Krishna' (<i>kr.s.n.a</i>) , as your Sanskrit-English dictionary will tell you, means black’. The god (not Hindu gods in general) is traditionally painted in dark blue. Why? To avoid confusion with Dravidians?
Another question is why the international Krsna cult paints him in <b>pastel</b> blue.
I suspect that he’s refering to the observation that the old fashioned 19th century ideas of blond Aryans sweeping in Wagnerian invasions has been roundly critiqued. Of course that’s a little different than saying the Indo-Euro speakers never came.
First of all, I’m really impressed with Pez knowing about “Blamenn” unless of course her name is Lilja and she’s Icelandic, in that case: Hæ Lilja! 
Secondly I’ve always thought that certain Africans actually do look Blue. I have at least two African (not just black, I mean actual Africans) friends that I consider to look more blue than they look black, but then most Africans look brown to me.
— G. Raven
Collounsbury: Ah, I see - A confusion over the term “Aryan”. Yep, Hitler’s supermen likely weren’t operating in that part of the world 
.
An old professor of mine of Iranian origin ( who was, not incidentally, the color of my tea ) always used to mock-grumble “I’m as Aryan as they come - How come I never get invited to all those neo-Nazi rallies” .
About black people being called blue men - I accept Ruadh’s critique, but the devilish explanation is the only one in the market, and it seems a cogent one until something better comes along.
About Aryans - There is serious debate whether Aryans invaded India around 1500 BC. The invasion theory developed in the 19th century from language studies, but there is little archeological evidence. The theory developed before major discoveries in the Indus Valley / Mohenjo Daro / Harappa, since the 1920’s. They found a complex civilization easily capable of producing the roots of Indian / Hindu culture without help from an invasion. The invasion theory asks us to accept evidence of a complex civilization but to assume they left no cultural history behind them. It also asks us to believe in invaders who left a cultural history but little other evidence of their invasion. The new theory is that they were the same people, and no invasion happened around 1500 BC.
About Flood stories - The Ancient Greeks also had a story of a Flood. The god Zeus sent a flood, but Deucalion was warned and built a ship, in which he and his wife Pyrrha survived. They landed on the side of Mount Parnassus. Recent evidence suggests a catastrophic flood when the Mediterranean broke through into the modern Black Sea area. See National Geographic site for more - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html
Balor:Hmmm, again. Why posit an either/or scenario?
This seems quite reasonable and I wouldn’t dispute it ( don’t know enough to try, really 
). But the penetration of Indo-European language into the sub-continent seems significant. Any such invaders/immigrants ( probably invaders ) likely would have been nomadic and consequently not have been the source of much archaeological remains in of themselves. They may simply have arrived, conquered, and, as with the Mongols and some others, established themselves as a politically/socially dominant parasitic class on the settled society of Mohenjo Daro/Harappa, eventually being absorbed by that society. In other words, maybe the ONLY thing they transmitted to the sub-continent was their language ( or elements of it ).
There is certainly precedent - For example the words “Serb” and “Croat” appear to be Indo-Iranian in origin, not Slavic. The may have been the names of Scythian-related horse tribes that established a political leadership over the much larger Slavic groups that now bear those names. We can see in recorded history just such a progression with the Turkic Bulgars gradually being “Slavicized” by their subjects and losing their separate cultural identity.
This idea seems to be ill-founded.
There is no question but that the languages of modern Pakistan and northern India are Indo-European. The Harappan script is as yet undeciphered, and probably will always remain so; there is little doubt, though, that if it were Vedic Sanskrit, or some older Indo-Aryan, or even Indo-Iranian or Indo-European, dialect, it would be at least partially known by now, through the same cryptanalytic techniques that Ventris used to decipher Linear B.
I will agree that we must distinguish between those elements of classical Hindu civilization derived from Harappa and those brought by Indo-European invaders. The Vedas, in fact, picture a culture strongly different from both the urbanized Harappan and the later Hindu. Much of the latter (other than the language) appears to derive from the former, not from the invaders’ culture. OTOH, this is hardly a uncommon phenomenon in history.
Finally, I don’t think that anyone now seriously accepts the notion of Indo-Aryan invaders being the cause of the fall of the Harappan civilization. Rather, it seems to have been in serious decline already; the Indo-Aryans apparently both took advantage of that fact, and finished it off, much as Germanic invaders were much later to do the Western Roman Empire. The Indo-Aryans probably came to Gandhara and Sind in serious numbers about 1200 - 800 BCE (although there certainly could have been an earlier vanguard). Note that we also find an Indo-Aryan aristocracy among the essentially Hurrian Mitanni in Mesopotamia about 1500 BCE; the Indo-Aryans must have been on the move just ahead of the Iranians.
