The
study of the “Cradle of Civilization” is interwoven with references to the
Aryan Invasion of India. For years, Western historians such as Max Mueller have
propagated the theory of Aryan Invasion of India. It has also made its way to
the history curriculum of schools that teach students about ancient India. The
Aryan Invasion has been reexamined recently by erudite historians who question
its actuality. This paper will explore the two sides of the argument and
provide copious facts based on a thorough review of literature. The Aryan theory
advocates cite references in the Vedas[1],
artifacts found in excavations and writings of scholars like Max Mueller to
prove their theory. However, many researchers dispute the veracity of such an
invasion, or a profound impact made by them in the history of India. These
scholars also use numerous evidences in the Vedas, study of vernacular
linguistics, the study of DNA samples of indigenous inhabitants, and believe that
Max Mueller and other theory advocates misinterpreted them. They further
believe that the Aryan Invasion Theory was propagated by Europeans and white supremacists,
who wanted to invade, colonize and control India. Their strategy was to divide
and conquer by making the Indians believe that the indigenous dark-skinned
Dravidians[2]
were inferior to their light-skinned Aryan counterparts. After carefully examining
and analyzing many scholastic and research publications, it is apparent that
the Aryan Invasion of India did not happen.
The
Aryan Invasion theory can be defined as follows; a light skinned, nomadic race
from Central Asia, perhaps near present-day Iran, invaded, conquered and
destroyed the pre-existing towns and cities near the Indus River Valley around
1500 BCE (Agarwal) .
With them they brought Sanskrit, a language which was known to be “more perfect than the Greek and more copious than the Latin” (Mueller) .
These barbaric nomads came to India in horse-drawn chariots and fought with
superior battle tactics (Frawley) .
Many evidences in excavations, however, disprove this ideology.
Mueller was an Oxford scholar and a very significant
invasionist and Sanskritist. He analyzed the Vedas and also introduced the word
‘Arya’ to the European world as a denotation of race and a linguistic group. In
his book he wrote, “I have
declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones,
nor hair, nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language…” (Mueller) . This word’s meaning
has been exploited over the years as a racial phenomenon of whites. The most
famous example is Adolf Hitler wanting to have a master race of ‘Aryans’. Max
Mueller stated that Sanskrit was one of many Aryan languages. According to Mueller,
the Sanskrit word ‘Arya’ meant cultivator, and was derived from “-ar” which meant
“plough” or “cultivate”. This, however, was a misinterpretation of the Sanskrit
word, since ‘Arya’ referred to someone who was noble and righteous (Giri) . But, many European
scholars still viewed Max Mueller as a prodigious scientist who shed new light
about the Aryans and their invasion into India (Poliakov) .
To Hindus, the Vedas are
the epitome of knowledge. They refer to ancient cultures, timeless revelations
and divine incarnations of God. The Vedas (Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva) have a
very strategic goal and structure. Unlike most religious texts, the Vedas were not
written by few individuals. Its knowledge was acquired by the great Vedic
Rishis[3]
through immense tapas[4]
and devotion to God. They received the ‘divine truth’, which later was written
and codified as the Vedas. The Vedas have been on this earth since the
beginning of time, but was only written down by these Rishis around 3000 BCE (Giri) . This knowledge was also presented in a systematic way so it would
not be lost in the modern age. The teachings of the Vedas are meant to help man
understand that “he is not an independent entity; rather he is a part of
a universal body, depending on many higher forces” (Dasa) .
Many
invasionists believe that the Rig Veda described
the Gods as ‘destroyer of cities’. They also used this description to believe
that nomads invaded, conquered and brought the Vedas to India. Because of this,
European scholars first believed that the Vedas were just primitive poems and
uncivilized plunders (Frawley) .
Max Mueller initially stated that “Vedas were worse than savage. India
must be conquered again by education. Its religion is doomed” (Vishnu) . European scholars
also believed that the Vedas were compiled after 1500 BCE and the natives
started worshiping the Vedic gods around 1700 BCE (Agarwal) .
Conversely,
this was extremely different from what the non-invasionists believe. There are
no references to the Aryan Invasion in the Vedas. Also in the Vedas and other
religious scriptures, the word ‘Arya’ is nowhere denoted as a race or language.
Finally, non-invasionists believe that Vedas were compiled no later than 3500 BCE
and there are astronomical references that were analyzed from the Rig Veda that
helped prove this (Rajaram) .
It can be argued that the Europeans scholars misinterpreted the Vedas to make
them seem more primitive. They also wanted to
control and convert many Hindus to Christianity. In this Crusade, they stated
that the Vedas (the most important scriptures of Hinduism) were mythological
and were brought to India by foreigners. By doing this, Europeans made many Hindus
ashamed of their culture (Vishnu) .
