For the Bollywood movie called Aryan, see Aryan (movie).

Aryan is an English word derived from the Indian Vedic Sanskrit and Iranian Avestan terms ari-, arya-, ārya-, and/or the extended form aryāna-. The Sanskrit and Old Persian languages both pronounced the word as arya-. Beyond its use as the ethnic self-designation of the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the meaning "noble" has been attached to it in Sanskrit and Persian.

Etymology

Indo-Iranian arya- descends from PIE *ar-yo-, a yo-adjective to a root *ar "to assemble skillfully", present in Greek harma "chariot", Latin ars "art" etc.

In later times "Arya" referred to Indo-Iranian holy Kings and holy warriors raja, kshatriya or Shah and thus "nobles" or of the "nobility" the protectors of Dharma.

In the Rig Veda: 1:51

8 Discern thou well Aryas and Dasyus;

9 Indra gives up the lawless to the devout man, destroying by the Strong Ones those who have no strength.

Here it tells us to discern the true Aryan, the Aryan is a devout man who follows the Aryan holy laws and so is victorious. The Dasyu is akin to the "unbeliever" and undevout.

The important Sanskrit lexicon Amarakosha (c. 450) defines Arya as: "An Arya is one who hails from a noble family, of gentle behavior and demeanor, good-natured and of righteous conduct. (महाकुल कुलीनार्य सभ्य सज्जन साधवः)" However it does earlier seem to have been used to identify certain populations in distinction from others, in particular those clans who accepted proto-Vedic and proto-Zoroastrian beliefs.

Origins

By the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, Indo-Aryans are believed to have arrived on the Iranian plateau and the Indian subcontinent (see Indo-Aryan migration). Indeed, the term Iran – in full Iran Shahr – is the modern outcome of an ancient Aryānām Xšaθra- meaning "realm of the Aryans." Similarly, Northern India was referred to as Aryavarta in ancient times. The Aryan, or Indo-Iranian group of languages is divided into three branches: Indo-Aryan, Nuristani, and Iranian. In Middle Persian, we find the term "Aryāna-" as "Ērān" and in Modern Persian as "Īrān." However, there is much speculation as to origins of the Aryans as the land they supposedly entered first Indus Valley Civilization and their scripts remain undeciphered.

Aryans: Religious Initiates

The Hindu usage of the term "Aryan" has its roots in a tribe of people who received initiation of the Navjote in Zoroastrianism or Vedic upanayanam. In Vedic Hinduism the Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishyas who recieved this initiation were also called 'Aryan.' This allowed them to attain spiritual perfection and self mastery. When an Aryan was called "pure", it

In the Vedic religion, those who no longer received this initiation from Brahmin priests were considered "fallen" and were no longer considered "Aryan". This led to various movements like Buddhism and Jainism whose converts were also called 'Aryan' due to their purification rites through practice of meditation, self control and acts of virtue.

Collectively modern Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Jainism are sometimes termed Aryan religions, as conversion and initiation into them allows one to become Aryan or Noble.

Uncertain Linguistic Derivations

The adjective *aryo- was suggested as ascending to Proto-Indo-European as the self-designation of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European itself, and Éire, the Irish name of Ireland, was considered a cognate. It was also suggested that the Greek word "aristos", as in "aristocracy" and other words such as "heir" and "ehre" (German for "honour") were related to it, but these are now widely regarded as untenable, and while *ar-yo- is certainly a well-formed PIE adjective, there is no evidence that it was used as an ethnic self-designation outside the Indo-Iranian branch. In the 1850s Max Müller theorized that the word originated as a denotation of farming populations, since he thought it likely that it was related to the root *arh₃, meaning "to plough". Other 19th century writers, such as Charles Morris, repeated this idea, linking the expansion of PIE speakers to the spread of agriculturalists. Most linguists now consider *arh₃ to be unrelated.

Indo-Iranian

Main article: Indo-Iranians.

The most probable date for Proto-Indo-Iranian unity is roughly around 2500 BC. In this sense of the word Aryan, the Aryans were an ancient culture preceding both the Vedic and Iranian cultures. Candidates for an archaeological identification of this culture are the Andronovo and/or Srubnaya Archaeological Complexes.

Indo-Aryan

See also Arya, Indo-Aryans, Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan migration, Aryan invasion theory.

There is evidence of speakers of Indo-Aryan in Mesopotamia around 1500 BC in the form of loanwords in the Mitanni dialect of Hurrian, the speakers of which, it is speculated, may have once had an Indo-Aryan ruling class. The Indo-Aryans inhabiting northern India, the bearers of the Vedic civilization are sometimes called Vedic Aryans.

Contemporary speakers of Indo-Aryan languages are spread over most of the northern Indian Subcontinent. The only Indo-Aryan branch surviving outside the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas is the Romani language, the language of the Roma people.

Iranian

See also Iranian peoples, Iranian languages, Achaemenid dynasty

Since ancient times, Persians (Iranians) used the term Aryan to describe their lineage and their language, and this tradition has continued into the present day amongst modern Iranians. In fact, the name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and means "Land of the Aryans."