Akatsukami: Beat you to the punch . Pity I couldn’t do it as eloquently as you .
Very good points, which show why there is a debate.
I wanted to answer Ranger2099, that there is debate about the Aryan invasion of India, and to show why. I think we agree the situation is far more complex than the original Aryan invasion theory.
That 19th century theory was popular because it implied that Indian culture was not developed locally. Imperial Europeans could tell themselves that light-skinned cousins of theirs taught culture to what they saw as dumb natives. Because of this, it is linked a whole mess of racial and/or racist theories in India and in Europe/USA.
Most racist theories are based on simple views of history. In reality history is not simple but hugely complex, because it involves a hell of a lot of real people living real lives. Look around if you don’t believe me - our own lives are part of the future’s history.
Well, my main problem with the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is that it seems to completly negate South India’s effects on modern Indian culture, though the South seems to be just as culturally rich as the north, the main difference being that it has less of an Islamic influence. I also seem to have trouble believing that there is a significantly different “Dravidian” and “Aryan” race inhabiting the same continent. It also seems strange to me that a bunch of nomadic invaders could develop a language as intricate as Sanskrit (it is really hard to understand Sanskrit grammar). Generally, such a complex language would require that we had a complex system of writing and again, a nomadic civilization would have trouble developing such things simply because they are always on the move. I believe any difference seen between the north and south would simply be because of differing styles of art (Southern temples showed nudity which the muslims were quick to eliminate in the north, but far slower down south). The Europeans may have seen this and assumed that the south was distinctly “less civilized” than the north whose Islamic influence seemed more familiar and complied more with European/Judeo-Christian sensibilities.
Now that is utter and absolute balderdash. The most complex grammar on Earth belongs to a South American tribe with a culture almost impossible to tell from chimps. (They haven’t even developed hunting; they live on grubs dug out of rotting logs, supplemented by occasional stranded fish.)
If complexity of a language means anything that way (and it almost certainly doesn’t), it indicates a primitive culture, not the other way around.
And in any case, that Sanskrit is in the same family as Greek, Italic, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, etc., is as perfectly bloody obvious as that humans are more nearly related to the great apes than they are to starfish.
Well, just because the gramar is complex doesn’t mean that it is an elegant language. Sanskrit grammar is extremely tough, but it also makes the language extremely poetic. I have never heard of this South American tribe you talk about so I couldn’t compare, but I am willing to bet that since they seem to be below hunter-gatherers by your description, that they don’t have a form of writing either. Besides, the Vedic culture and Vedic philosophy is extremely, profoundly deep. Many of the philosophies in the Vedas are extremely profound, beyond the capabilities of the average nomadic tribesman to understand.
Plenty of people would say the same thing about the philosophy of a certain group of Semitic nomads.
But let that pass. No-one is saying that every element of North Indian culture came in with the Aryans. Just that the Aryans came in.
I saw an update on this SD classic, Is there really a race of blue people? - The Straight Dope, with Cecil’s comment: “Africans as seen by the Scots and the Irish. Unable to confirm use of this term.”
For Irish, it’s extremely easy to confirm, in fact, by consulting the National Terminology Database for Irish at focal.ie; the very first reference confirms the use of the term.
No worrying about regional dialects, Ireland has official language standards (“An Caighdeán Oifigiuil”), and certainly no need to go to the pub in search of enlightenment, as one silly comment above would have it. Sigh…
Frank, note that you are responding to a 13-year-old thread. Your link didn’t seem relevant, can you narrow it down somewhat?
Yes, of course, the thread is 13 years old, as you say. However the column Is there really a race of blue people? - The Straight Dope now appears on the front page of the Straight Dope.
One of the last questions on the topic was: “In Irish-Scottish Gaeilge (or Gaelic), people of African descent were historically referred to as the fir gorum [my insertion, “gorm” is the standardized spelling in Irish], or blue men”, and one of Cecil’s very last comments on the subject is: “Africans as seen by the Scots and the Irish. Unable to confirm use of this term”.
All I’m saying is that confirmation of the term as far as the Irish language is concerned is now very easy. Just tying up a loose end, if you will.
Of course I understand that online resources are better now than 13 years ago, but even when I went to school we had Irish dictionaries (and that was a lot more than 13 years ago), “fear gorm” was the standard term for a man with black skin. My Irish teacher was aware of the oddity of the expression and mentioned the South Coast of Ireland’s links with North Africa, copper mines, trading, Tuaregs, and so on but that’s really out there.
Frank, it’s not in dispute whether the term “gorm” is used, what seems to be is why “gorm” is used and not “dubh” and I think Ruadh explained it above concisely all those years ago.