The
Saraswati River and the discovery of the lost city of Dwaraka are very
influential evidences that disprove the Aryan Invasion theory. The Saraswati
River is mentioned numerous times in the Vedas (Chakladar) .
Though the river is now dry, archaeologists have charted the period of the
river’s flow and also its path. The river had changed its course many times. Based
on scientific calculations, the path of the Saraswati River, which was similar
to what was specified in the Vedas, was flowing long before 3000 BCE. Logically,
if the river was flowing at that time, the Vedas must have been written before
this date (Agarwal) . This was a major
flaw in the invasionist’s theory. Scientific and historical evidence of the
Saraswati River, and its multiple references in the Vedas, prove that the Vedas
existed as early as 3500 BCE, long before the supposed Aryan Invasion
propagated by Max Mueller (Frawley) .
On
the contrary, the Aryan Invasion theory advocates stated that the Indus and
Ganga rivers were far more important than the Saraswati River. Many European
scholars used Biblical chronology to date time. They stated that the creation
of civilization was around 4000 BCE with Noah’s flood, and thus stated that the
Aryans could not have invaded India before 1500 BCE (Giri) . For European
scholars, to accept that there was a very sophisticated and advanced
civilization outside Europe, long before the time of the Patriarchs, Abraham
and Moses, was a concept that was very hard to grasp (Giri) .
Other
evidences the theory advocates cite is that there were many treaties between kings
with Aryan names in Central Asia and the Middle East. There are also various references
to Vedic gods in West Asian texts. Theory advocates state that these are traces
of the migratory paths that the Aryans took to conquer India. However,
non-invasionists counter this statement by pointing out that various Hindu Puranas[5]
and Ithihasas[6]
dated prior to the Aryan invasion have references to lands such as Bali
(Indonesia) and Kishkinta (Lanka). India and the neighboring lands such as
Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka belonged to a highly organized Hindu
civilization.
The artifacts found in excavations
near the ancient cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa pose very debatable arguments
and results. According to the invasionists, the Aryans were primitive nomads
who came from Central Asia to India on horse-drawn chariots and overthrew the
pre-existing civilization with their superior battle tactics and iron weaponry.
However, archaeological excavations failed to find even a single chariot in
these sites. Furthermore, iron weaponry was very rarely found in the excavation
sites. Archaeologists also found no horse skeletons in these excavation sites,
which makes us wonder if horse-drawn chariots were used in this part of the
world at that time. Moreover, the non-invasionists argue that if indeed a group
of nomads came from Central Asia to India, they could not have used chariots
because the route was very mountainous and chariots could have only been used
in flat terrain (Giri) .
The
claim that the Aryans killed and destroyed numerous civilians while invading
India is another major topic of dispute. If this were true, then a plethora of
skeletons and weaponry should be found while excavating the ancient cities of
Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa near the Indus River Valley. However, there were very
few skeletal parts and weaponry found in these sites. To the non-invasionists,
this disproved a war or mass killing of the pre-existing civilization of the
Indus Valley (Frawley) .
Archaeologists
have excavated many Harappan seals that revealed some interesting facts about
the ancient civilization. There are many seals with illustrations that look
similar to the ‘Vedic gods’. Some examples of these seals had drawings that represented
the Hindu Trimurti[7]
and many different animals. These seals, therefore, were very “Vedic”. Since
Harappa was a city that existed before the ‘Aryan Invasion’, these seals were
used as another notion to debunk the theory that the Aryans brought these Vedic
ideas and beliefs to India (Sastri) .
The
genetic makeup of modern day Indians has been examined to explore the
possibility of an Aryan ancestor. Originally, all modern humans descended from
Africa. Slowly, these primitive humans migrated out of Africa to the rest of
the world. Genetic markers are used to find sequences in DNA that can be traced
to find specific traits and chromosomes. The genetic marker M130 showed that
the first inhabitants of India came from the coast of Africa almost 60,000
years ago. The M20 marker is likely to be a Middle Eastern marker that migrated
into India about 30,000 years ago. The most controversial genetic marker is M17
which proved that Europeans did indeed once migrate into India. This genetic
marker was first found about 15,000 years ago near Southern Russia. However,
this does not prove that these people were actually the infamous ‘Aryans’ (Hari) .
Having
reviewed the above mentioned arguments that are for and against the Aryan
invasion theory, it can be deduced that the Aryan invasion and supremacy was a
myth propagated by Westerners to control local Indians. A fascinating
observation many non-invasionists provide is that, if the Aryan invasion did
actually happen, why didn’t the ‘Aryans’ inhabit these cities after they destroyed
the pre-existing civilians (Vishnu) ?
