Perusing a religion board I visit, I ran into a thread that had trainwrecked which began with an interesting premise: Max Muller’s theory that the dominant culture of India is largely the product of Indo-European (“Indo-Aryan”) migration, combined with probable conquest of the previous indigenes, is now rejected. Linkie poo.
Let’s note quickly that “Indo-Aryan” has nothing to do with Nazi or white-supremacist use of the terms, but refers to the branch of the Indo-European language family that occupies north and central India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, comprising the majority of India’s population and nearly all of the other two countries’, along with the “classic” Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanisads.
I suspect there’s a GQ immersed in this about how far to take the Muller theory and the revisionist view. But it sounds like it’s a hot topic for debate on cultural origins, so I’m throwing it here in GD for discussion on what seems reasonable to believe about the origins of Indian culture. I’d particularly like to see what xash, Tamerlane, Johanna, and a few others with some background knowledge about Indian culture and its origins, have to say about it.
That BBC link sounds like it’s written by someone from the Sangh, especially the ‘Dangers of the Theory’. I know that the Aryan influx theory is out of favor, but that link is bad.
The “lite” version of this ideology simply holds that India was the home of a highly advanced early civilization. For example, see Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts, the chapter on Varanasi. I have no problem with that as far as it goes, we know that India enjoyed a very early civilization in the Indus Valley and beyond. Where I part company with the Hindutva ideologues is they say the Indus Valley was an Aryan civilization from the start, while I think it was Dravidian, which the evidence of ancient linguistics points to. Civilization arose in India at a time prior to when Aryans were there. Regardless of how they got there. They are Johnny Come Latelys.
The Hindutva rejection of any form of Aryan incursion from outside India forces them to posit the origin of the Indo-European language family within India, from which it spread to Central Asia, Iran, and Europe. Competence in Indo-European studies will tell you that an Indian origin for IE cannot hold water. This point collapses first and calls the rest of their prehistoric ideology into question.
What troubles me the most about this ideology is the way it’s being used to serve a violent, intolerant, fascistic, Hindu fundamentalist political movement. It is not Godwinesque of me to compare this to Nazi racial ideology; one of the Hindutva nationalist leaders, Bal Thackery, cheerfully stated he was deliberately emulating Hitler and Nazism to purge his society of undesirable minorities. This is the ideology of hate that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. The RSS organization that plotted Gandhi’s death and the VHP are influential in the current ruling party, the BJP. However, Mr. Vajpayee mostly turned out to be a pragmatic ruler who reined in the worst extremes of his party. Still, I find it alarming that fascist political fundamentalism has grown in power so much, it gives me the major creeps. Minorities, liberated women, and leftists are liable to violent attack from RSS goons.
The real problem here is that there are groups of people on both sides who take a statement like “Indo-Europeans migrated into South Asia” in order support all kinds of irrelevant value judgments, such as whether “civilisation” (to take an extreme example) was invented by Indians or by Europeans.
Euro-chauvinists take the line that shows that the Aryan invasion shows that all good things came from white Europeans. Indo-chauvinists take the line that if you buy the Aryan invasion theory, you’re being duped by Euro-chauvinists.
Simply put, the Aryan invasion theory is largely based on linguistic evidence and largely has linguistic, and not other, consequences.
The linguistic evidence is clear – Indo-European languages moved into the Indian subcontinent from central Asia and largely displaced Dravidian languages, which were pushed into the southern part of the subcontinent, but was left in isolate pockets throughout the rest of the subcontinent. Similarly, Indo-European languages moved into Persia and Europe, largely displacing other language groups there.
There has been no discrediting of this theory.
But it’s an excruciating argument to try to make to some people. (“This evidence can be read to show that Indo-Europeans came from India and from there moved into central Asia then into Europe.” Aggh.)
From all that I’ve read on it, I think the usual old location of proto-Indo-Europeans in the steppes of southern Russia is probably still the best guess. The nature of nomadic steppe culture being what it is, they could have easily ranged west into Hungary and east all through Kazakhstan into Dzungaria and Xinjiang, if there were no populations further west or east to check their movements. The Altai region on the borders of Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Siberia may have been the proto-Turkic Urheimat.
