Aryan race

The word Aryan was originally used in various Indo-Iranian languages with a meaning roughly similar to "noble" or "honorable", and was sometimes used by the speakers of these languages to refer to themselves.

In the 19th century, the term was used a synonym for "Indo-European" and also more restrictively, to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages, and later arose a nation propagated most assiduously by the Conte de Gobineau and later by his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain, of an "Aryan race", those who spoke Indo-European languages.

Since then the word has also been used by various European and Indian nationalist and racist movements, most notably in the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) Party, to refer to a supposed "master race" claimed to consist of those of Northern European descent.

Largely because of this association with Nazi and imperialist racism the word "Aryan" is now somewhat, much like the Hindu symbol of the swastika, tainted and considered taboo in European and North American culture. However because it continues to be in use by many non-racists, especially in South Asia and Iran, one should never assume that the term "Aryan" appearing by itself necessarily denotes racism or white supremacy.

Support for the superiority of the Aryan race is sometimes referred to as Aryanism. This should not be confused with the unrelated religious belief known as Arianism.

Origin of the concept

The word Arya first appears in the Sanskrit Vedas around 2000 BCE, with the meaning of "noble person". The word is attested in Old Persian inscriptions and other Persian sources from c. 500 BC onwards that refer to an Aryan lineage or nation. The word Iran is derived from the word Aryan. India is also referred to as Aryavarta, which means "the Land of Aryans". Modern Iranians consider their ethnicity and stock as being Aryan, and about 70% of South Asians are considered to be Aryan, the other 30% being Dravidian.

The idea of the "Aryan race", however, as a strictly ethnic intepretation of the word that extended to Europeans, arose when linguists identified the Sanskrit and Avestan language as the oldest known relatives of all the major European languages, including Latin, Greek, the Germanic, Celtic and Slavic languages. They argued that all of these languages originated from a common root - spoken by an ancient people who must have been the ancestors of all the European, Iranian, and North Indian peoples.

These hypothetical ancestors were at first given the name Aryans by linguists, despite the fact that the word was never attested in any European sources. From this point the term "Aryan" came to mean something similar to "white European" — although excluding the Jewish and Arab peoples and including the inhabitants of Persia and India. In modern times, however, the word is not used by linguists or ethnologists to describe this group, who now prefer the more neutral Indo-European. The only remaining common use of the word in linguistics is in the name of the Indo-Aryan language sub-family.

The culture of the Aryans

It is generally accepted that the cultures of ancient Persia and India have common roots, and that that common ancestor was in turn a descendent of the original proto-Indo-European culture. Elements of the original Aryan culture included the worship of the gods Indra, Varuna, Agni, and Mithra, and the ritualistic use of a possibly hallucinogenic drink called Soma, extracted from an unknown plant. However, as groups separated and migrated, these religious practices diverted changed. Eventually the Persian Zoroastrian and Indian Vedic faiths emerged from the primal Aryan belief-system, and the ancestral Aryan gods gave rise to different pantheons.

Imperialist, nationalistic and Nazi uses of the term

During the 19th century, it was commonly believed that the Aryan race originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day Russia, what was formerly a part of Persia, and including the Caucasus Mountains. The Persian Steppe theory of Aryan origins was not the only one circulating during the nineteenth century, however. Many German scholars argued that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany or Scandinavia, or at least that in those countries the original Aryan ethnicity had been preserved. It was widely believed in that the Vedic Aryans were ethnically identical to the Goths, Vandals and other ancient Germanic peoples of the Völkerwanderung. This idea was often intertwined with anti-semitic ideas. The distinctions between the "Aryan" and "Semitic" peoples were based linguistic and ethnic history of the ancient world. In this way Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within "Aryan" societies, and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of civilization's downfall by Nazi and Pre-Nazi theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. During this time Arthur de Gobineau became read around Europe. A complete, and highly speculative and racist theory of Aryan and anti-Syrian, anti-Semitic, and anti-Jewish history can be found in Rosenberg's publication, "Race and Race History". The details of ancient history in this novel are very well researched, but the conclusions made by Rosenberg require great leaps in logic. But the academic nature of such works was very effective in spreading Aryan supremist theories among German intellectuals in the early 19th century, especially after the first World War.

In India, under the British Empire, the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian caste system. Because many modern European languages are of the Indo-European language family, as is Sanskrit, British colonialists used this as a justification for their rule of India. They claimed that the Aryans were “white” people who had invaded India in ancient times, subordinating the dark skinned native Dravidian peoples, who were pushed to the south. They also sought to divide the society by caste by claiming that Aryans had established themselves as the dominant castes, who were traditionally the scholars of the intellectually sophisticated Vedic writings of the Hindu faith. Much of these theories were simply conjecture on the part of European imperialism, as there is nothing in the ancient Indian literature to suggest that caste had any kind of racial basis. There is also no record in the vast corpus of ancient Indian texts of people with "white" racial features, and archaeological findings show that the inhabitants of the region had much the same racial features as the current population. All discussion of Aryan or Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, but does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, most commonly Tamils, claim that the worship of Shiva is a distinct Dravidian religion, to be distinguished from Brahminical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist Hindutva movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, arguing that Vedic beliefs emerged from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is generally supposed to have pre-dated the advent of the supposed Aryans in India. See also: Aryan Invasion Theory

These debates also led to the Theosophical movement founded by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott at the end of the nineteenth century. This was an early kind of New Age philosophy, that took inspiration from Indian culture, in particular from the Hindu reform movement the Arya Samaj founded by Swami Dayananda. Blavatsky named the fifth root race (out of seven root races) the Aryan Race or Aryans. She thought that the Aryans originally came from Atlantis and described the Aryan races with the following words: "The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis." (Secret Doctrine, vol.II, p.249). Blavatsky used the term "Root Race" mainly as a technical term to describe the large time periods in her cosmology. However, her use of terms like "Aryan Race" and "Root Race" was not connected to fascist or racialist ideas, she believed in a Universal Brotherhood of humanity and wrote that "all men have spiritually and physically the same origin" and that "mankind is essentially of one and the same essence." (The Key to Theosophy, Section 3)

Guido von List (and his followers such as Lanz von Liebenfels) later took up these ideas, falsifying and mixing this ideology with nationalistic and fascist ideas. Such views also fed into the development of Nazi ideology.

These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a "master race" of people of northern European descent, going to extreme and violent lengths to "maintain the purity" of this race through a far-reaching eugenics program (including anti-miscegenation legislation, compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutionalized mentally ill as part of a euthanasia program, and eventually the systematic targeting of Jews, Gypsies, and Homosexuals in the Holocaust). This usage now has nearly no meaning outside of Nazi or Neo-Nazi ideology.

Quotations

"I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar." Max Müller

"I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects." - JRR Tolkien, responding to a German publisher who was inquiring about the possibility of printing a German translation of The Hobbit.

External links

The Aryans in a historical context
ÂRYÂ (ARYAN) Philology of Ethnic Epithet of Iranian Peoples
Aryans
The myth of the "Aryan tribe" (nornirsaett.de)