Aryan
For the Hindu and Zoroastrian spiritual interpretation see Arya. For the Bollywood movie called Aryan, see Aryan (movie).Aryan () is an
English language word derived from the
Indian Vedas and
Iranian Avestan terms
ari-,
arya-,
ārya-, and/or the extended form
aryāna-. The
Old Persian and
Sanskrit languages both pronounced the word as
arya- () and aryan. Beyond its use as the ethnic self-designation of the
Proto-Indo-Iranians, the meaning
"noble/spiritual" has been attached to it in
Persian and
Sanskrit. In
linguistics, it is sometimes still used in reference to the
Indo-Iranian language family, but it is primarily restricted to the compound
Indo-Aryan, the
Indic subgroup of the Indo-Iranian branch.
Indo-Iranian
arya- descends from
PIE , a
yo-adjective to a root "to assemble skillfully", present in Greek
harma "chariot", Greek
aristos, (as in "
aristocracy"), Latin
ars "art", etc.
The adjective
*aryo- was suggested as ascending to Proto-Indo-European times as the self-designation of the speakers of the
Proto-Indo-European language itself. It was suggested that other words such as
Éire, the Irish name of
Ireland, and
ehre (German for "honour") were related to it, but these are now widely regarded as untenable, and while
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 , 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 to be unrelated.
The
Old Persian form of
*Aryāna- appears as
Æryānam Väejāh "Aryan Expanse" in
Avestan, in
Middle Persian as
'rān, and in
Modern Persian as
Īrān. Similarly, Northern India was referred to by the
tatpurusha Aryavarta "Arya-abode" in ancient times.
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 Avestan cultures. Candidates for an archaeological identification of this Indoiranian culture are the
Andronovo and/or
Srubnaya Archaeological Complexes.
In linguistics, the term
Aryan currently may be used to refer to the
Indo-Iranian language family. To prevent confusion because of its several meanings, the linguistic term is often avoided today. It has been replaced by the unambiguous terms
Proto-Indo-European,
Proto-Indo-Iranian,
Indo-Iranian,
Iranian and
Indo-Aryan.
The
Proto-Indo-Iranian language evolved into the family of
Indo-Iranian languages, of which the oldest-known members are
Avestan,
Vedic Sanskrit, and another Indo-Aryan language, known only from loan-words found in the
Mitanni language.
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.
The term "Aryan" is also commonly used as a girl's and boy's name in various Iranian and Indic languages . Whilst the surname Arya is categorized into the
Arora community (see
List of Arora last names).
Iranian
See also Iranian peoples, Iranian languages, Persian empire
Since ancient times, Persians have used the term Aryan
as a racial designation in an ethnic sense to describe their lineage and their language, and this tradition has continued into the present day amongst modern Iranians (Encyclopedia Iranica, p. 681, Arya
). In fact, the name Iran is a cognate of Aryan and means "Land of the Aryans.
" [The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000] [http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/february/indoIranianBranch.html] [http://imp.lss.wisc.edu/~aoliai/languagepage/iranianlanguages.htm]
Darius the Great, King of Persia (521"486 BC), in an inscription in Naqsh-e 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. According to the Encyclopedia Iranica, "the same ethnic concept was held in the later centuries" and was associated with "nobility and lordship." (p. 681)
The word has become a technical term in the theologies of Zoroastrianism, but has always been used by Iranians in the ethnic sense as well. In 1967, Iran's Pahlavi dynasty added the title Āryāmehr "Light of the Aryans
" to those of the monarch, known at the time as the Shahanshah (King of Kings
). Afghanistan's national airline is Ariana Airlines in reference to Airyanem Vaejah, the land of the original Iranian peoples.
The term also remains a frequent element in modern Persian personal names, including Arya
and Aryan (boy's and girl's name), Aryana
(a common surname), Iran-dokht
(Aryan daughter
, a girl's name), Aryanpour
(or Aryanpur
, a surname), Aryaramne'', among many others.
Sanskrit arya
According to
Paul Thieme (1938), the Vedic term
arya- in its earliest attestations has a meaning of "stranger", but "stranger" in the sense of "potential guest" as opposed to "barbarian" (
mleccha,
dasa), taking this to indicate that
arya was originally the ethnic self-designation of the Indo-Iranians.
Arya directly contrasts with
Dasa or
Dasyu in the
Rigveda (e.g. RV 1.51.8,
' "Discern thou well Aryas and Dasyus"). This situation is directly comparable to the term Hellene in Ancient Greece. The Middle Indic interjection ar"!, r"! "you there!" is derived from the vocative arí! "stranger!".