This is only speculation, but I would bet that proto-Indo-European nomadism may have extended to central Kazakhstan. Or I may be too influenced by the archaeological and historical features of the Scythians, an ancient Indo-European steppe nomad people in about the same area. My guess as to what the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably looked like is modern Iranians or Tajiks. The Scythians spoke an Iranian language too. I may be influenced by having an Iranian bias, but the Tajiks are the only Indo-European people I can think of who are apparently aboriginal or indigenous where they are, Central Asia, the only IE people who didn’t displace somebody else. The ancestors of the Tajiks have apparently been there as long as anyone has been there. I don’t just mean the area of modern Tajikistan, but what is now Uzbekistan too, Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan. Ancient Bactria and Sogdiana.
What is the consensus regarding the displacement of the Dravidian speaking peoples of the Indus River Valley? My understanding of the standard theory is that the Dravidian speaking peoples were displaced by Sanskrit speaking people from the north (Aryans), forcing them into the Indian subcontinent. However, I have heard of another theory that the Dravidian speaking peoples abandoned the Indus River Valley; the Sanskrit speaking peoples later migrated into the Indus River Valley. In essence, there was no forced displacement of the Dravidian speaking peoples.
My understanding is that recent archeological evidience suggests the later theory rather than the standard theory, but I could be mistaken. Thoughts?
The latest timelines suggest that the Indus Valley Civilization declined before Aryans were in the picture. Harappan culture is thought to have declined c. 1900 BC, and Aryans in India from c. 1500 BC. I don’t take that to mean all the Dravidian population packed up and moved out of the area. It meant the area was less well organized, making it easier for foreigners to move in and become the dominant culture. As for “what happened” to the Dravidian-speaking inhabitants, apparently their descendants lived on as castes that were mixed more or less with Aryans. In Bengal the population speaks an Aryan language, but the people are mainly descended from Dravidian ethnic stock. There are still two Dravidian languages spoken in Bengal: Kurux and Malto. In Tamil Nadu, where everyone is Dravidian-speaking, there is a Brahmin caste that is the result of Aryan cultural influx (not conquest); they probably have some Aryan ancestry, but they speak their own sociolect of Tamil.
In classical Sanskrit geography the the five Dravidian nations were listed as Andhra, Karnataka, Gujarat, Telangana, and Maharashtra. Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are the names of Dravidian-speaking states in modern India too. Telangana is a northern area of Andhra Pradesh, which gave its name to the Telugu language. But note Gujarat and Maharashtra are today Aryan-speaking lands. Study of linguistic archaeology shows that prehistoric Dravidian languages were spoken in those western areas of India, and as well farther northwest, in Sindh where the Indus Valley Civilization had flourished, and beyond in adjoining areas of Afghanistan and Iran.
I think what complicates matters is that there’s no clear explanation for the decline of the Indus River Valley civilization circa 1900 BC. At least, that’s my understanding - unless, of course, there’s been recent archaeological evidence to suggest a clear explanation. Possibly climatological?
As to the origins of Indian culture (can it even be properly called as such from a historical perspective; that is, can a distinct Indian culture be dated with some precision like China - Han Dynasty?), my understanding is that, with respect to the history of Hinduism, there were elements of both Aryan and Dravidian cultures present that evolved into what is known as Hinduism today (with elements of Aryan culture playing a greater role in other realms - like the structure of society).
The explanation I’ve heard is that riverbeds shifted or dried up, making agriculture more difficult. Wiki says the decline began around 1900 BC and by 1900 BC “most of the cities were abandoned.”
The speculation for the reason why involved climate change, as you said, as well as a tectonic event that shifted riverbeds. The bottom line was agriculture would have become more difficult.
“Decline” of a civilization does tend to lead to some depopulation, but as in the case of the Maya closer to our own times, it doesn’t mean everyone packs up and leaves. I surmise even after the cities were abandoned, farmers in the area kept on farming, albeit under less than optimal conditions. Without cities, they would have lacked big enough markets to trade enough to become wealthy, meaning architecture, art, communication, and civic organization suffered. No more international trade as in the heyday of the IVC. Subsistence farming with only local chieftains as authorities. If bands of nomads decided to move in next to your farming village, there wouldn’t be a lot you could do about it.
