Aryans
- This article is about the term "Aryan". For "Arian", a follower of the ancient Christian sect, See Arianism.
Aryan is an English word derived from the Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan term arya, meaning noble.
One of the meanings of this term in modern English refers to a hypothetical single group of people who spoke the parent language of the Indo-European languages (the people known as Proto-Indo-Europeans). It has at times been believed that these people formed an ethnic group; in particular, a school of German and Soviet scholarship at one time believed that this ethnic group originated in the Russian steppes. German philologists believed that the Germanic group originated from the steppes north of Historic Khwarizm, and this Germanic group followed the Aryan group into Iran before splitting from Arya. It then migrated north to the Black Sea, where they again moved north to the Baltic lake. Thus, German philologists concluded, the German people have a direct ancestry with the people of the Arya region in Iran.
Another meaning refers to the Aryan race, a presumedly more or less directly descendant ethnic group of this original Aryan group. This meaning was, and still is common in theories of European racial superiority, some of which have spread to North American and to India. In Nazi ideology, the Germanic race is believed to be the purest representative of the Aryan race with its diametrical opposite being the Semitic race, represented by the Jews. Nazism portrays the Aryan race as the only race capable of creating culture and civilizations, while other races are merely able of some preservation, or destruction of, culture.
It has been argued that the term *arya was originally used to denote kinfolk or clansmen bound by socio-linguistic, not ethnic, ties. It has been used in later times as a general term of respect, signifying nobility (as in ari-stocracy), in both Hinduism (the descendant of Vedic religion) and Buddhism. It has also been argued that the supposition that the term referred to an ethnic group arose as the result of speculative translation. Indeed, it is now generally accepted that the Aryans were already a heterogeneous group at the time of their cohesion. Max Mueller, the primary German scholar on Indology, and a chief contributor to study of Vedic Sanskrit, later in his career clarified that by Aryan he had meant not a racial group but a linguistically-bound people. A major contemporary historian, the holder of the presitigious Kluge Chair of history in Washington, D.C., has also asserted that based on current knowledge of ancient India and Iran, it is most probable that the Aryans were a mixed group of people following a similar religion, in all likelihood originating in the Middle East around what is now Iran.
Since the mid 19th century it has been claimed that Aryans migrated into India, around 1800 BC-1500 BC, possibly waging war against the declining Harappan civilization. The Rig-Veda certainly describes warfare and struggle for control of territory, but whether this resulted from a migration or not is unclear. However the archaeological and historical record can be interpreted to indicate a gradual migration around the end of the 2nd millennium BC of Indo-Aryan speakers to the east from the vicinity of Kurdistan. Nevertheless, the evidence is weak. It is also possible to argue that the Indo-Aryan speaking cultures had much older roots in the area. At any rate, modern India is divided into two main language families, one Indo-European, its speakers possibly linguistic descendants of invading Aryans, and the other Dravidian, its speakers possibly linguistic descendants of the Harappans.
Iran
Ancient Iranians used the term Aryan to describe their lineage and their language. Darius the Great, King of Persia (521 - 486 BC), in an inscription in Naqsh-e-Rostam (near Shiraz in present-day Iran), proclaims: "I am Darius the great King... A Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage...". The name Iran is a modern cognate of Aryan meaning the Land of Aryans.
The term has become a term of art in the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Jain, and Hindu religions.
The Aryan tribes in the Indian subcontinent called their land Aaryaa varta or Aryan expanse / Aryan land. When the ancient Persians lived in the Inner Asian Steppes and moved south into today's Iran, they named the place Airyanem Vaejah, or The Iranian Expanse, and today the word survives as Iran. Many present day Iranian boy and girl names reflect this ancient relation: names like Aryana, Iran-dokht (Aryan Daughter), Arayn, Aryan-Pur, Aryaramne, ...
Etymology and Semantics
*aryo- (Indo-Iranian *arya-) is an adjective to the PIE root *ar-, originally meaning 'to assemble', possibly with positive overtones of 'accomplished, skillful'. *arya- as the name of a people, the 'Aryans', is only attested in India and Persia, but the root is well known from other languages in the Indo-European world, e.g. the aristoi, the "most noble," of Greece, and possibly Éire, a native name of Ireland (although this is not commonly accepted). The original meaning of the root, pertaining to skillful assembly (art), union, confederacy, may be perceived in Latin ordo 'order' or in Greek harma 'chariot'.
In its original sense, "aryan" may or may not have had any racial meaning, certainly not in the sense that we define race today. Rather the term more likely grew from a tribalist self-identity, until more recent racialist distortions, attempting to justify eugenics policies, such as colonialism and genocide. (See also Aryan race and Dravidian race).
See also
