Harappans and Aryans: old and new perspectives
of ancient Indian history.
Author: Manian, Padma. Source: The History Teacher (Long Beach, Calif.) v. 32 no1 (Nov. 1998) p. 17-32 ISSN: 0018-2745
Number: BEDI99001143 Copyright: The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with
permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited.
IN THIS ERA OF GLOBALIZATION it is important for the general public to have some knowledge of the histories and cultures
of people around the world. The main source of information for most people would be a world history course. What they learn may
not, however, be as accurate as one might wish. I have found that, to some extent, world history texts suffer from a Eurocentric
bias when dealing with the histories of non-European peoples. I will illustrate this point by looking at how nine world history texts
treat the Harappan (also called Indus) civilization and the Aryans in ancient India. These are the texts:(FN1).
L.S. Stavrianos, A Global History: From Prehistory to the Present.
Peter Stearns and others, World Civilizations: The Global Experience
William McNeill, A History of the Human Community
Anthony Esler, The Human Venture
Kevin Reilly, The West and the World
Richard Greaves and others, Civilizations of the World
Walter Wallbank and others, Civilization: Past & Present
Stanley Chodorow and others, The Mainstream of Civilization
John McKay and others, A History of World Societies.
I will begin by looking at what these texts say about the Indus civilization and the Aryans under four categories: their description
of the Indus civilization, the causes of its decline, the entrance of the Aryans, and the aftermath of their appearance in India. Then
I will analyze the sources from which these texts drew their material. Finally I will discuss alternative ideas as seen in some old
and new scholarship.
All the texts mention Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the two sites of the Indus civilization that were first discovered. They describe
general features of the cities such as well-planned streets, extraordinary drainage systems, citadels, granaries, and the great bath at
Mohenjodaro. They also mention the many artifacts excavated such as pottery, and statues. All of them note that the Indus script
found on the numerous seals is undeciphered. Greaves and coauthors and McKay and coauthors give the size of the area over which
the civilization had existed as half a million square miles and over 1.25 million square kilometers respectively. Only Greaves and
coauthors mention Kalibangan, another big excavated city. Most mention that two hundred "village sites" have been excavated
while Chodorow and coauthors say that three hundred sites have been excavated. McKay and coauthors and Stearns and coauthors
alone devote some attention to the neolithic settlements which were antecedents to the Indus civilization.
The texts all date the beginning of the Indus civilization to the third millennium BCE. Except for Greaves and coauthors, who give
3000 BCE as its origin, the rest have opted for 2500 BCE. Again Greaves and coauthors alone give 2000 BCE as the end of the
civilization whereas all others state that it ended in 1500 BCE. The year 1500 BCE is also significant in another way for these texts
in that they all state that as the year when the Aryans entered India.
We now turn to the next issue at hand, namely what causes led to the decline of the Indus civilization. I found that the texts could
generally be put into two groups according to the causes they attributed for the decline. The first group unequivocally see the
Aryans as the destroyers who massacred and enslaved the Indus people, while the second group say that environmental changes
led to the civilization's decline. Four of the texts; Reilly, McNeill, Stavrianos, and Esler fall into the first category. Greaves and
coauthors, McKay and coauthors, and Chodorow and coauthors, belong to the second category. The other texts, Stearns and
coauthors, and Wallbank and coauthors straddle the two groups.
In the words of Reilly, the civilization was "burned, destroyed, and left in rubble by invading Aryan-speaking tribes from the
North." He believes that this was part of a worldwide series of Aryan invasions ca. 1500 BCE when "nomadic tribes in chariots
invaded and destroyed civilizations such as Minoan and Indus." Stavrianos writes that the Indus people were "overrun by tribes
people who, with the military advantage of iron weapons and horse-drawn chariots, easily overwhelmed the copper weapons and
ox-drawn carts of the natives. The invaders called themselves the Aryans." While he clearly sees the Aryans as destroyers, in
another chapter Stavrianos also states that the Indus civilization "may have been literally drowned in mud. Subterranean volcanic
activity, according to this theory, caused a huge upwelling of mud, silt, and sand that dammed the Indus and formed a huge lake,
swamping the capital, Mohenjo-daro." The third text belonging to this group, by Esler, states "the fall of the Harappan world was
almost certainly due to the intrusion of a new people into northwestern India: the Aryans." McNeill also states the same
opinion.(FN2).
On the other hand, Greaves and coauthors emphatically state that the Aryans entered India after the Indus civilization collapsed.
They say that the Aryan invaders could never have seen the Indus civilization in its prime and are thus unlikely causes for its
decline. Instead "the Indus people encountered some specific problems resulting from their desert or semiarid environment,
problems that may quickly have become overwhelming."(FN3) However it must be pointed out that while they did not say that the
Aryans destroyed the Indus civilization, they nonetheless saw them as conquerors who destroyed other indigenous people whom
they encountered. Chodorow and coauthors see that "environmental factors such as devastating floods, a shift in the course of the
Indus River, and exhaustion of soil fertility may have accounted for the demise of the civilization."(FN4).
