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The Myth of The Aryan Invasion By Svami B.V. Giri
The aryan invasion theory has been one of the most controversial historical topics for well over a century. However, it should be pointed out that it remains just that – a theory. To date no hard evidence has proven the aryan invasion theory to be fact. In this essay we will explain the roots of this hypothesis and how, due to recent emergence of new evidence over the last couple of decades, the validity of the aryan invasion theory has been seriously challenged. It is indeed ironic that the
origin of this theory does not lie in Indian records, but in 19th
Century politics and German nationalism. No where in the Vedas,
Puranas or Itihasas is there any
mention of a Migration or Invasion of any kind. In 1841 M.S.
Elphinstone, the first governor of the Bombay Presidency, wrote in his
book History of India:
The Birth of a Misconception
Interest in the field of Indology during the 19th Century was of mixed motivations. Many scholars such as August Wilhelm von Schlegal, Hern Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Arthur Schopenhauer lauded praise upon the Vedic literatures and their profound wisdom, others were less than impressed. To accept that there was an advanced civilization outside the boundaries of Europe, at a time before the Patriarchs Abraham and Moses had made their covenant with the Almighty was impossible to conceive of for most European scholars, who harbored a strong Christian tendency. Most scholars of this period were neither archeologists nor historians in the strict sense of the word. Rather, they were missionaries paid by their governments to establish western cultural and racial superiority over the subjugated Indian citizens, through their study of the indigenous religious texts. Consequently, for racial, political and religious reasons, early European indologists created a myth that still survives to this day. 
It
was established by linguists that Sanskrit, Iranian and European languages
all belonged to the same family, categorizing them as
‘Indo-European’ languages. It was assumed that all
these people originated from one homeland where they spoke a common
language (which they called ‘Proto-Indo-European’
or PIE) which later developed into Sanskrit, Latin, Greek etc. They
then needed to ascertain where this homeland was. By pure speculation,
it was proposed that this homeland was either southeast Europe or
Central Asia.
Harappa
  Harappa and Mohenjo-daroThe discovery of ruins in the Indus Valley (Harappa and Mohenjo-daro) was considered by indologists like Wheeler as proof of their conjectures – that a nomadic tribe from foreign lands had plundered India. It was pronounced that the ruins dated back to a time before the Aryan Invasion, although this was actually never verified. By assigning a period of 200 years to each of the several layers of the pre-Buddhist Vedic literature, indologists arrived at a time frame of somewhere between 1500 and 1000BC for the Invasion of the Aryans. Using Biblical chronology as their sheet anchor, nineteenth century indologists placed the creation of the world at 4000BC 1 and Noah’s flood at 2500BC. They thus postulated that the Aryan Invasion could not have taken place any time before 1500BC. Archeologists excavating the
sites at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro found human skeletal remains; this
seemed to them to be undeniable evidence that a large-scale massacre
had taken place in these cities by the invading Aryan hordes. Prof. G.
F. Dales (Former head of department of South-Asian Archaeology and
Anthropology, Berkeley University, USA) in his ‘The
Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-daro’, states the
following about this evidence:
Mohenjo-daro
Evidence from the Vedas
It was therefore concluded that light-skinned nomads from Central Asia who wiped out the indigenous culture and enslaved or butchered the people, imposing their alien culture upon them had invaded the Indian subcontinent. They then wrote down their exploits in the form of the Rg Veda. This hypothesis was apparently based upon references in the Vedas that point to a conflict between the light-skinned Aryans and the dark-skinned Dasyus. 2 This theory was strengthened by the archeological discoveries in the Indus Valley of the charred skeletal remains that we have mentioned above. Thus the Vedas became nothing more than a series of poetic tales about the skirmishes between two barbaric tribes. However, there are other
references in the Rg Veda
3 that point to India being a
land of mixed races. The Rg Veda also states that
"We pray to Indra to give glory by which the Dasyus will become Aryans."
4 Such a statement confirms
that to be an Aryan was not a matter of birth.
An inattentive skimming
through the Vedas has resulted in a gross
misinterpretation of social and racial struggles amongst the ancient
Indians. North Aryans were pitted against the Southern Dravidians,
high-castes against low-castes, civilized orthodox Indians against
barbaric heterodox tribals. The hypothesis that of racial hatred
between the Aryans and the dark-skinned Dasyus has no sastric
foundation, yet some ‘scholars’ have misinterpreted
texts to try to prove that there was racial hatred amongst the Aryans
and Dravidians (such as the Rg Veda story
of Indra slaying the demon Vrta
5 ).
