Harappans and Aryans

Who were the Aryans? Most people know that the German National Socialists under Hitler called their master race Aryans, comprising Germans and North Europeans broadly speaking (though excluding the eastern Slavs). Less well-known among people in general is from where the idea of an Aryan race was picked up. The historical Aryans were the descendants of a group of nomadic pastoralists that had emigrated from their Urheimat (original homeland) in the Pontic-Caspian steppe (roughly Ukraine) and founded a culture along the southern tip of the Ural mountains known as the Sintashta culture. This culture is known for its development of chariot technology and pioneering of copper working. There are also traces in the burial practices of religious beliefs that would later find themselves into the Vedic hymns of Hinduism. Whereas the Ukrainian nomads spoke Proto-Indo-European - the mother of all Indo-European languages today - the Sintashta culture is associated with Indo-Iranian, a branch derived from the original language. At a later stage, these Indo-Iranians migrated southwards into Central Asia and eventually split up, one branch moving into Iran and the Middle East (and eventually expanding all the way back to the Ukraine), another moving into India. The linguistic branches that now formed are termed Iranian and Indo-Aryan, respectively. But on both sides of the divide, the people called themselves "Arya" - the noble ones.

The Indian Aryans - Indo-Aryans - now began to compose a collection of hymns known as the Veda. This was around 1300 BC, and the language they now spoke was Sanskrit, though a more archaic form than the classical Sanskrit of India today. Through the Veda we know not only what they called themselves, but also how they lived and what they valued. They petitioned with various deities for success in worldly endeavours, ranging from the protection of livestock, to the attainment of sons, to victory in battle. Above all this was a culture of heroic warfare, where the thunder-god Indra played a particular role accompanying fast-flying warriors into battle.

Fast forward to the 18th century, when European contact with and colonization of India began to open up a new field of linguistics to European scholars. One of these was Sir William Jones, who served as a judge in British Bengal during much of the 1780s and 1790s. Jones was not the first one to notice similarities between Sanskrit and European languages, but nevertheless the following paragraph of his has become famous:

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.

Jones also suggested that an Aryan invasion of India had established the "racial divide" between light-skinned and dark-skinned people in India, and in this suggestion he seems to have been the first. This would spur ideas among white supremacists in Europe that the Aryans had been bringers of civilization to India, and that the caste system had been established to preserve the purity of the Aryan stock. Nevertheless, after many generations the Aryans had mixed so much with the natives that their culture degenerated and Indian civilization began to stagnate and decline. Ultimately, when this package of ideas has been picked up by Adolf Hitler, the concept Aryan had begun to denote the first speakers of the original Indo-European language - proto-Indo-European - and their role in spreading civilization had been dramatically expanded. The Aryan homeland was variously cited as Germany or Iran among other places. Today the label Aryan is usually reserved for the Vedic Aryans, speakers of ancient Sanskrit, while the Urheimat of the proto-Indo-Europeans has been shown convincingly in The Horse, the Wheel and Language to have been the aforementioned Pontic-Caspian steppe.

Beginning in the 1920s, a new discovery complicated the picture of ancient India. Ancient, planned cities began to be excavated in Punjab and along the Indus river in present-day Pakistan. This ancient civilization, spanning from around 3300 BC to 1300 BC, has been termed the Indus valley civilization, due to its center around the Indus river valley; it is also called the Harappan civilization, Harappa being one of the earliest points of excavation, which conveniently allows us to call the inhabitants Harappans. Who were these Harappans, then, and what was their relation to the Indo-Aryans?

One theory which seems very straightforward is that the Aryans destroyed the Harappan civilization. The Veda, after all, cherishes warfare and describes the god Indra as a destroyer of forts. (As famously put by Sir Mortimer Wheeler: "Upon circumstantial evidence, Indra stands accused.") Another theory, popular among Indian nationalists, is that the Aryans and the Harappans were one and the same. As for the first theory, I shall content myself with stating that scholars today do not believe this to be the case. No evidence has been found for a destructive invasion, and by the time of the Aryan arrival in Punjab (ca 1500 BC) the Harappan cities had already began to decline due to changes in monsoon patterns in the area. Regarding the second theory, it seems to have been rather strongly refuted just now.

At the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi, a genetic study of ancient remains has now concluded that the inhabitants were "Ancestral South Indian" with some degree of "Iranian farmer" ancestry. This means that they were closely related to South Indian people today, which - given the appearance of the Harappan "dancing girl" statuette - hardly comes as a surprise. They had no ancestry from the Eurasian steppe, i.e. no relation to Aryans.



The problem of course is that this is a very sensitive issue in India itself. If the Aryans were not somehow indigenous, then the foundations of the supposedly eternal Vedic religion are trembling. As an outsider, I am naive enough to suggest that since the Vedas were after all composed within India, they are in a sense indigenous and that Hindu nationalists therefore should not feel threatened by this. On the other hand, if one insists on the historicity of the Hindu epic Ramayana which is said to have taken place during the Treta Yuga - about one million years ago or so - then I can appreciate where the problem lies.


Edit: According to Razib Khan at the Gene Expression blog, some pre-Aryan paternal lineages found their way into the (Aryan) Brahmin community, including from the Indus Valley Civilization.