Wallbank and coauthors who straddle the above two interpretations first suggest that the decline set in 1700 BCE culminating in
1500 BCE "when a series of floods caused by earthquakes altered the course of the Indus and brought chaos." However the authors
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also find an Aryan hand in its destruction when they said "the semibarbaric invaders brought an end to what little was left of Indus
civilization."(FN5) Similarly, Stearns and coauthors say that "a dramatic vision of a wave of "barbarian" invaders smashing town
dwellers' skulls made for good story-telling but bad history." Instead, they explain the demise in terms of natural factors.
Nevertheless, later on in writing about the Aryan displacement of the Harappans, they suggest "that there was a good deal of violent
conflict in this transition cannot be ruled out."(FN6).
All the texts believe that the Aryans were pastoral nomads. Reilly says that the Aryans originally came from the grasslands of
Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Stavrianos states that they came from the region of the Caspian Sea. According to Chodorow
and McKay and their coauthors, the Aryans were from Anatolia. Esler identifies the steppes of European Russia, perhaps north of
the Caspian Sea, as the Aryan homeland. Greaves and coauthors say that the Aryans came from south-central Asia, including what
is now Iran. Stearns and coauthors believe that the Aryans originally came from the area between the Caspian and Black seas.
Wallbank and coauthors merely say that they came from the north. And McNeill is silent on this topic.(FN7) In addition, the texts
led by Reilly, Stearns, Wallbank, McNeill, Stavrianos, Greaves and Esler also believe that these nomads came not only with their
cattle but also in horse-drawn chariots across the difficult northwestern mountain passes of the Himalayas. Except for Greaves and
coauthors, the rest also state that the Aryans came with iron weapons which helped in their conquest of the Indus people who had
only bronze weapons. Chodorow and coauthors make no mention of Aryan metallurgy. Stearns and coauthors merely state that the
Aryan metal-tipped spears were more effective than the weapons of the indigenous peoples without specifying the nature of the
metal. Greaves and coauthors differ from the rest in stating that the Aryans came to use iron only after they migrated into India.
A few conclusions can be drawn from this review of the texts. First, all of them believe that the Aryans came from outside India in
1500 BCE. Second, whether it was destroyed by invading Aryans or by environmental factors, the Indus civilization ceased to exist
with the arrival of the Aryans. Third, they all assume that the civilization, its people, or culture was mutually exclusive of the
Aryans and their culture.
This brings us to the fourth issue, the aftermath of the Aryan invasion. It is indisputably taken for granted by the texts that the
Aryan invasion in India culminated in their victory over the Indus or other people they encountered. So who were the vanquished
people, be they the Indus people or others? How did the Aryans perceive them? How did they relate to and treat the conquered?
All the texts arrive at their answers through their understanding of the caste system (varna) mentioned in the Vedas, the sacred texts
of Hinduism composed by the Aryans. They identify the four varnas; namely brahmana, kshatriya, vaisya, and shudra as the four
castes.
Stavrianos sees the Aryans as a race who were "very conscious of their physical features" and describes them as "tall, blue-eyed,
fair-skinned." He further states that the image of them from the Vedas was that of a "virile people, fond of war, drinking, chariot
racing, and gambling." In contrast, the conquered people he found, were called the Dasas or "slaves" in the Vedas, and were "short,
black, noseless." Based on their fair and dark skin colors, Stavrianos concludes that they belonged to two different races. He projects
such racial interpretations further into his discussion of varna or the caste system: "With their strong sense of racial superiority, the
Aryans strove to prevent mixture with their despised subjects. Accordingly they evolved a system of four hereditary castes. The
first three comprised their own occupational classes, the priests (brahmans), the warrior nobles (kshatriyas), and the farmers
(vaishyas). The fourth caste (shudras) was reserved for the Dasas who were excluded from the religious ceremonies and social
rights enjoyed by their conquerors." However, he thinks that "this arrangement ceased to correspond to racial reality with the
passage of time" because he finds that in present-day India there are "black Southern Indian Brahmans" who enjoy a high status
and "light-skinned grey-eyed untouchables" in Northern India.(FN8).
Stearns and coauthors understand that when the Aryans entered India, they were already divided into three main social groups of
warriors, priests, and commoners. The Aryans enslaved the conquered indigenous people who then formed the fourth group of
"slaves or serfs." These authors also see "a physical dimension to the sharp division between the free and enslaved. The Aryans
pictured themselves as light-skinned conquerors in a sea of dark-skinned Dasas."(FN9) Esler, Wallbank and coauthors, and
Chodorow and coauthors also present a similar racial interpretation. They go further in identifying the Aryans and Dravidians as
the two races in India. Esler also reads varna in the Vedas to mean skin color when he says that it was "clearly referring to the old
racial differences between the conquerors and conquered." Chodorow and coauthors are of a similar opinion: "the dark-skinned
conquered people who formed the fourth order, were the shudras, who were reduced to serfdom and forced to perform menial
tasks." Wallbank and coauthors state that the shudras were the non-Aryan dark-skinned Dasas mentioned in the Vedas.(FN10).