Based on literary analysis,
many scholars including B.G. Tilak, Dayananda Saraswati and Aurobindo
dismissed any idea of an Aryan Invasion. For example, if the Aryans
were foreign invaders, why is it that they don’t name places
outside of India as their religious sites? Why do the Vedas
only glorify holy places within India?
Max
Mueller
 What
is an
‘Aryan’?The Sanskrit word ‘Aryan’ refers to one who is righteous and noble. It is also used in the context of addressing a gentleman (Arya-putra, Aryakanya etc). 6 Nowhere in the Vedic literature is the word used to denote race or language. This was a concoction by Max Mueller who, in 1853, introduced the word ‘Arya’ into the English language as referring a particular race and language. He did this in order to give credibility to his Aryan race theory (see Part 2). However in 1888, when challenged by other eminent scholars and historians, Mueller could see that his reputation was in jeopardy and made the following statement, thus refuting his own theory -
But the dye had already been
cast! Political and Nationalist groups in Germany and France exploited
this racial phenomenon to propagate the supremacy of an assumed Aryan
race of white people. Later, Adolf Hitler used this ideology to the
extreme for his political hegemony and his barbaric crusade to
terrorize Jews, Slavs and other racial minorities, culminating in the
holocaust of millions of innocent people.
 According to
Mueller’s etymological explanation of ‘Aryan’,
the word is derived from ‘ar’
(to plough, to cultivate). Therefore Arya means
‘a cultivator, or farmer’. This is opposed to the
idea that the Aryans were wandering nomads. V.S. Apte's Sanskrit-English
Dictionary relates the word Arya to the
root ‘r-’ to which the prefix
‘a’ has been added in order to
give a negating meaning. Therefore the meaning of Arya
is given as ‘excellent, best’, followed by
‘respectable’ and as a noun, ‘master,
lord, worthy, honorable, excellent,’ ‘upholder of Arya
values, and further: teacher, employer, master, father-in-law,
friend.’
Kenneth Kennedy of Cornell
University has recently proven that there was no significant influx of
people into India during 4500 to 800BC. Furthermore it is impossible
for sites stretching over one thousand miles to have all become
simultaneously abandoned due to the Invasion of Nomadic Tribes.
There is no solid evidence that the Aryans belonged to a nomadic tribe. In fact, to suggest that a nomadic horde of barbarians wrote books of such profound wisdom as the Vedas and Upanisads is nothing more than an absurdity and defies imagination. Although in the Rg Veda Indra is described as the ‘Destroyer of Cities,’ the same text mentions that the Aryan people themselves were urban dwellers with hundreds of cities of their own. They are mentioned as a complex metropolitan society with numerous professions and as a seafaring race. This begs the question, if the Aryans had indeed invaded the city of Harrapa, why did they not inhabit it after? Archeological evidence shows that the city was left deserted after the ‘Invasion’. Colin Renfrew, Prof. of Archeology at Cambridge, writes in his book Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins’ - ‘It is certainly true that the gods invoked do aid the Aryas by over-throwing forts, but this does not in itself establish that the Aryas had no forts themselves. Nor does the fleetness in battle, provided by horses (who were clearly used primarily for pulling chariots), in itself suggest that the writers of these hymns were nomads. Indeed the chariot is not a vehicle especially associated with nomads’
Another
important point in this regard is that nomadic tribes do not
use chariots. They are used in areas of flat land such as the Gangetic
plains of Northern India. An Invasion of India from Central Asia would
require crossing mountains and deserts – a chariot would be
useless for such an exercise. Much later, further excavations in the
Indus Valley (and pre-Indus civilizations) revealed horses and evidence
of the wheel on the form of a seal showing a spoked wheel (as used on
chariots).
An
Iron Culture
Similarly, it was claimed that another reason why the Invading Aryans gained the upper hand was because their weapons were made of iron. This was based upon the word ‘ayas’ found in the Vedas, which was translated as iron. Another reason was that iron was not found in the Indus Valley region.  However, in other
Indo-European languages, ayas refers to bronze,
copper or ore. It is dubious to say that ayas only
referred to iron, especially when the Rg Veda does
not mention other metals apart from gold, which is mentioned more
frequently than ayas. Furthermore, the Yajur
and Atharva Vedas
refer to different colors of ayas. This seems to
show that he word was a generic term for all types of metal. It is also
mentioned in the Vedas that the dasyus
(enemies of the Aryans) also used ayas to build
their cities. Thus there is no hard evidence to prove that the
‘Aryans invaders’ were an iron-based culture and
their enemies were not. Yajna-vedhis
Throughout the Vedas, there is mention of fire-sacrifices (yajnas) and the elaborate construction of vedhis (fire altars). Fire-sacrifices were probably the most important aspect of worshiping the Supreme for the Aryan people. However, the remains of yajna-vedhis (fire altars) were uncovered in Harrapa by B.B. Lal of the Archeological Survey of India, in his excavations at the third millenium site of Kalibangan. The
geometry of these yajna-vedhis is explained in the
Vedic texts such as the Satpatha-brahmana. The
University of California at Berkley has compared this geometry to the
early geometry of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia and established that
the geometry found in the Vedic scriptures should be dated before
1700BC. Such evidence proves that the Harrapans were part of the Vedic
fold.
