Talk:Indo-Aryan migrations/Archive 1

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NPOV

Is this paragraph NPOV:

Some of the opponents of the theory have (perhaps inadvertently) considerably weakened their case by means of particularly objectionable conduct. Their claims are remarkably clouded by their frequent use of argumentum ad hominem (notably against Frederick Max Müller and Prof. Romila Thapar), and a considerable tendency to adopt paranoid rather than scholarly arguments. RickK 22:59 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

response by the author of the paragraph:

While it may seem to an uninformed observer (as I imagine you, Mr. RickK, to be) that the corresponding paragraph in the current version is biased, it is actually a fact that many well established historians have been subjected to 'flame', hate mail, effigy burning and other attacks of an academically unjustifiable nature in recent years, solely because they have chosen to defend the AIT.

You may wish to search the web for Prof. Romila Thapar, for example, to see that this is a fact. I am unable to provide a "reciprocal" case, to be "fair", since the defenders of AIT have not chosen to use similar tactics against their rivals.

While the mention of attacks against just one side of the debate may seem to be unfair, do you think it is still the case, given the above?

If so, I welcome you to remove the offending paragraph, or to change it as you see fit. (I am personally not too keen on the paragraph, but thought I might provide some flavor of the current controversy)

Thanks.

I would disagree... though no doubt there is plenty of bile devoted to Romila Thapar, to highlight this in particular (e.g. effigy-burning and so on) is to stain the reputation of opponents of the theory, not all of whom engage in such behavior, and some of whom are serious scholars; the paragraph is thus an example of the logical fallacy guilt by association. Graft 03:49 28 Jul 2003 (UTC)

response by the author of the paragraph:

I *did not* highlight effigy burning etc in the article (only in my response), but only the fallacious tactics being used by *some of them* to further the opposition (and which, in fact seems to have had greater effect in popularising it in a *political* and populist way, compared to the attempts of the more level headed partisans of the opposition at scholarly persuasion).

Note that, I only criticise *some* of the opponents, for having succumbed to such objectionable conduct. It is of course possible to modify it in a way to emphasise that this definitely does not mean *all*.

In a discussion of the *politics* of the debate, (as opposed to the scholarly debate itself, which I see as being discussed before the section titled politics, and to end there), it is not too unreasonable to detail the mistakes in argument used to further the political debate. As long as it does not appear in the main text of the article comparing the two different view points in the scholarly angle, it does not, as such, seem to constitute a guilt by association. What is being attempted is not a statement on the debate itself, but of some of the ways in which it has gone in the wrong direction, on a different plane (the political).

As I hinted before, it would be a welcome effort if someone could come up with an example of similar victimisation of the attackers of the theory. However, I would doubt its success.

Let me reiterate that I have no objection to removing the paragraph entirely. (I welcome the objectors to do so, if they are unconvinced, since I personally will not). However, it seems that the rather murky turn the controversy has taken in populist circles, needs to be indicated somehow to give a true picture of things, especially to prevent a new reader of this article from getting the impression that all resources he is likely to come across on this topic are acceptable on a scholastic level.

End of response

philology

I'm not a linguist, but the examples chosen in the article to show the connection between modern-day Hindi and some Western languages are weak, to say the least. Sugar/azucar/sucre/Zucker etc., for example, is a modern word brought west through Arabic, reaching Europe much later. You could marshal the same sort of evidence to show the common origins of Chinese and Western languages [tea, the, cha, etc.] As for "path," it strikes me as a fluke and nothing but.

There are better examples, which someone else can provide, to show the common Indo-European roots of Sanskrit, Greek, German, Latin, Russian, etc. While I would not eliminate the current text, I would rewrite it asap. Fascinating article otherwise.