Reilly has a different understanding of the caste system. He sees the "untouchables" as the "lower outcaste group of darker, nonAryan indigenous peoples who were required to do the work that all other groups considered "polluting." These "other groups"
consisted of brahmanas, kshatriyas, vaishyas, and the shudras. He also does not put the shudras in the non-Aryan category as the
other texts do. Yet he says that they were denied the same rights as the other three castes.(FN11).
With the coming in of the Aryans, these texts see a clear divide in India between the fair and dark skin colors of Aryans and nonAryans respectively, suggesting that the Aryans regarded themselves as the superior race. It ought to be pointed out that none of
the authors of these texts appears to be a specialist in ancient Indian history and that they have all presented the views of other
scholars of India. It is now pertinent to look at the work of some of the pioneering scholars of Indian studies to see the development
of ideas about ancient Indian history.
Sir William Jones was a distinguished linguist and a British judge in Bengal. He was a principal founder of western scholarship on
ancient India. He was also highly influenced by his Christian beliefs. Upon studying Sanskrit he made the remarkable discovery in
1786 that it had striking similarities with Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Celtic. He was one of the first scholars to clearly put forward
the idea that the languages of India and Europe constituted one family. He believed that this came about because the speakers of
all these languages were descended from Ham, one of Noah's sons. Indians must therefore have come into India from the Biblical
lands of West Asia where, presumably, Noah and his sons settled after the Great Flood and before the dispersal of the
nations.(FN12) We can see the Aryan invasion theory prefigured in his work in that he proposed a migration into India from outside
to explain the relationship between the languages of India and Europe.
Among the many linguists who studied the Indo-European languages after Jones, Max Müller stands out as one of the most
significant scholars of Indo-European language studies. Born in Germany, he lived and worked in England and made a translation
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of the Vedas from Sanskrit to English and was influential in his dating of the Vedas. As we shall see below, the dating of the Vedas
is crucial to the dating of the Aryan invasion to 1500 BCE. Like Jones, Müller assumed that the stories of the Bible were historical
facts. But unlike Jones, he believed that Indo-Europeans descended from Japeth, another of Noah's sons rather than Ham.(FN13).
Navaratna Rajaram describes in detail how Müller arrived at his dates for the composition of the Vedas.(FN14) In short, since
Müller subscribed to a literal interpretation of the Bible, the descendants of Japeth would have left for India after the dispersal of
the nations following the construction of the Tower of Babel after the Flood. This would be around 2500 BCE as calculated from
the genealogies of the Bible. The Buddha can be reliably dated to around 500 BCE and since most of the Vedas already existed in
the Buddha's time, Müller knew that the Vedas had to be composed between 2500 BCE and 500 BCE. From the differences in
language in different portions of the Vedas, Müller saw several stages in their composition. He assumed around two hundred years
for each stage and also assumed that the latest stages of the Vedic literature were composed after the time of the Buddha. Müller
assigned 200 BCE for the composition of the last of the Vedic literature and 1200 BCE for its earliest composition. This is a span
of a thousand years which allowed five stages of 200 years each. Therefore the descendants of Japeth must have invaded India a
few centuries earlier or around 1500 BCE.
When the belief in the literal veracity of the Bible decreased after the publication of Darwin's work on evolution, interest in IndoEuropean languages took a different turn. Scholars were then primarily driven by the belief that the first speakers of an IndoEuropean language, termed by them proto-Indo-European, comprised an ethnic group (the Aryans) who inhabited an original
homeland from which they then dispersed into various parts of the world. Incidentally, the word Aryan was appropriated from the
word "arya" which occurs in the Vedas as an adjective meaning honorable. The usage of "arya" in the Vedas has no racial
connotation since potentially any person can be "arya" or honorable. The search for the Aryan homeland was then conducted by
the enterprise of historical linguistics or linguistic paleontology.(FN15) The methodology of this discipline consisted of building
up the vocabulary of the hypothetical proto-Indo-European language by studying what was common to specific cognate words in
the different Indo-European languages. Next, based on this lexicon, inferences were made. One conclusion to which these scholars
arrived was that the Aryans were pastoral nomads since the hypothetical vocabulary that they created had many words for
domesticated animals and fewer words for cereal grains. They then tried to identify the homeland where the Aryans first practiced
nomadic pastoralism. Various widely separated places for the Aryan homeland were suggested such as northern Europe, the
Balkans, Anatolia, Southern Russia and the Caucasus; but India was not one of them. Therefore it was believed that the first
speakers of Indo-European languages in India must have come from outside.