Historians have concluded that after the civilians of the ancient cities
disappeared, nobody inhabited these areas. Therefore, what was the
point of the Aryans conquering the lands, if they do not live in them? Another
point the non-invasionists make is that if Aryans were invading nomads who
brought the Vedas to India, why doesn’t the Vedas mention an ‘Aryan homeland’?
All the sacred and divine places stated in the Vedas are in India (Vishnu) . This is truly
fascinating because these questions have helped non-invasionists analyze the
data and provide plentiful proof that the Aryan invasion did not exist.
Forcing
the Indians to believe that the Aryans invaded India and brought the Vedas with
them created a deep sense of inferiority and shame among Indians. Indians were
taught to believe that their vast heritage and rich culture came from foreign
soil. India is known for its culturally rich heritage and to say that it was
brought to India by foreigners is completely wrong. We now know, through facts
substantiated by archeologists that the Aryan invasion did not happen and the
culture and heritage of India, actually originated in India itself.
Reading
many different sources, both from an invasionist and non-invasionist’s point of
view, one can find the extreme differences in how each group analyzes data. The
European invasionists are notorious for misinterpreting the Vedas and other
literary works to suit the Aryan Invasion theory (Vishnu) . One such example of
the invasionists misinterpreting the Vedas is with the simple word “samudra”. According
to the European scholars, samudra meant “a large body of water”. However, it
has been clearly mentioned several times in the Rig Veda that samudra means
“ocean” (Frawley) .
Saying that samudra was a large body of water helped invasionists determine and
prove that the Indus and Saraswati rivers were examples of samudras.
A
false theory was made a fact by European scholars and white supremacists who
wanted to control and conquer India. These individuals fabricated a way to make
the dark-skinned Dravidians feel inferior to the light-skinned Aryans. They
stated that all of India’s culture and heritage was from foreign soil. Thus by
making Indians feel ashamed of their culture, Europeans were able to conquer
India. In spite of the abundance of evidence that disproves the Aryan invasion
theory, the school curriculums, including the North Carolina world history
curriculum, still teaches that the Aryans invaded India. This research paper is
a modest, but sincere effort to correct the misinterpreted history of the great
Indian civilization.
In
conclusion, the Aryan invasion is a cleverly manipulated theory created by
Europeans scholars and white supremacists. Because of this theory, Indians are
denied credit for their culturally rich heritage and recognition for being the
oldest civilization in the world. Influential European scholars like Max
Mueller misinterpreted references within the Vedas to prove his theory. Max
Mueller also brought the word ‘Arya’ as a denotation for a racial and
linguistic group. However, references to
the Vedas, the study of vernacular linguistics, the study of DNA samples of indigenous
Indians and the abundance of artifacts found in excavations help us with
bountiful evidence that the Aryan invasion did not happen.
Works Cited
Agarwal, Dinesh. Demise of the Aryan Invasion
Theory. n.d. 20 October 2012.
.
Chakladar, Haran Chandra. Aryan Occupation of
Eastern India. Calcatta: Quality Printers & Binders, 1962.
Dasa, Atma-tattva. What are the Vedas. 2002. 5
November 2012. .
Frawley, David. "The Myth of the Aryan Invasion
of India." The India Times 1994.
Giri, Swami B.V. The myth of the aryan invasion.
n.d. 18 10 2012. .
Hands, Davers. The Frazer Lectures. Freeport,
New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1922-1932.
Hari. History of India: The First Indians. 22
July 2010. 10 November 2012.
.
Mueller, Max. Biographies of Worlds and the Home
of the Aryas. New York: Longmans, Green, 1888.
Poliakov, Leon. The Aryan Myth. New York:
Basic Book Inc., 1974.
Rajaram, N. S. "Aryan Invasion Theory is a Hoax:
History Revisited." Times of India 22 August 1993.
Sastri, K. N. The New Light on the Indus
Civilizations. Delhi: Atma Ram & Sons, 1957.
Talageri, Shrikant and S.R. Rao. Aryan Invasion
Theory (A Reappraisal). Aditya Prakashan, 1993.
Thapar, Romila. 11 October 1999. 22 October 2012.
.
Vishnu, B.B.
"aryan-invasion-theory-proven-false_news." n.d. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xeo2qx_aryan-invasion-theory-proven-false_news.
2012.
[1]
Vedas-Oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism
[2]
Dravidians- a term used to refer to the diverse groups of people who natively
speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family, mostly found
in Southern India
[3]
Rishi- a sage or seer
[5]
Puranas- Narrative stories of history
[6]
Ithihasa- Epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata
[7]
Hindu Trimurti- Lord Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva
