Indo-Aryan migrations

"We know that the Hindus in India are a people mixed from the lofty Aryan immigrants and the dark-black aboriginal population, and that this people is bearing the consequences today; for it is also the slave people of a race that almost seems like a second Jewry."

"No tradition of an early home beyond the frontier survives in India."

"Up until the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization in 1922, images of virile, blond, northern tribes swooping across the mountain passes on chariots and overpowering the primitive and ill-equipped natives they found on their way were presented as the standard version of the early history of the subcontinent."

"A principal motive of many Indian scholars in this debate is the desire to reexamine the infrastructure of ancient history that is the legacy of the colonial period and test how secure it actually is by adopting the very tools and disciplines that had been used to construct it in the first place. The Aryan invasion theory is a major foundation stone of ancient Indian history, the "big bang," and has therefore attracted the initial attention of many Indian scholars."

"Over the course of the past half century, the model of an Indo-Aryan population invasion have been thoroughly problematized, and largely discredited within archaeology .. What the accumulation of archaeological evidence over the course of the twentieth century has inevitably demonstrated is that the major transitions in South Asian pre- and proto-history are gradual and often show little evidence for any outside origin… Archaeologists in particular have thus very much moved away from migrationist models, including the idea of Indo-Aryan invasions, as an explanation for cultural change in South Asia. And those scholars, both archaeological and otherwise, who continue to embrace an Indo-Aryan migration paradigm now generally present a very different model that sees the language change as resulting more from social processes than any substantial population movements."

"The bulk of the peoples now inhabiting India may have been the descendants of a new race from more northern latitudes, even perhaps, as argued by Mr. Tilak, from the Arctic regions; but there is nothing in the Veda, as there is nothing in the present ethnological features of the country, to prove that this descent took place near to the time of the Vedic hymns or was the slow penetration of a small body of fair-skinned barbarians into a civilized Dravidian peninsula."

"These Hindus are supposed to have entered the country from the northwest; they are conjectured by some to have brought with them the Brahmanical religion, and the language of the conquerors was probably the Sanscrit. On these three meagre data our philologists have worked ever since the Hindustani and its immense Sanscrit literature was forcibly brought into notice by Sir William Jones -- all the time with the three sons of Noah clinging around their necks. This is exact science, free from religious prejudices! Verily, ethnology would have been the gainer if this Noachian trio had been washed overboard and drowned before the ark reached land!"

"In the case of Indo-European language relationships, it is possible to make the argument that the creation of a hypothesis relating the languages of Northern India to those of Europe was initially created and promulgated by nineteenth century scholars in order to promote agendas of colonialism or racism."

"The linguistic "aryanization" of India by white Aryan invaders from Europe formed a complete case study of all that the upcoming racist worldview stood for."

"The Aryan invasion of India is recorded in no written document and it cannot yet be traced archaeologically but it is nevertheless established as a historical fact on the basis of comparative philology."

"At some time in the second millennium BC, probably comparatively early in the millennium, a band or bands of speakers of Indo-European language, later to be called Sanskrit, entered India over the northwest passes. This is our linguistic doctrine which has been held now for more than a century and a half."

"The discourse about the Indo-Europeans was also dependent on the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century, imperialism. To an even greater extent than concerned the view of Semites, racism was present in the scholars depictions of how the Indo-European colonizers in ancient times conquered a dark, primitive original population. The Indo-Europeans were presented as humanitys cultural heroes, who, undefeated throughout history, spread knowledge and ruled over lower peoples, and who therefore seemed predestined to remain rulers even in the future. The “Aryan” colony of India came to have a special place in this context. The scholars racist attitude made them seek evidence in the Vedic texts that the ancient Aryan immigrants (aryas) had had a racial consciousness, and that the caste society was a kind of apartheid system from the very beginning. But reference to the higher castes as “Aryan brothers" could also be used for humanitar­ian aims. By referring to the relationship between Europeans and Indians, people imagined that they could more easily reform the Hindu culture and modernize or “Indo-Europeanize" Indian society."