Thus was born the theory that India had been invaded by the Aryans. Max Müller and other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
scholars propounded what Thomas Trautmann has called the "racial theory of Indian civilization." This is the notion: "that India's
civilization was produced by the clash and subsequent mixture of light-skinned civilizing invaders (the Aryans) and dark-skinned
barbarous aborigines (often identified as Dravidians)."(FN16) I call this the first or Müller version of the Aryan invasion theory.
This theory was based on the interpretation of linguistic and literary evidence from the Vedas by Müller and others and not on
archaeology.
In 1921, Sir John Marshall and R.D. Banerji identified the ruins at Harappa and Mohenjodaro as the remains of the Indus
civilization. This civilization was found to have been flourishing in the third millennium BCE. Since the invasion of the Aryans
was accepted to have occurred in 1500 BCE the authors of the Indus civilization could not have been the Aryans. Instead Sir
Mortimer Wheeler who made further archaeological investigations of the Indus civilization and whose name is now more closely
associated with it, came up with his own theory.(FN17) He interpreted groups of skeletons which were carelessly buried in
Mohenjodaro as the victims of a massacre by invading Aryans. He then concluded that these Aryans caused the Indus civilization
to collapse. In the words of Stavrianos, the Aryans did the work of "empire smashing."(FN18) The racial theory of Indian
civilization thus underwent a metamorphosis into what I call the second version of the Aryan invasion theory.
Unlike Müller's theory which saw the white-skinned Aryans as the superior race and the civilizers, Wheeler's theory saw them as
the barbarians and the dark-skinned Dravidian natives as the civilized ones. However racial and cultural stereotypes were not
abandoned. The Aryans were supposed to have brought fresh vigorous blood, energy, and ideas to the old, conservative, hidebound
civilization that prevailed in India. We repeatedly see images of the "conquerors" and "conquered" in the world history texts. To
quote Gordon Childe, the noted archaeologist:.
At the same time the fact that the first Aryans were Nordics was not without importance. The physical qualities of that stock did
enable them by the bare fact of superior strength to conquer even more advanced peoples and so to impose their language on areas
from which their bodily type has almost completely vanished. This is the truth underlying the panegyrics of the Germanists: the
Nordics' superiority in physique fitted them to be the vehicles of a superior language.(FN19).
Since the discovery of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, archaeologists have uncovered several hundred Harappan village and city sites
spread over a wide area. It is now clear that the Harappan civilization was the most extensive in terms of area of any of the ancient
civilizations before the second millennium BCE. It also has become clear that the urban phase of the Harappan civilization had
ended by 2000 BCE.(FN20) This has presented a problem for the second Aryan invasion theory's notion that the end of the Indus
civilization was caused by the Aryan invasion. Scholars were not willing to abandon the theory that the Aryans invaded with their
cattle and chariots in 1500 BCE. So they modified the invasion theory to say that the Indus civilization declined for other reasons
and that the Aryans came into India when there was no urban civilization left. This is the third version of the Aryan invasion theory.
In examining the texts we see that Esler, Stavrianos, Chodorow and coauthors, and McNeill presented the second version of the
Aryan invasion theory while the others presented some combination of the second and third versions. We can be thankful that none
of the texts presented the first version.
Let us now turn to what some of the more recent scholars say about the Aryan invasion theory and with it the Indus civilization
and the Vedas. Their findings, archaeological and literary, have refuted and challenged the old ideas of Müller, Wheeler, and their
subscribers such as the world history texts reviewed here. Jim Shaffer, an archaeologist of South Asia, says: "that current
archaeological data do not support the existence of an Indo-Aryan or European invasion into South Asia at any time in the preor
proto-historic period. Instead it is possible to document archaeologically a series of cultural changes reflecting indigenous cultural
developments from prehistoric to historic periods."(FN21) For example, Shaffer in another article, discussed the Painted Grey Ware
3
Pottery which some archaeologists identified as the work of Aryans and echoed by Stearns and coauthors when they said "rapid
changes in pottery suggest a series of sudden waves of migrants into the region."(FN22) Shaffer pointed out this pottery's absence
along the supposed route the Aryans would have taken to reach the Ganga-Yamuna region where this pottery was found. In addition
he noted that the Painted Grey Ware pottery was a continuation of earlier styles native to that area.(FN23).
Colin Renfrew, another archaeologist, criticized historical linguistics saying that while it could be useful in establishing
relationships between languages, its precision in determining the homeland of the original speakers of the Indo-European language
family is questionable.(FN24) Thus the identification of Southern Russia, Anatolia, or any other place as the original homeland of
the Aryans based only on historical linguistics is largely speculative. He does not see any evidence in the Rig Veda that the Aryans
were invaders in India or that they were nomads. He adds: "Indeed the chariot is not a vehicle especially associated with nomads."
He further says that "we should, in other words, seriously consider the possibility that the new religious and cultural synthesis
which is represented by the Rig Veda was essentially a product of the soil of India and Pakistan, and that it was not imported,
ready-made, on the backs of the steeds of the Indo-Aryans."(FN25).
Kenneth R. Kennedy, a physical anthropologist and archaeologist studied all the skeletons recovered from several Harappan sites
including those of the alleged massacre victims of Mohenjodaro. He found that only two skulls showed signs of injury and that
even those two individuals did not die immediately from these injuries but rather several months later possibly from other
causes.(FN26) Mortimer Wheeler's misinterpretation of these and other skeletal remains as those of massacre victims caused Esler
to write that the invading Aryans "left the corpses of their foes to rot in the streets of Mohenjodaro" and Stearns and coauthors to
write that "groups of skeletons with smashed skulls or in postures of flight have been found on the stairways at some sites."(FN27)
Kennedy further states that after examining the skeletons of the Harappans, he "recognizes a biological continuum of many of their
morphometric variables in the modern populations of Punjab and Sindh."(FN28) This finding is not favorable to the Aryan invasion
theory because the "tall, blue-eyed, fair-skinned" Aryans were supposed to be so unlike the "short, black, noseless" natives that
they defeated. The invasion of the Aryans should have resulted in a significant change between the Harappans and the present-day
people.
Robert H. Dyson, also an archaeologist, in talking about the Aryan invasion theory says that "the invasion thesis also becomes a
paradigm of limited usefulness. By freeing themselves from this hypothesis drawn from earlier linguistic studies, archaeologists
may now focus their attention on the archaeological evidence in its own terms."(FN29).
Trautmann, Shaffer and Lichtenstein, and Rajaram and Frawley have shown how nineteenth-century scholarship on India was
influenced by Victorian racial thought.(FN30) Scholars including Max Müller went out of their way to find references in the Vedas
to racial differences between the Aryans and their enemies the Dasas and Dasyus. Unfortunately, for all their labors they could
come up with precious little--just three passages. Even these three passages hardly gave unambiguous support to the notion that the
Vedic Aryans were conscious of a racial difference between themselves and their Dasyu and Dasa enemies. In one of those
passages, Max Müller found the enemies described as "anasa." Müller interpreted that to mean that they were noseless or snubnosed which we found earlier was a description Stavrianos used in his text. However, Trautmann showed that the medieval
commentator Sayana's interpretation that it was a figurative description referring to someone without speech as more reasonable.
Thus it had nothing to do with the shape or size of the Dasyus' noses.(FN31).
The other two passages referred to enemies with dark skins. Nevertheless, two references to dark skin do not imply that the Dasas
or Dasyus were despised on account of their skin color. In many more passages it is clear that the Aryans considered the Dasyus
despicable because of their irreligiosity and uncouth language. Rajaram and Frawley have suggested that the battles between the
Aryans and their enemies should be symbolically interpreted as struggles between the forces of light and darkness and not between
light-skinned and dark-skinned people.(FN32) I might also add that many highly respected sages and mythical figures in India were
said to have dark skin. The most well-known and popular is Lord Krishna, the human incarnation of the Lord Vishnu. His very
name means the dark-skinned one.
Let us move on to varna or caste. Varna does mean color. Conditioned no doubt by the European experiences with nonwhite people
in the last few centuries, Max Müller as well as many of the texts did not hesitate to give a racial interpretation to caste. They
claimed that the highest castes were descended from light-skinned Aryans and the lowest castes were descended from the darkskinned people defeated by the Aryans. But the colors associated with the various castes are "heraldic" colors and not the color of
the skin as shown by Trautmann and the Vedic scholar David Frawley.(FN33) The brahmana caste is assigned the color white
because this is the caste which is devoted to spirituality and enlightenment. The kshatriya or warrior caste is supposed to have a
fiery and courageous temperament and therefore the associated color is red. The vaishya caste's function is commerce leading to
the accumulation of wealth and its emblematic color is the yellow of gold. The shudra laboring caste is supposed to have neither
the discipline and self-sacrifice required for spiritual pursuits, nor the courage of the warriors, nor the enterprise of the traders, but
instead has to labor t the direction of one of the other castes and the emblematic color is the black of the darkness of ignorance.
Whatever the significance of the caste system, there is no evidence that it was a division of society by skin color or race. To interpret
caste as race would be a "fantastic back-projection of systems of racial segregation in the American South and in South Africa onto
early Indian history."(FN34).
The Aryan invasion theory, as Rajaram and Frawley have pointed out, has created a paradox in Indian history.(FN35) There are
plenty of archaeological remains of the largest civilization of ancient times but if the Aryan invasion theory is accepted, there are
apparently no surviving literary records from this extensive civilization. On the other hand, the Aryans have left no archaeological
trace of their supposed invasion but in the form of the voluminous Vedas have left the most massive literature from ancient times.
However, this paradox can be resolved if we accept that the Harappans were themselves followers of the Vedic religion. In none
of the ancient literature of India is there any mention of an invasion from outside India, in contrast to the Bible, which relates the
story of how the Israelites took possession of their promised land from the Canaanites. Therefore when Europeans beginning to
study Indo-European languages created the Aryan invasion theory it was as new to India as it was to the rest of the world.
The Aryan invasion theory also has some other weaknesses. I have already noted that chariots are not especially associated with
nomads. It seems implausible that relatively unorganized bands of semi-barbarous nomads could move with their chariots across
the difficult desert terrain of Afghanistan and the high mountain passes of the Himalayas. Even if these Aryan nomads did manage
4
to do so, they would have had to conquer the far more numerous inhabitants of India and then impose their language and culture
upon them. Now, when we look at thecases of the barbarian conquests of Rome or of the Mongol conquest of China, we see that
the barbarians got romanized and the Mongols sinicized. In the analogous case of the Aryan invasion of India, why should the
culture of the less-sophisticated group prevail? An explanation in terms of the "Nordics' superior physique" will not be acceptable
at the close of the twentieth century.
Yet another weakness of this theory concerns the use of metals. Most of the texts mentioned that one of the advantages that the
Aryans had over the Harappans was iron weapons. However, both the reputed historian A.L. Basham, and Frawley have pointed
out that this was not necessarily so. This idea was based on the fact that the word "Ayas" which occurred in the Rig Veda was
interpreted as iron.(FN36) But in the opinion of Basham and of Frawley, "Ayas" simply meant metal. I must also point out here
that in one chapter Stavrianos said that the iron weapons of the Aryans defeated the Indus civilization, but in another chapter of the
very same book he contradicted himself by saying that the Aryans' expansion into the Gangetic plain from the Indus valley was
"slow at first, since only stone, bronze, and copper axes were available. But iron was introduced about 800 BCE, and the expansion
pace quickened."(FN37) Maybe the Aryans forgot their iron technology after they defeated the Harappans in 1500 BCE and
remembered it 700 years later!
Historians have long referred to the ancient Indian civilization as the Indus civilization. However even that is now challenged in
the light of new geological findings. Rajaram and Frawley have shown that the river Saraswati, and not the Indus river, was the
most prominent and sacred river in the Rig Veda (playing the same role there as the River Ganges in later Hinduism). The Vedas
described the Saraswati as a mighty river flowing from the mountains to the sea.(FN38) But today the Saraswati, known now as
the Ghaggar, is a much smaller stream which gets lost in the Thar desert. A large number of Harappan sites have been found along
the banks of the now-dry Saraswati or Ghaggar (see for example the map from McNeill). Recent geological investigations have
shown that the Saraswati was indeed once a very substantial river flowing to the sea but that it dried up around 1900 BCE when
the Yamuna ceased flowing into it, and instead flowed east to join the Ganges. The decline of the urban phase of the Harappan
civilization seems to be correlated with that event. Rajaram and Frawley have argued that since the Vedas speak of the Saraswati
as a big river, the Vedic people must have been present in India well before 1900 BCE. They have also suggested that the civilization
should now be renamed as the Indus-Saraswati civilization. Saraswati has always had a sacred place in Hindu traditions. Scholars
such as Basham knew of the importance of the Saraswati in the Vedas and also that it is now a small stream but they were unaware
of the recent geological information regarding when it dried up.(FN39).
Rajaram and Frawley have also shown how astronomical statements in the Vedas could be used to date them.(FN40) The Vedic
people made observations of the positions of the Sun with respect to the fixed stars at the time of the equinoxes and solstices and
recorded them in the Vedas. Because of the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, the equinoxes in ancient times occurred
in different positions from where they occur now. This information can be used to date the Vedas. Another source of information
about the date of the composition of the Vedas is that they mentioned observations of a pole star. Again because of the precession
of the equinoxes, only at certain periods of history was there a pole star. Scholars have been aware of these astronomical references
for a long time. However, they studied the Vedas without a knowledge of astronomy and dismissed dates derived from those
observations since the dates were much more ancient than they were willing to accept. Rajaram and Frawley believed that the
astronomical observations in the Vedas indicated that the Vedas were composed before 3000 BCE. Acceptance of such an early
date would mean giving up belief in an Aryan invasion of India in 1500 BCE.
The present is clearly a time when long accepted views on ancient Indian history are being radically challenged. Clearly many of
the writers of the world history texts have been influenced by older authorities. For example, see Shaffer and Lichtenstein's criticism
of Piggott and Wheeler who were very influential in the middle parts of this century.(FN41) Many of the details of the newer
findings are still coming in and the story that is forming is certainly less violent than the one we find in many of these texts. Let us
now sketch out some of what is emerging from recent scholarship and from a reinterpretation of long-available evidence.
