INDO-EUROPEAN AND THE
“ARYAN” DEBATE
Adheesh Sathaye
University of British Columbia
¡ Languages in South Asia
¡ The discovery of Indo-European
and Dravidian language families
¡ “Aryan” theories: AIT, AMT, OIT
¡ The “Aryan Debate”
ONE. THE LANGUAGES
OF SOUTH ASIA
IndoEuropean and
the “Ar yans”
A d h e e s h S a t h aye ,
UBC
WHAT ARE “LANGUAGES”?
¡ Languages are [naturally-developed]
SYSTEMS of [verbal] communication
¡ Language is not necessarily tied to
ethnicity!
¡ Language is not the same as script!
LANGUAGE FAMILIES IN SOUTH ASIA
Language Family: A
set of “sister”
languages that have
naturally evolved from
a common “mother”
language
Four major language
“families” in South Asia
§
§
§
§
“Indo-Aryan”
Dravidian
Mundari
Tibeto-Burman
¡ These are language
families, not racial
divisions; No strict
biological dif ferences
between these
families, though
cultural dif ferences
do exist
THE “INDO-ARYAN” LANGUAGE FAMILY
¡ “Ar yan” was originally
used by scholars to
denote a race, but now
used here as a linguistic
label only.
¡ Primarily spoken in
Nor th India, Pakistan,
Nepal, Bangladesh
¡ Sinhala in Sri Lanka is
also an Indo- Ar yan
language
¡ All IA languages have
descended from
common ancestor s,
ultimately derived from
Sanskrit
Major Indo-Aryan languages:
(& number of speakers in India, 2001)
Hindi/Urdu – 473 million
Bengali – 200 million
Marathi – 72 million
Gujarati – 46 million
Panjabi – 29 million
THE DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY
¡ Primarily spoken in
South India, with
some northern
isolates
¡ A notable isolate in
Pakistan: Brahui (near
the IVC sites!)
¡ All have descended
from a common
ancestor,
hypothetically named
“proto-Dravidian” (or
“Old Tamil”)
Major DRAVIDIAN languages:
(& number of speakers in India, 2001)
Telugu – 74 million
Tamil – 61 million
Kannada – 38 million
Malayalam – 33 million
THE MUNDARI LANGUAGE FAMILY
¡ S eve ral t ribal lang uag e s
fo rm a f am ily c alle d M unda
or Mundari
¡ Most ly in t he spar se ly
populate d jung le s of
ce nt ral-e aste rn India
¡ Many are t hre ate ne d wit h
ex t inc t io n, as s pe ake r s
adopt H indi/ Urdu and
Eng lis h
¡ All would have descended
from a hypothetical
common ance stor, “ protoMundari” / some have
s pe c ulate d t h is to be t h e
IVC lang uag e
Major Mundari languages:
(& number of speakers in India, 2001)
Santali – 6.5 million
Ho – 1 million
Korku – 574,000
Mundari – 469,000
THE TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE FAMILY
¡ Extremely diver se family
of languages throughout
South and Southeast Asia
¡ In South Asia—found
mostly in Nepal and the
Nor theast
¡ Tibeto-Burman
communities have
complex, borderless,
“transnational” histories
Major Tibeto-Burman
languages in South Asia:
(& number of speakers in India, 2001)
Tibetan (worldwide) – 6 million
Manipuri – 1.5 million
Bodo – 1.4 million
Newari (Nepal) – 1 million
OTHER PHENOMENA
¡ Language evolution: Modern South Asian languages have
evolved slowly over time from (a) Sanskrit, (b) protoDravidian, (c) proto-Mundari, or (d) proto-Tibeto-Burman
¡ Language intermixture: These modern languages have been
altered (to various degrees) by the political/social influence
of other languages:
§
§
§
§
Sanskrit (Sanskritization) (various times)
Persian (Persianization) (c. 1300-1800s)
English (Anglicization) / & Portuguese, French also (19th C<)
Intermixture mostly affects vocabulary & script, not grammar
OTHER PHENOMENA
¡ Multilingualism: A large
percentage of speakers of
South Asian languages are
fluent in more than one
language
¡ Multilingualism creates
opportunities for hybridity or
creolization between
languages, e.g., “Hinglish” or
“Marglish” or “Khicadi”
speech, where a new quasilanguage is being created
¡ This complicates our
assumptions about language
evolution
TWO. DISCOVERING THE
INDO-EUROPEAN
AND DRAVIDIAN
LANGUAGE FAMILIES
IndoEuropean and
the “Ar yans”
A d h e e s h S a t h aye ,
UBC
WILLIAM JONES
Sir William Jones
(1746-1794)
¡ Graduate of
Oxford
¡ Welsh philologist,
legal scholar, and
colonial
administrator in
Calcutta
¡ founded the
Asiatic Society of
Bengal in 1784,
the fir st
Indological
association
¡ Prolific scholar of
Sanskrit, Per sian, and
Latin, Greek , and other
European classical
languages; also, an
accomplished poet
¡ Died at the age of 47 in
Calcutta from a liver
ailment
WILLIAM JONES’S REALIZATION
“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its
antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more
perfect than the Greek, more copious than
the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than
either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger
affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the
forms of grammar, than could possibly have
been produced by accident; so strong indeed,
that no philologer could examine them all
three, without believing them to have sprung
from some common source, which, perhaps,
no longer exists; there is a similar reason,
though not quite so forcible, for supposing
that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though
blended with a very different idiom, had the
same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old
Persian might be added to the same family.”