The Sanskrit lexicon Amarakosha (c. AD 450) defines Arya as ' "being of a noble family",
' "having gentle or refined behavior and demeanor", ' "being well-born and respectable", and
"being virtuous, honourable, or righteous". In Hinduism, the religiously initiated
Brahmin,
Kshatriya and
Vaishyas were
arya, a title of honor and respect given to certain people for noble behaviour. According to some sources, in Indian Vedas, the word Arya or Aryan, has never been used in an
ethnic or
racial sense. This word is still used by
Hindus,
Buddhists,
Jains and
Zoroastrians to mean
noble or
spiritual .
Max Müller and other
19th century linguists theorized that the term
*arya was used as the self-description of the
Proto-Indo-Europeans, who were often referred to at this time as the "primitive Aryans". By extension, the word came to be used in the West for the
Indo-European speaking peoples as a whole. Besides Müller for example H. Chavée in 1867 uses the term in this sense (
aryaque), but this never saw frequent use, precisely for being reserved for "Indo-Iranian" already. G. I. Ascoli in 1854 used
arioeuropeo, viz. a compound "Aryo-European" with the same rationale as "Indo-European", the term now current, which has been in frequent use since the 1830s.
Use of "Aryan" for "Indo-European" in academia was obsolete by the 1910s: B. W. Leist in 1888 still titles
Alt-Arisches Jus Gentium ("Old Aryan [meaning Indo-European, not Indo-Iranian]
Ius Gentium"). P. v. Bradke in 1890 titles
Methode und Ergebnisse der arischen (indogermanischen) Altterthumswissenschaft, still using "Aryan", but inserting an explanatory bracket. Otto Schrader in 1918 in his
Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde under the entry
Arier matter-of-factly discusses the Indo-Iranians, without any reference to a possible wider meaning of the term.
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." [
1]
|
Movie poster from 1916 portraying William S. Hart as an "Aryan" (here meaning "Anglo-Saxon") whose instinct for racial solidarity leads him to protect a threatened woman "of my people". |
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", and this popular usage persisted even after academic authors had ceased to use the term in any other meaning than "Indo-Iranian". Among
White supremacists the term still sometimes functions as a synonym for non-Jewish "
white person."
The
Aryan race was a term used in the early 20th 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 constituted 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 behavioral and 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 late 19th century, a number of writers had argued that the Proto-Indo-Europeans had originated in Europe. Their opinion was received critically at first, but was widely accepted by the end of the nineteenth century. By 1905
Hermann Hirt in his
Die Indogermanen (incidentally consistently using
Indogermanen, not
Arier to refer to the Indo-Europeans) claimed that the scales had tilted in favour of the hypothesis, in particular claiming the plains of northern Germany as the
Urheimat (p. 197) and connecting the "blond type" (p. 192) with the core population of the early, "pure" Indo-Europeans. The identification of the Indo-Europeans with the north German
Corded Ware culture was first proposed by
Gustav Kossinna in 1902, and gained in notability over the following two decades, until
V. Gordon Childe (notably of
Marxist persuasion) who in his 1926
The Aryans: a study of Indo-European origins concluded that "the Nordics' superiority in physique fitted them to be the vehicles of a superior language" (a view which he later regretted having expressed).
The idea became a matter of national pride in learned circles of Germany, and 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
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 is no longer in technical use, and the popular use of "white person" fell out of use during the 1930s when the obvious obsession of the Nazis with the term became a matter of ridicule in Britain and North America. In the USA, the established and less contentious term "
Caucasian" became dominant in official usage.
*
Aryan race*
Aryanization*
Airyanem Vaejah*
Aryavarta*
History of Iran*
History of India*
History of Pakistan*
History of Afghanistan*
Pakistan*
India*
Iran*
Indo-Aryan languages*
Iranian languages*
Iranian peoples*
Indo-Iranians*
Japhetic*
Kurgan*
Kushan Empire*
Proto-Indo-European language*
Proto-Indo-Europeans*
Vedic Civilization*
Tocharians
*
Paul Thieme,
Der Fremdling im Rigveda. Eine Studie über die Bedeutung der Worte ari, arya, aryaman und aarya, Leipzig (1938).
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*
The Aryans in a historical context*
ÂRYÂ (ARYAN) Philology of Ethnic Epithet of Iranian Peoples*
Aryans*
Etymological study*
Aryanism in Tajikistan*
Genetic evidence suggests European migrants may have influenced the origins of India's caste system*
Site arguing that Armenia was the Indo-European homeland.*
Aryan as a race or language, By David Frawley, American Institute of vedic Studies.
*
India through the Ages*
Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts, By Michael Witzel, Harvard University.
*
The Aryan-Dravidian Controversy Article by David Frawley
*
An Aryan Discussion Group