It appears that cultural developments in the Indian subcontinent go back a very long time and are largely independent of
developments in West Asia. Previously it was thought that agricultural techniques as well as the food crops themselves came into
India from West Asia.(FN42) The large neolithic settlement at Mehrgarh discovered in 1974 by a French archaeological team has
been dated to the seventh millennium BCE and attests to the antiquity of agriculture in India.(FN43) There appears to be an
underlying continuity in the culture of India which Shaffer and Lichtenstein have called the Indo-Gangetic tradition, and changes
that have occurred in it seem to be largely due to internal factors rather than external influences and invasions. There appears to be
a west-to-east movement of people within India around the second millennium BCE due to the drying up of the Saraswati and other
ecological changes in Western India but there is no archaeological or literary evidence of intrusions of people from outside
India.(FN44) The Vedas would, then, not be the composition of invaders but of people long resident in India. If we accept the
chronology of Rajaram and Frawley, the Vedas were composed before 3000 BCE.(FN45) It is not possible to reconcile this with
the 1200 BCE date that is often quoted for the start of the composition of the Vedas. Max Müller was right in seeing several stages
in language evolution in the Vedas. However the Vedas are sacred texts and as such change in them should be very slow. Max
Müller's attribution of 200 years for each stage may be too low and a larger number would result in a much more ancient date for
the Vedas.
The Aryan invasion theory of India, as we have seen, was proposed in order to account for the similarities in the Indo-European
family of languages. This theory can be analyzed as consisting of three hypotheses. The first is the notion that there was an ancestral
language to all the present-day Indo-European languages called proto-Indo-European which was originally spoken by a small group
of people called Aryans. The second is that these Aryans originally occupied a homeland outside of India. The third hypothesis
proposes that they invaded India in 1500 BCE with the Vedas supposedly documenting the defeat of the "short, black, noseless"
natives by the "tall, blue-eyed, fair-skinned" Aryans. Thus we see that though long accepted as fact, the Aryan invasion theory of
India is a series of unproved hypotheses. The evidence described in this article shows that the third hypothesis (invasion in 1500
BCE) is wrong. Shrikant Talageri accepts only the first hypothesis and further believes that India is the original homeland of the
Aryans from where they took the language family to Europe.(FN46) Another possibility that occurs to me is that perhaps there was
an Aryan homeland outside India but that the Aryans came into India at a very early date well before the seventh millennium BCE
5
at which time we already have evidence of cattle husbandry and agriculture at Mehrgarh. I leave it for further work to decide
between these and possibly other theories which seek to explain the origin of the Indo-European languages. At the present state of
research the provenance of the Aryans is a matter for hypothesis not certitude.
Much more work needs to be done to fill in the details. The question then is what can be done to improve the world history texts. I
would suggest that they leave out old incorrect ideas such as a massacre at Mohenjodaro. They should leave out references to race
and color with respect to ancient Indian history and as an explanation of the caste system. And if authors wish to present the Aryan
invasion theory they should explain the evidence for and against it instead of simply stating it as fact. The fragmentary evidence is
susceptible to more than one interpretation. The Aryan invasion theory is just that; a theory.
The central event in the twentieth century is certainly the second world war and the Holocaust perpetrated by the "Aryans" of Nazi
Germany. The Nazis were influenced in their ideology by the work of scholars such as Max Müller who produced the "racial theory
of Indian civilization." As we have seen, many of the distinguished historians who have authored the texts reviewed in this article
have repeated the erroneous theories of the same scholars. When even the best-informed hold such opinions, surely the picture of
Aryans in the popular mind is much in need of correction.
Added material.
Padma Manian.
De Anza College.
The author would like to acknowledge Richard Snyder, William Pemberton, and Jess Hollenback, all from the University of
Wisconsin, La Crosse, and David Fahey from Miami University, Ohio, for reading the manuscript and providing valuable
suggestions.
FOOTNOTES1. L. S. Stavrianos, A Global History: From Prehistory to the Present, 6th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice Hall, 1995); Peter N Stearns, Michael Adas, and Stuart B. Schwartz, World Civilizations: The Global Experience, vol. 1,
2nd ed. (New York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1996); William McNeill, A History of the Human Community: Prehistory
to 1500, vol. 1, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Simon & Schuster, 1997); Anthony Esler, The Human Venture: The
Great Enterprise: A World History to 1500, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1992); Kevin Reilly, The West
and the World: A History of Civilization, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1989); Richard Greaves et al, Civilizations
of the World: The Human Adventure, vol. 1, To the Late 1600s, 3rd ed. (New York: Longman, 1997); Walter Wallbank et al,
Civilization: Past & Present, vol. 1, To 1774, 8th ed. (New York: Harper Collins, 1996); Stanley Chodorow et al, The Mainstream
of Civilization to 1500, 6th ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Press, 1994); and John McKay, Bennett Hill, and John Buckler, A
History of World Societies, vol. 1, To 1715, 4th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).