February 2,
1786: Jones
delivers an
address in
Calcutta to the
Asiatic Society
of Bengal
¡ Asserts (a) the wonders of
Sanskrit as a language, and
(b) that Sanskrit,Latin, and
Greek (along with Gothic,
Celtic, and Persian) have a
common ancestor.
JONES WAS NOT THE FIRST…
In India:
¡ Sirajuddin Ali Khan Arzu,
Urdu/Persian intellectual and
poet (1689-1756):
“Up to this day, no one has
conceived of the tawāfuq (concord/
agreement/relationship) between
Hindi and Persian except this fakir
Arzu in spite of the fact that there
were a number of dictionary
makers and other scholars of this
guiding science.” (Musmir, c. 1752)
In Europe:
¡ Filippo Sassetti (1580s)
§ Stated that Sanskrit is related to Greek
and Latin
¡ Bonaventura Bulcanus (1597)
§ Noticed agreement between German and
Persian
¡ Claudius Salmasius (1643)
§ Claimed that Latin, Greek, Teutonic, and
Persian are related
COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
¡ Three main goals of “Comparative Historical
Linguistics” as a discipline:
¡ 1) Compare vocabular y and grammar of
cognate languages in Indo-European family
¡ 2) RECONSTRUCT the hypothetical original
language (called “proto-Indo European” or
pIE)
§ Note: no actual texts in pIE, purely a theoretical
language
¡ 3) Formulate general rules that explain how
the various language branches have evolved
from this original
¡ PIE reconstruction of words to
“know” or “see”:
¡ *weyd- / *gno-
¡ Wo r d s f r o m b o t h r o o t s c o m e i n to E n g l i s h
t h r o u g h d i f fe r e n t l a n g u a g e p a t h way s :
§
§
§
§
Video, vista, visa, vision (French/Latin)
Idea (Greek)
Wise, wit (Germanic)
Know, knowledge (Germanic)
¡ German: wissen, Irish: fios
¡ S a n s k r i t : ve d a , v i d y ā , j ñ ā n a
¡ H i n d i / U r d u , Pa n j a b i : j ā n n ā
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN AND
“ARYAN” ETHNICIT Y
¡ European scholars noted that the Sanskrit word
ārya ( “noble, elite”) was cognate with Persian
“ariya” (< Iran)
¡ They proposed an ethnic/racial
identity of “Aryans” who:
§ Spoke Sanskrit (descended from
PIE)
§ Performed fire sacrifices
§ Used horses and chariots
§ Ethnically related to rest of IndoEuropean speakers
§ Represented by “painted grey ware”
pottery and iron in South Asian
archaeology
Note: (Trautman, p.
xxix): “the relation
between languages
and peoples is not a
necessary one but a
contingent one.”
THREE. THEORIES
ABOUT THE “ARYANS”
IndoEuropean and
the “Ar yans”
A d h e e s h S a t h aye ,
UBC
THE BASIC PUZZLE OF THE “ARYANS”
¡ How/when did
speaker s of Sanskrit
(the “Ar yans”) find
themselves in (mostly)
nor thern India?
¡ Three answer s:
§ Aryan Invasion Theory
§ Aryan Migration Theory
§ “Out of India” Theory
ARYAN INVASION THEORY (AIT)
NO HARD EVIDENCE or CULTURAL MEMORY of
invasions. Practically no scholars accept AIT today!
