devas themselves.

For example, RV 3.23.4:

नि त्वा दधे वर आ पृथिव्या इळायास्पदे सुदिनत्वे अह्नाम् । दृषद्वत्यां मानुष आपयायां सरस्वत्यां रेवदग्ने दीदिहि ॥

You, O Agni, I place on the best spot on earth, Ilāyāspada, the land on banks of the Drshadvati, Sarasvati and Āpayā.

This in itself is incontrovertible evidence of the completely indigenous origin of the Vedas and the Vedic people. There is not a single shred of evidence for a migration of the so-called Indo-European or Indo-Iranian or whatever linguistic or ethnic group from outside the Indian subcontinent.

Any invader of a new land always cherishes his original motherland and retains strong memories of it. You can see that throughout history across all geographies. For example, Babar who was originally from central Asia and invaded India and settled in India, fondly records his memories of his homeland in his autobiography Babarnama. Every Islamic invader of India maintained connections to their ancestral homeland, and regularly sent wealth usurped from India. The same pattern is seen with the British. The European Gypsies who migrated out of India more than a 1000 years ago, still retain their memories of their Indian ancestry. Against such a unanimous pattern, the Vedic people who otherwise demonstrate such a prodigious and stupendous capacity for preserving ancestral lore in excruciating detail, have not recorded a single word that indicates any origin outside the Indian subcontinent.

Since you have emphasized citing sources strictly from the Vedas, I highly recommend reading the book 'The Rig Veda: A Historical Analysis' by Shrikant Talageri.

Although I disagree with Talageri on some minute details, I completely agree with his analysis of the key aspects seen in the Rig Veda that incontrovertibly confirm a completely indigenous ancestry of the Vedic people.

Answer 3

Oh Manyu with your help may we conquor both the Aryans and Dasas

Oh lodra with your help may we kill both the Dasas and Aryans.”

—–Rig Veda 10-83-1

This verse pray for the destruction of both Aryans and Dasas. Should this verse be interpreted to mean that before Aryans invaded India some native ‘Aryan’ variety already existed in India and they were killed by invaded Aryans?

It is true that in many places, Rig Veda says Indra protected the Aryan color, but it also says Kanwa, the son of black. This Kanwa Rishi is said to have dark skin. Many Suktas in the 8th Mandala of Rig Veda was written by his descendants.So, these verses like Indra protecting Aryan colour should be taken as metaphorical.

Answer 4

As a child I have seen few mythological series like the Ramayana & Mahabharata and have heard this word 'Arya' many times but don't think it was in context to Aryan race!

Speaking of the Aryan invasion theory, it would probably be an oversimplification to say: "Germans invented it, British used it," but not by much. The concept of the Aryans as a race and the associated idea of the 'Aryan nation' were very much a part of the ideology of German nationalism.

Before getting to the role played by German nationalism, it is useful first to take a brief look at what the word Arya does mean.

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. The word 'Arya' in Sanskrit means noble and never a race. In fact, the authoritative Sanskrit lexicon (c. 450 AD), the famous Amarakosa 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 Rigveda 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) RV, VII. 33.17

Julian Huxley, one of the leading biologists of the century, wrote as far back as 1939:

In 1848 the young German scholar Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) settled in Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his life. ... About 1853 he introduced into the English language the unlucky term Aryan as applied to a large group of languages. ...

As far as ancient India is concerned, one may safely say that the word Arya denoted certain spiritual and humanistic values that defined her civilization. The entire Aryan civilization - the civilization of Vedic India - was driven and sustained by these values. The whole of ancient Indian literature: from the Vedas, the Brahmanas to the Puranas to the epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana can be seen as a record of the struggles of an ancient people to live up to the ideals defined by these values.

Let us now take a final look at this famous theory. It was first a theory of Europe created by Europeans to free themselves from the Jewish heritage of Christianity. This was to lead to Hitler and Nazism. This theory was later transferred to India and got mixed up with the study of Sanskrit and European languages. Europeans, now calling themselves Indo-Europeans became the invading Aryas and the natives became the Dravidians. The British hired Max Muller to use this theory to turn the Vedas into an inferior scripture, to help turn educated Hindus into Christian collaborators. Max Muller used his position as a Vedic scholar to boost German nationalism by giving scriptural sanction to the German idea of the Arya race. Following German unification under Bismarck, British public and politicians became scared and anti-German. At this Max Muller, worried about his position in England, got cold feet and wriggled out of his predicament by denouncing his own former racial theory and turned it into a linguistic theory. In all of this, one would like to know where was the science?

More can be read in details here

Found an interesting presentation ruling out rightly the so-called AIT. Watch here on youtube.

Answer 5

The problem with the historians & anthropologist is They Conclude something unidirectionally based on various available Limited incomplete samples or premises. But the work of fate is not limited to their intellect. It is not necessary that the things should work based on limited understanding of various logists & ians, derived from limited available distorted sources. Will of lord works in various ways which historians & various -logists can't even fathom. So scriptures are valid means of knowledge as Brahma Sutra says & purva mimamsa proves systematically. And Since no any historian or various -logist is omniscient enough to see past events nor were they provided with complete information (rather were provided with limited available past information in bits & pieces) they are not worthy accepted as valid means of knowledge to us. What happened some thousands years back can not be discerned by anyone scientifically. One can only speculate based on one's limited understanding what happened looking at bits & pieces But one can't gauge the pattern of the will of unfathomable reality.

Answer 6

The astounding similarities between Greek, Latin and especially Avestan and Sanskrit strongly point to all of them being descended from a single language. Phonetics makes it extremely unlikely that Sanskrit is the ancestral language (sanskrit has only three short vowels (a i u) and wherever Greek and latin show e Sanskrit often displays palatalization in Rig Veda - softening hard sounds like k which are preserved intact in Latin and so forth. (sanskrit chatvaras :: Latin Quattuor)). Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan have largely replaced l by r whereas European languages keep them apart.

The only way for Aryas not to be descended from Central Asian / European migrants is for Proto Indo-European to have originated in India. The fact that Sanskrit alone has retroflex sounds borrowed from Dravidian and loanwords from Munda, Dravidian etc. not found in European languages suggests strongly that the ancestor of Sanskrit is an immigrant to India.

Even if PIE originated in India - Vedic Sanskrit has undergone major changes from how Linguists have reconstructed PIE and it is hard to reconcile with apaurusheyatva of Sanskrit.