The Aryan Invasion Theory is the name of a theory first propounded by Max Müller in the nineteenth century to explain the similarities between the languages of India and those of Europe by suggesting that a group of nomadic warriors from Europe invaded India at some point in the prehistoric past (roughly between 1800 and 1500 BCE), and imposed the Sanskrit language and Vedic culture on the native Dravidians. The theory was initially posited with the sole object of demonstrating that Indian languages and European languages descended from a common ancestor, but devolved over time into an assertion of a distinct Aryan race, with Nazi Germany, notably, interpreting it as an affirmation of the racial superiority of Northern Europeans over Jews.
The word Aryan is derived from the Sanskrit ārya, which means “noble” or “worthy”, and has parallels in several other languages. The authors of the ancient Persian Avesta, for instance, referred to themselves as airya, which in the ancient Persian language means “venerable”. The word also appears in Hittite inscriptions dating back to 1500 BCE. Linguistic reconstruction of the Indo-European ancestral language (known as the Proto-Indo-European language) suggests that the word may be derived from the root words ar- and yo-, which when put together mean “one who assembles skillfully”.
The Rigveda, one of the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language, is believed to have been part of the pre-invasion culture of the early Aryans, and had been passed down orally for generations before being written down in the sixth century BCE. It describes a semi-nomadic people, with horse-drawn chariots and mostly bronze but some iron weapons, that treated cows and horses as wealth. Several notable deities from Hindu mythology, such as Indra, are mentioned as prominent Aryan warriors.
Two other relevant sources of information on the Aryans are the Sanskrit epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, which are thought of as dramatized references to early Aryan conquests of Dravidians. The heroes of both epics, like Indra, were probably powerful warriors or chieftains in their tribes, and the demonic Rakshasas were probably Dravidians. In both epics, the subcontinent is referred to as Āryāvarta – “the abode of the Aryas” or “the land of the noble”.
The discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in the 1920s brought forth a deluge of material evidence from prehistoric India. The religious practices of the people of the Indus valley reflected the propitiation of only some of the deities worshipped by Hindus today: the most primal nature gods and fertility gods like the Mother Goddess and what is believed to be the precursor of Shiva. Warrior gods with sophisticated weapons, such as Indra, became dominant in popular mythology after the invasion. That Indra was initially regarded as the greatest of celestial beings in the early days of Hinduism, and was relegated to a more modest position when the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva was conceived, indicates that the evolution of Hinduism involved the complex syncretism of Dravidian and Aryan beliefs. The deification of Aryan warriors such as Indra may symbolize the absolute power that the Aryans commanded over the Dravidians in their wars.
That the Aryans came from outside the subcontinent can be inferred from the fact that none of the artifacts unearthed at the various sites of the Indus Valley Civilization includes the horse among its many depictions of animals. The Rigveda, on the other hand, contains numerous mentions of the horse and of horse-riding warriors. Even a cursory study of Hindu traditions would reveal the importance of the horse in rituals. The animal was, therefore, not indigenous to the subcontinent, and acquired a special status in the religion of the land after being brought in by the Aryans. The sudden collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization in about the same period as the Aryans were speculated to have entered the subcontinent gave further credence to the invasion theory.
However, scholars soon realized that the Indus Valley Civilization was far more advanced than they had earlier thought. A system of uniform weights and measures had been in use, and the major towns and cities reflected remarkably scientific planning in their construction, especially in the sophistication of their drainage systems and the regularity with which orthogonally intersecting streets cut out city blocks. The economy was dependent on trade, and boats designed for this purpose plowed through the waters between the Indus valley and the civilizations of Persia and Mesopotamia, as evidenced by the discovery of seals from each of the civilizations in the port towns of the others. None of these architectural and technological feats could have been achieved by a primitive tribe of savages, as the invasion theory assumed the Dravidians to be. The theory was then modified, so that the Aryans were shown to be a barbaric tribe of warriors who plundered the cities of and destroyed an advanced and nonviolent people.
The veracity of the invasion theory came into question when it became apparent that the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization, as sudden as it had been, may not have been caused by war, but rather by climatic changes and the disappearance of the Saraswati river system . Evidence suggested that the Indus valley was verdant, well irrigated, and teeming with wildlife around 2600 BCE, and floods frequently overwhelmed certain settlements. Tectonic events of some sort might have then diverted the Saravasti’s sources toward the Ganges Plain, causing the Indus valley to become the desert that it is today. This resulted in a gradual migration to more fecund parts of the subcontinent, such as the Ganges Plain. It was therefore the civilization that disappeared – not the people. Also, the Aryans would have had to discover mountain passes in the Hindu-Kush, which are notorious for being some of the highest in the Himalayas and snow free for only three months a year, and conquer one of the largest civilizations of the age – which would have been quite improbable. Finally, no concrete archeological evidence in support of the theory had been found; nor were there any references to an invasion in lore.