Objections in the Realm of
Linguistics and Literature
 There are
various objections to the conclusions reached by the indologists
concerning linguistics. Firstly they have never given a plausible
excuse to explain how a Nomadic Invasion could have over- whelmed the
original languages in one of the most densely populated regions of the
ancient world. Secondly, there are more ling- uistic changes in
Vedic Sanskrit than there are in classical Sanskrit since the time of
Panini (aprox.500 BC). So although they have assigned an arbitrary
figure of 200 year periods to each of the four Vedas,
each of these periods could have existed for any number of centuries
and the 200 year figure is totally subjective and probably too short a
figure.Another
important point is that none of the Vedic literatures refer to
any Invasion from outside or an original homeland from which the Aryans
came from. They only focus upon the region of the Seven Rivers (sapta-sindhu).
The Puranas refer to migrations of people out
of India, which explains the discoveries of treaties
between kings with Aryan names in the Middle East, and references to
Vedic gods in West Asian texts in the second millenium BC. However, the
indologists try to explain these as traces of the migratory path of the
Aryans into India.
North-South Divide
Indologists have concluded that the original inhabitants of the Indus Valley civilization were of Dravidian descent. This poses another interesting question. If the Aryans had invaded and forced the Dravidians down to the South, why is there no Aryan/Dravidian divide in the respective religious literatures and historical traditions? Prior to the British, the North and South lived in peace and there was a continuous cultural exchange between the two. Sanskrit was the common language between the two regions for centuries. Great acaryas such as Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha, and Nimbarka were all from South, yet they are all respected in North India. Prior to them, there were great sages from the South such as Bodhayana and Apastamba. Agastya Rsi is placed in high regard in South India as it is said that he brought the Tamil language from Mount Kailasa to the South. 7 Yet he is from the North! Are we to understand that the South was uninhabited before the Aryan Invasion? If not, who were the original inhabitants of South India, who accepted these newcomers from the North without any struggle or hostility? Pasupati
Siva
 SaivismThe advocates of the Invasion theory argue that the inhabitants of Indus valley were Saivites (Siva worshippers) and since Saivism is more prevalent among the South Indians, the inhabitants of the Indus valley region must have been Dravidians. Siva worship, however, is not alien to Vedic culture, and is certainly not confined to South India. The words Siva and Sambhu are not Dravidian in origin as some indologists would have us believe (derived from the Tamil words ‘civa’ - to redden, to become angry, and ‘cembu’ - copper, the red metal). Both words have Sanskrit roots – ‘si’ meaning auspicious, gracious, benevolent, helpful, kind, and ‘sam’ meaning being or existing for happiness or welfare, granting or causing happiness, benevolent, helpful, kind. These words are used in this sense only, right from their very first occurrence. 8 Moreover, some of the most important holy places for Saivites are located in North India: the traditional holy residence of Lord Siva is Mount Kailasa situated in the far north. Varanasi is the most revered and auspicious seat of Saivism. There are verses in the Rg Veda mentioning Siva and Rudra and consider him to be an important deity. Indra himself is called Siva several times in Rg Veda (2:20:3, 6:45:17, 8:93:3).  So Siva is not a Dravidian
divinity only, and by no means is he a non-Vedic divinity. Indologists
have also presented terra-cotta lumps found in the fire-alters in
Harappa and taken them to be Siva-lingas, implying
that Saivism was prevalent among the Indus valley people. But these
terra-cotta lumps have been proved to be the measures for weighing
commodities by shopkeepers and merchants. Their weights have been found
in perfect integral ratios, in the manner like 1 gm, 2 gms, 5 gms, 10
gms etc. They were not used as the Siva-lingas for
worship, but as the weight measurements. The Discovery of the
Sarasvati River
Whereas the famous River Ganga is mentioned only once in the Rg Veda, the River Sarasvati is mentioned at least sixty times. Sarasvati is now a dry river, but it once flowed all the way from the Himalayas to the ocean across the desert of Rajasthan. Research by Dr. Wakankar has verified that the River Sarasvati changed course at least four times before going completely dry around 1900BC. 9 The latest satellite data combined with field archaeological studies have shown that the Rg Vedic Sarasvati had stopped being a perennial river long before 3000 BC.  As Paul-Henri Francfort of
CNRS, Paris recently observed –"...We
now know, thanks to the field work of the Indo-French expedition that
when the proto-historic people settled in this area, no large river had
flowed there for a long time."
The
proto-historic people he refers to are the early Harappans of 3000 BC.
But satellite photos show that a great prehistoric river that was over
7 kilometers wide did indeed flow through the area at one time. This
was the Sarasvati described in the Rg Veda.
Numerous archaeological sites have also been located along the course
of this great prehistoric river thereby confirming Vedic accounts. The
great Sarasvati that flowed "from the mountain to the sea" is now seen
to belong to a date long anterior to 3000 BC. This means that the Rg
Veda describes the geography of North India long before 3000
BC. All this shows that the Rg Veda must have been
in existence no later than 3500 BC.
10
With
so many eulogies composed to the River Sarasvati, we can gather
that it must have been well known to the Aryans, who therefore could
not have been foreign invaders. This also indicates that the Vedas
are much older than Mahabharata, which mentions the
Sarasvati as a dying river.
 Discoveries of New SitesSince the initial discoveries of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa on the Ravi and Sindhu rivers in 1922, over 2500 other settlements have been found stretching from Baluchistan to the Ganga and beyond and down to the Tapti Valley. This covers almost a million and a half square kilometers. More than 75% of these sites are concentrated not along the Sindhu, as was believed 70 years ago, but on the banks of the dried up river Sarasvati. The drying up of this great river was a catastrophe, which led to a massive exodus of people in around 2000-1900BC. Some of these people moved southeast, some northwest, and some to Middle-eastern countries such as Iran and Mesopotamia. Dynasties and rulers with Indian names appear and disappear all over west Asia confirming the migration of people from East to West. With so much evidence
against the Aryan Invasion theory, one wonders as to why this ugly
vestige of British imperialism is still taught in Indian schools today!
Such serious misconceptions can only be reconciled by accepting that
the Aryans were the original inhabitants of the Indus Valley region,
and not a horde of marauding foreign nomads. Such an Invasion never
occurred.
_____________ 1
In 1654 A.D. Archbishop Usher of Ireland firmly announced that his
study of Scripture had proved that creation took place at 9.00am on the
23rd October 4004 B.C. So from the end of the seventeenth century, this
chronology was accepted by the Europeans and they came to believe that
Adam was created 4004 years before Christ.
2
Rg Veda (2-20-10) refers to "Indra, the killer of Vritra, who destroys
the Krishna Yoni Dasyus". This is held as evidence that the "invading
Aryans" exterminated the "dark aboriginals"
3
RV.10.1.11, 8.85.3, 2.3.9
4
RV.6.22.10
5
RV. 1.32.10-11
6
In Valmiki's Ramayana, Lord Ramacandra is described as an Arya as
follows - aryah sarva-samas-caivah sadaiva priya-darsana (Arya:
one who cares for the equality of all and is dear to everyone)
7
Tradition has it that Lord Siva requested the sage Agastya to write the
Tamil grammar, which was spoken prior to Sage Agastya's work. Agastya
chose his disciple Tholgapya's grammar for Tamil which was considered
much more simple than the grammar that Agastya had developed. This laid
the foundation for later classical Tamil literature, and also spawned
other Dravadian languages. Agastya Muni and Tholgapya are considered to
be the Tamil counterpart of Panini of Sanskrit.
8
Monier-Williams Sanskrit to English Dictionary
9
Gods, Sages and Kings by David Frawley
10 Aryan Invasion of india: The
Myth and the Truth
by N.S. Rajaram.
|
 Introduction The Birth of a Misconception Harappa and Mohenjo-daro Evidence from the Vedas What is an ‘Aryan’? No Nomads Horses and Chariots An Iron Culture Yajna-vedhis Objections in the Realm of Linguistics and Literature North-South Divide Saivism The Discovery of the Sarasvati River Discoveries of New Sites |
'It is opposed to their (Hindus) foreign origin,
that neither in the Code (of Manu) nor, I believe, in the Vedas, nor in
any book that is certainly older than the code, is there any allusion
to a prior residence or to a knowledge of more than the name of any
country out of India. Even mythology goes no further than the Himalayan
chain, in which is fixed the habitation of the gods... .To say that it
spread from a central point is an unwarranted assumption, and even to
analogy; for, emigration and civilization have not spread in a circle,
but from east to west. Where, also, could the central point be, from
which a language could spread over India, Greece, and Italy and yet
leave Chaldea, Syria and Arabia untouched? There is no reason whatever
for thinking that the Hindus ever inhabited any country but their
present one, and as little for denying that they may have done so
before the earliest trace of their records or tradition.’