¡ Aryans entered India through the
northwest
¡ Conquered the Dravidians using
superior military technology: horses
and chariots
¡ They pushed Dravidians to the South
and began to rule over northern India
¡ Mohenjo Daro, Harappa, etc. –
remains of proto-Dravidian culture
ARYAN MIGRATION THEORY (AMT)
¡ Aryans entered India through the northwest,
but in various “waves”
¡ Slow, peaceful dispersals over several
generations across Asia and Europe
¡ Arrived in India c. 1500 BCE, 400 years
after the decline of the IVC
Trautmann calls this the “established” view – most
mainstream scholars accept (some version) of AMT
§ Or, alternatively, co-existed with Dravidian
speakers in a multi-cultural IVC
¡ Adapted and absorbed Dravidian
language and cultural features
“OUT OF INDIA” THEORY (OIT)
¡ No invasion or migration of
“Aryans”
¡ The people of the IVC WERE the
Aryans
¡ IVC culture WAS Vedic culture,
IVC script IS Sanskrit
¡ Vedic culture much older than we
think (~7000 BCE)
¡ Continuous cultural development:
§ IVC crafts turned into painted grey
ware
§ IVC religion turned into Hinduism
¡ Indo-European “homeland” was
India, waves of migrants went
West to Persia, Europe, Turkey,
Central Asia.
Trautmann calls this the “alternative” view – most adherents of OIT are untrained as
historians or are politically/religiously motivated.
FOUR. THE “ARYAN”
DEBATE
IndoEuropean and
the “Ar yans”
A d h e e s h S a t h aye ,
UBC
THE GROUNDS FOR DEBATE
¡ A I T: A r ya n I nv a s i o n T h e o r y
§ Developed out of the 19 t h C. colonial context
§ Language was seen as inherently connected to ethnicity and race
§ Ar yans seen as colonizers who invaded and conquered Indian
subcontinent
¡ A M T: A r ya n M i g r a t i o n T h e o r y
§ Slow waves of migration, af ter collapse of IVC cities
§ Established scholarly model
¡ O I T: O u t o f I n d i a T h e o r y
§ Ar yans migrated out of India to Persia, Europe, etc.
¡ B u r d e n o f p r o o f i s o n t h o s e w h o w i s h to s u p p o r t t h e
a l te r n a t i ve v i ew ( O I T ) , n o t e s t a b l i s h e d v i ew ( A M T )
§ Linguistic data demonstrates that Indo- Ar yan languages are VERY
closely related to European ones. [And Dravidian ones form a
separate language family]
§ Archaeology shows that IVC culture did not possess key IndoEuropean features: horses and chariots
§ Textual studies make it ver y clear that Vedic culture did not know
about IVC city life
THE HEATED DEBATE
¡ T h e d e b a te b e t w e e n A M T a n d O I T p e r s p e c t i ve s h a s l e f t
t h e a c a d e my a n d e n te r e d i n to t h e p u b l i c a r e n a
¡ N o n - a c a d e m i c m o t i va t i o n s fo r O I T – c o r r e c t i n g o l d
misconceptions about India and Hinduism, as well as
r e l i g i o u s a n d p o l i t i c a l c h a u v i n i s m b e h i n d “ p r ov i n g ” t h a t
A r ya n s w e r e H i n d u a n d f r o m I n d i a
¡ U n t r a i n e d s c h o l a r s ( o f te n “ h a r d ” s c i e n t i s t s ) , h o b by i s t s ,
a n d p o l i t i c i a n s h ave fe l t f r e e to m a ke u n r e s e a r c h e d o r
p o o r l y r e s e a r c h e d c l a i m s ( a l o t l i ke a r g u m e n t s a b o u t
evo l u t i o n v s . “ i n te l l i g e n t c r e a t i o n ” )
¡ I n te r n e t a n d s o c i a l m e d i a h ave c r e a te d a h o s t i l e
a t m o s p h e r e w h e r e s c h o l a r s h ave b e e n a t t a c ke d ,
h a r a s s e d , o r v i l i f i e d a s b e i n g “ a n t i - H i n d u ” ( i f t h ey ’ r e
We s te r n ) o r “ M a r x i s t ” ( i f t h ey ’ r e I n d i a n )
¡ T h e g e n e r a l p u b l i c r e m a i n s p o o r l y i n fo r m e d a b o u t
current scholarly thinking (e.g., the discreditation of the
AIT)
SOLUTIONS?
¡ 1) Debate needs to be de-politicized and based on
accepted principles of academic discour se
(evidence-based argument, peer review, mutual
respect)
¡ 2) Race and ethnic/religious identity must be
decoupled from language (Indo- Ar yan languages
could enter into India without “Ar yans” having to
enter into India!)
¡ 3) Social histories are not stories, but complex
sets of events – no ONE stor y will cover the
entirety of what happened over a THOUSAND year
period of histor y! (c. 2000-1000 BCE)
§ For example: multiple phases of migrations, multidirectional migrations, IVC as a multicultural/
multilingual environment
¡ 4) Focus should be on gathering MORE evidence
rather than just fighting with one another over
theories