2. Reilly, The West, pp. 61, 69; Stavrianos, A Global, pp. 66, 58; and Esler, The Human, pp. 72.
3. Greaves et al, Civilizations of the World, p. 51.
4. Chodorow et al, The Mainstream, p. 146.
5. Wallbank et al, Civilization, p. 108.
6. Stearns et al, World Civilizations, pp. 51, 52.
7. Wallbank et al, Civilization, p. 27; Reilly, The West, p. 8; Stavrianos, A Global, p. 61; Chodorow et al, The Mainstream, p. 8;
McKay et al, A History, p. 30; Esler, The Human, p. 72; and Greaves et al, Civilizations of the World, p. 52.
8. Stavrianos, A Global, p. 66.
9. Stearns et al, World Civilizations, p. 54.
10. Esler, The Human, p. 73; Wallbank et al, Civilization, p. 108, and Chodorow et al, The Mainstream, p. 146.
11. Reilly, The West, p. 61.
12. Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 37-52.
13. Ibid., pp. 172-78.
14. Navaratna S. Rajaram, The Politics of History: Aryan Invasion Theory and the Subversion of Scholarship (New Delhi: Voice
of India, 1995), pp. 91-96.
15. Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (London: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 14.
16. Trautmann, Aryans (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), p. 4.
17. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Civilizations of the Indus Valley and Beyond (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966), p. 83.
18. Stavrianos, A Global, p. 61.
19. V. Gordon Childe, The Aryans: A Study of Indo-European Origins (1926; reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970),
p. 212.
20. Jim G. Shaffer, "Indus Valley, Baluchistan and the Helmand Drainage (Afghanistan)," in Chronologies in Old World
Archaeology, vol, 2, 3rd ed., ed. Robert W. Ehrich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 441-64.
21. Ibid., p. 441.
22. Stearns et al, World Civilizations, p. 51.
23. Shaffer, "The Indo-Aryan Invasions: Cultural Myth and Archaeological Reality," in The People of South Asia: The Biological
Anthropology of India, Pakistan, and Nepal, ed. John R. Luckacs (New York: Plenum Press, 1984), p. 84.
24. Renfrew, Archaeology and Language, p. 77.
25. Ibid., pp. 182, 196.
26. Kenneth R. Kennedy, "Skulls, Aryans, and Flowing Drains: The Interface of Archaeology and Skeletal Biology in the Study of
the Harappan Civilization," in Harappan Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, ed. Gregory L. Possehl (New Delhi: Oxford
and IBH Publishing Co., 1982), p. 291.
27. Esler, The Human, p. 72.
28. Kennedy, "Skulls," 291.
29. Robert H. Dyson, Jr., "Paradigm Changes in the Study of the Indus Civilization" in Harappan, ed. Possehl, p. 422.
6
30. Trautmann, Aryans; Shaffer and Diane A. Lichtenstein, "The Concepts of 'cultural tradition and 'palaeoethnicity in South Asian
archaeology" in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, ed. G. Erdosy (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter), 127-8; Rajaram and Frawley, Vedic "Aryans.".
31. Trautmann, Aryans, pp. 211-216.
32. Navaratna S. Rajaram and David Frawley, Vedic "Aryans" and the Origins of Civilization (New Delhi: Voice of India, 1995),
p. 27.
33. Trautmann, Aryans, p. 210; and Frawley, Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization (Salt Lake City, UT:
Passage Press, 1991), pp. 261-62.
34. Trautmann, Aryans, p. 211.
35. Rajaram and Frawley, Vedic "Aryans," p. 23.
36. A. L. Basham, The Wonder that was India: A Survey of the Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent before the Coming of the
Muslims (New York: Glove Press, 1954), p. 37; and Frawley, Gods, p. 252.
37. Stavrianos, A Global, pp. 66, 116.
38. Rajaram and Frawley, Vedic "Aryans," p. 49.
39. Basham, The Wonder, p. 32.
40. Rajaram and Frawley, Vedic "Aryans," pp. 98-99.
41. Shaffer and Lichtenstein, "The Concepts," 126-30.
42. Ibid.
43. Jean-Francois Jarrige and Richard H. Meadow, "The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley," Scientific American 243,
no. 2 (August 1980): 122-133 and Jarrige, "Excavations at Mehrgarh: Their Significance for Understanding the Background of the
Harappan Civilization," in Harappan, ed. Possehl, pp. 79-84.
44. Shaffer and Lichtenstein, "The Concepts.".
45. Rajaram and Frawley, Vedic "Aryans," p. 143.
46. Shrikant G. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion: A Reappraisal (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1993).
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