Darius the Great, King of Persia (521–486 BC), in an inscription in Naksh-i Rustam (near Shiraz in present-day Iran), proclaims: "I am Darius the great King… A Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage..". He also calls his language the "Aryan language," commonly known today as Old Persian.

The word has become a technical term in the theologies of Zoroastrianism, but

The term remains also a frequent element in modern Persian personal names, including Arya (a boy's name), Aryana (a common surname), Iran-dokht (Aryan daughter), Aryanpur (or Aryanpour), Aryaramne, among many others.

Linguistic Terminology

During the 19th century, following Max Müller's 'Aryan invasion theory', the term gained an added meaning, being used in the West to refer to what are now called the 'Proto-Indo-Europeans', and, by extension, to the Indo-European speaking peoples as a whole. In linguistics, the term Aryan currently refers only to the Indo-Iranian language sub-family.

The Proto-Indo-Iranian language evolved into the family of Indo-Iranian languages, of which the oldest-known members are Avestan, Vedic, and another Indo-Aryan language, known only from loan-words found in the Mitanni language.

To prevent confusion because of its several meanings, the term is often avoided today in the Western World. It has been replaced by the well-defined Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian, Indo-Iranian, Iranian or Indo-Aryan terms.

Proto-Indo-European

Max Müller and other 19th century linguists (see also Indo-European studies) theorised that the term *arya was used as the self-description of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

The nomadic Iranians of the north western steppes, however, especially those settled in Europe, are extensively covered by the classical writers; they are also attested in a very large number of archaeological excavations in Eastern Europe; these Iranian peoples are known in the West as Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, and finally Ossets; it must be emphasised that all these names refer to the successive migratory waves of the same people, who probably called themselves by a name derived from the word Airya, as the Alans did, and the Ossets still do.

Indo-European

In the 19th century the term "Aryan" was used as shorthand for "Indo-European", even though many of the writers who adopted this usage accepted that it was not strictly accurate, given that the term was unattested in western branches of the languages. Because of ethnolinguistic arguments about connections between peoples and cultural values, "Aryan" peoples were often considered to be distinct from Semitic peoples. By the end of the nineteenth century this usage was so common that "Aryan" was often used as a synonym for "gentile". This usage was particularly common in Germany. Among White supremacists the term still sometimes functions as a synonym for non-Jewish "white person".

Racist connotations

Main article: Aryan race

The Aryan race was a term used in the nineteenth century by European racial theorists who believed strongly in the division of humanity into biologically distinct races with differing characteristics. Such writers took the view that the Proto-Indo-Europeans consituted a specific race that had expanded across Europe, Iran and India. This meaning was, and still is, common in theories of racial superiority which were embraced by Nazi Germany. This usage tends to merge the Avestan/Sanskrit meaning of "noble" or "elevated" with the idea of distinctive ancestral ethnicity marked by language distribution. In this interpretation, the Aryan Race is both the highest representative of mankind and the purest descendent of the Proto-Indo-European population.

From the 1880s a number of writers had argued that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had been of "Nordic" race. This idea was taken up by the Nazis. According to Alfred Rosenberg's ideology the "Aryan-Nordic" (arisch-nordisch) or "Nordic-Atlantean" (nordisch-atlantisch) race was thus a master race, at the top of a racial hierarchy, pitted against a "Jewish-Semitic" (jüdisch-semitisch) race, deemed to be a racial threat to Germany's homogeneous Aryan civilization, thus rationalizing Nazi anti-Semitism. Nazism portrayed their interpretation of an "Aryan race" as the only race capable of, or with an interest in, creating and maintaining culture and civilizations, while other races are merely capable of conversion, or destruction of culture. These arguments derived from late nineteenth century racial hierarchies. Some Nazis were also influenced by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888) where she postulates "Aryans" as the fifth of her "Root Races", dating them to about a million years ago, tracing them to Atlantis, an idea also repeated by Rosenberg, and held as doctrine by the Thule Society. Such theories were used to justify the introduction of the so-called "Aryan laws" by the Nazis, depriving "non-Aryans" of citizenship and employment rights, and prohibiting marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans. Though Mussolini's fascism was not originally characterised by explicit anti-Semitism, he too eventually introduced laws pressed upon him by Hitler, prohibiting mixed-race marriages between "Aryans" and Jews.

Because of historical racist use of Aryan, and especially use of Aryan race in connection with the myths and propaganda of Nazism, the word is sometimes avoided in the West as being tainted, in the same manner as the swastika symbol.In the English language, the use of the word "Aryan" when referring to an ethnic group or race (or even a linguistic group) is no longer in technical use and is sometimes considered unacceptable because of the Nazi associations. In India the term continues to be used.

According to Michael Witzel in his paper Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts, "the use of the word Arya or Aryan to designate the speakers of all Indo-European (IE) languages or as the designation of a particular race is an aberration of many writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and should be avoided."

See also

• Aryan race
• Aryanization
• Aryavarta
• History of Iran
• History of India
• History of Pakistan
• History of Afghanistan
• India
• Iran
• Indo-Iranians
• Japhetic
• Kurgan
• Kushan Empire
• Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Indo-Europeans
• Vedic Civilization
• Tocharians

Notes and references