Max Müller’s model was conflict and conquest. The modern reaction to it stresses gradual, peaceful settlement as the means for introducing a new population and new culture to the area. I consider over a period of a few centuries as word spreads that there’s lots of land in India for the taking and more and more bands of Aryan nomads move in, the process may not have been entirely free of conflict, but the indigenous people lacked a unified state and could not put up serious resistance.
What we know today as Hinduism is composed of many layers superimposed. The standard definition of a Hindu is one who “accepts the authority of the Vedas.” I think this definition was formed as such to distinguish Hindus from Jains and Buddhists, who do not accept the authority of the Vedas. To this day, Brahmins continue to chant Vedic texts in their services. But apart from that, I doubt how much direct influence the Vedas have on contemporary Hindu belief and practice. The popular deities of today, like Shiva and Shakti, and their son Ganesha, are not in the Vedas.
Shiva has been identified with a Vedic deity named Rudra, though the character of Shiva as we know him derives more from pre-Aryan mythology. The name Shiva is probably derived from a Dravidian language; compare Tamil cem ‘red’, cevvai ‘Mars the Red Planet’, cevvi ‘beauty, gracefulness, elegance’, and red is a symbolic color meaning auspicious, Shiva being an auspicious deity. Red being the color of blood, hence of the life force, it’s used in Tamil to form epithets for deities, e.g. Cenkanan Vishnu, Cenkamalai Lakshmi (literally ‘red lotus’, since the abode of the goddess Lakshmi is a red lotus), cenkatu, a place sacred to Shiva, and Cevvel, Skanda, a son of Shiva. The word cekkar ‘redness’ is an epithet of Shiva. The primitive root of all these words in Tamil is ce- which conveys the basic idea of redness.
The Mother Goddess, known under so many forms and names, is clearly of pre-Aryan origin, as are the cults of Shaktism and Tantrism. These traditions from popular religion slowly were taken up by the dominant Hindu culture until the Vedas themselves, still considered the foundational texts of Hinduism, are eclipsed in actual importance by the survivals of pre-Aryan religion.
Good point - if I remember correctly, there was some similar rationale posited for the Maya, until it became clear via the archaeological evidence that their decline was largely a result of internal strains caused by environmental degredation done by the Mayans themselves.
Makes sense given that for Muller’s model there wasn’t any convincing evidence of conflict and conquest.
So Hindutva ideology continues to beat the dead straw horseman, to mix metaphors. All I hear is attacks on Müller’s outdated 19th century theories, which were based more on interpretation of certain Vedic texts, rather than actual archaeological data. What response can they make to modern archaeology?
JFTR, lest I be accused of “hit-and-run” OP-ing, I’ve been reading and learning.
Personally, my view is that it seems probable that “traditional Indian culture” evolved in situ, from an interreaction of the cultures living there, and that it doesn’t matter a whole whoop whether the predecessors of the majority/mostly-dominant group were invaders or what. Compare the U.K. and its culture mix for an excellent analogy.
It seems to me like you’re not taking sides in the debate? Or you just think the whole debate is daft?
I don’t get what you mean. Roman law and Anglo-Saxon law were different from each other, and both were different from that of the Celtic Britons that they invaded. I don’t think England would have the culture it has now if it hadn’t been invaded by Angle and Saxon foreigners. In fact, it wouldn’t even be England.
As for the name of India, it comes from the province of Sindh, and the river Indus (sindhu), whose origin was the proto-Dravidian name *cintu meaning ‘date palm’. The ancient Persians gave the whole country the name Hind because when they entered the Indian subcontinent from Iran, Sindh was one of the first areas they found.
I was going to say that’s a really indigenous name, but Dravidian languages themselves came to India from outside, much earlier than the Aryan languages. Dravidian languages probably came from Afghanistan way back in prehistory. The real indigenous languages of India are the Munda languages like Santal, Birhor, and Ho. Their speakers were marginalized early by Dravidian and Aryan influxes, and now the languages are spoken only by a few hill and forest tribes. As a branch of the Austroasiatic language family, Munda languages are distantly related to Mon-Khmer and Vietnamese. I’ve found several cognates between them. For example, ‘one’ is mit in Santal and môt in Vietnamese. ‘Two’ is bar in the Munda languages, and pir in Khmer. ‘Eye’ is met in Santal, mat in Mon, and mát in Vietnamese.