An Aryan migration was much more probable. The Aryans would have migrated into the subcontinent in small groups over a long period of time, and been peacefully assimilated into Dravidian culture. The large amount of time it would have taken this migration to occur, coupled with the absence of a martial purpose, makes finding routes into India less improbable than in the case of an invasion. Human skeletal remains excavated at the Indus valley show a mixed ethnic composition – first established by craniometry, and later by the considerably more accurate genetic anthropology. Thus, the Aryan Invasion Theory was transformed into the Aryan Migration Theory.
Professor Romila Thapar’s analysis of the Rigveda is consistent with the migration theory. Refuting claims to the contrary, she establishes that there are references to migrations in the Rigveda that describe a gradual movement in the direction of Punjab from Afghanistan, and then past Punjab and into the watershed. Indra is referred to in the Rigveda as having helped the Yadus and the Turvasas to cross swollen rivers. The Bhārata tribe, which is the tribe to which the main characters of the Mahabharata belonged and the source of the Republic of India’s official name, migrated from the river Ravi to the river Beas in Punjab, from where a smaller group continued eastward into the middle Ganges valley. According to Thapar, “The idea is not that there was a huge displacement of people and culture, but a kind of slow trickling in of people bringing in new technology, new ideas.”
Despite this, numerous scholars have contested the invasion and migration theories, for reasons ranging from not being convinced by the available evidence (or lack thereof) to having vested interests in doing so, especially ones with political undertones. Nationalist and Hindu groups in India resent the suggestion that their roots and those of Hinduism exist outside India, and regard this theory as a political weapon used by the British during the days of colonial rule to undermine the Indians’ exclusive right to the subcontinent, as well as to justify British rule in India by citing that foreign races had ruled the country throughout her history. Others, while accepting the basic premise of the migration theory – that all Indo-European languages descended from a single prehistoric language – believe that the Aryans originated in India and migrated to Europe instead of the other way around, and that the civilization mentioned in the Rigveda is in fact the Indus Valley Civilization.
This theory is known as the Out of India theory or the Indian Urheimat theory. The fatal flaw in this theory is that it does not obey the linguistic center of gravity principle, which states that the most likely origin of a language family is in the region of its greatest diversity. India is home to only a single branch of the Indo-European family tree (viz. the Indo-Aryan), while the region between the Caspian and the Black seas (the most probable candidate for an Aryan homeland), is home to nine. Another reason why India could not have been the original home of the Aryans is that the relative positions of the dialects of the Proto-Indo-European language had always been more or less the same throughout history, and dialectological studies on the influence of neighboring languages on each other suggest that Indo-European branches diverged radially from a central point – Central-Eastern Europe. The alternative is assuming that the Aryans migrated out of India through the bottleneck exit routes in the northwest without disturbing any of the isoglosses that existed in the subcontinent – which is highly unlikely.
Due to its political and religious ramifications on Indian society, the Aryan Migration Theory has been the subject of more than its fair share of controversy. Historically, Indian reactions to the theory have been varied, and its acceptance or rejection usually served the greater purpose of furthering political ends or providing a historical basis to the claims of political and religious organizations. Debate on the theory has never ended, as a result. Figures like Jyotiba Phule of Maharashtra supported the invasion theory in the nineteenth century because they wanted to believe that the lower castes (the Dalits) were the true “sons of the soil”, and that the Brahmins and the members of other oppressive upper castes were foreigners. A few Anglophilic Indians began to look upon the British as cousins.
Hindus by and large tend to oppose the theory, however, because it discredits Hinduism’s pretentions to being an eternal religion that had always existed in India. Many Hindus believe that the Vedas anticipated the automobile, the airplane, and other inventions and discoveries, and that the migration theory invidiously takes away from India the glory of being the land where the most brilliant scientific and philosophical ideas in history originated. Fundamentalist Hindu groups such as the Hindutva justify their antipathy toward the minority Muslims and Christians by labeling them foreigners, and refuse to accept the idea that they, too, might have originally belonged to foreign land. Such organizations also consider all historical documents written about pre-Independence India by European writers to be partisan views that deliberately show India in poor light, and regard Hindu scriptures as the ultimate arbiter in all fields of knowledge.
The fiercely contentious nature of the discussion notwithstanding, the Aryan Migration Theory is generally regarded as the most plausible explanation for the evolution of Indo-European languages that has been presented to date. However, it is important to note that, in spite of the strong case the migration theory has in its favor, it is far from being established as fact. That the script used in the Indus Valley Civilization has not been deciphered yet means that it remains unclear whether the language was Dravidian, or related to ancient Persian, or part of a language family that became extinct long ago and is unknown today. The possibility that such distinct language families might have existed is difficult to verify, and could potentially render the present linguistic evidence inconclusive, or even misleading. Also, only five percent of the two thousand or so sites of the Indus Valley Civilization have been excavated, making it reasonable to suppose that the fruits of future excavations may necessitate another modification to the migration theory, or even the formulation of an entirely new theory.
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