---

It's a bit pointless having an edit war over "At this time few historians accept the theory" vs "At this time most historians accept the theory". Is there any survey of historians that would give hard figures either way? If not, where does the information come from, given that this article has no external links at all? Would it be possible to list a few historians that support and oppose the theory? ( 13:09, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I doubt there's a survey as such, but the evidence for the majority view is simply overwhelming and leaves little doubt, being disputed only by varieties of Indian nationalists. Of course, the NPOV way to say this is going to be something like "At this time few historians accept the theory", unless there's a better way to put it. Thus, I think Graft's edit is a mistake. -- VV 22:17, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, I'll admit most of what I've read is written by Hindutvadis, but I find a lot of their challenges credible and well-reasoned, and I don't think the "evidence for the majority view" leaves little doubt. Also I'm not so certain that it's the majority view any longer, but there I'm stepping off the map. At any rate, I really don't think it adds that much to this article, and we'd do much better just to lay out the arguments. Now... if you could point me to some good reading for the "majority view", i'm eager to consume it. Graft 03:01, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Good reading would probably be any book on the subject. The most straightforward evidence is probably linguistic: Sanskrit is Indo-European; Tamil, etc., are Dravidian, and pockets of Dravidian languages survive in northern parts of India. Sanskrit's extremely close link to Avestan and thus modern Farsi is beyond dispute, and the IE link to Greek, German, etc., is well established. In addition, the Hindu gods and beliefs often have direct one-to-one relationships to the Greek and Roman gods, and, more locally, there are whole sections of the Avesta which are nearly word-for-word identical to the Vedas. And so on and so forth. All this is totally irreconcilable with an ancient continuous Indian civilization (unless you go further and propose an Indian origin, which can't be resolved with the two-family situation, and is wholly implausible anyway for other reasons, some in the next paragraph).

In addition, there is a mass of other evidence, covering such things as pottery styles, horse domestication, urbanized vs. nomadic cultures, and so on, which can be traced out of India. All of these point to external sources for Vedic culture, and in fact the Andronovo culture is probably the root of the Indo-Iranian language/culture group. Furthermore, recent molecular studies (on human DNA) confirm the migration occurred. Opposition to this theory should be seen for what it is: a transparent attempt to invent a fictitious infinite past for India's civilization by partisan nationalists. Scraps of evidence can be found, just as they could be for any other wild theory if one looks enough; I'm sure I could come up with "evidence" that the United States is an ancient civilization, and that England was one of her colonies until the "oppressive" Brits invented the reverse story.

Anyway, I don't want to belabor this. But I strongly object to the changes you've made. The way the article reads, AIT is just some random theory proposed in the 19th century, when in fact it is the consensus view of experts in history, linguistics, archaeology, and genetics, backed up by an enormous amount of evidence. -- VV 06:03, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

First, let me be clear that I'm entirely open-minded about this, and I don't have an opinion one way or the other (although considerable interest), and I've defended this article in both directions in the past. However, I'm simply ignorant of current theory... I'll visit a library and read some more on this today.

Anyhow, whatever evidence has since accumulated, I have little doubt about the dubious colonial origins of the theory, although again my reading list might be to blame. And there are plenty of political forces machinating in the opposite direction, desiring to keep the theory alive and kicking. This is why I maintain my skepticism. Graft 15:06, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Having doubts is fine, but don't confuse your doubts with the historical consensus. Decades of painstaking research by scholars across numerous fields, many with probably next to zero interest in politics, should not be airily dismissed as "colonial origins"; the cliched boogeyman of evil, scheming whites all working together is a cheap attack with no merit. I am not aware of any "political forces machinating", unless you count as "political" defending historical truth against crackpot theories by upstart nationalist movements. Why would there be, anyway? All peoples came from somewhere; it's just a matter of where and when. We happen to have figured it out in this case, and the answer is just not the simplest possible (one continuous civilization). (Cf. the discovery that Dorian Greek civilization owes little to Mycenaean Greece.) -- VV 23:04, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

---

To User:203.197.16.5: please read Wikipedia:NPOV to see how we can resolve the current editing conflicts related to this article. Just editing the article to U-turn it to reflect your point of view is unlikely to help. If you believe your opinions reflect the opinions of a majority of historians, please present evidence here to show that that is the case. -- The Anome 14:42, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Dear 203.197.16.5: Please do not simply interpolate comments into the article. Instead attribute opinions, for example by saying: "opponents of the theory say X", or "supporters of the the theory say Y". Doing this is going to make it less likely that people will keep on reverting your contributions. Again, please read Wikipedia:NPOV for a guide to how to edit contentious articles.

Also, if you are going to change the article radically, please discuss it here, and present your arguments here first. -- The Anome 09:07, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Summarizing the argument

Just to summarise, here are 203.197.16.5's points, with ad hominem attacks removed, extracted by diffing the versions of the articles. "the article" below refers to the version of the article that 203.197.16.5 edits, and other users keep reverting to. -- The Anome 09:28, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

• the article states that this theory is believed by a majority of historians
  • 203.197.16.5 states that this theory is not believed by a majority of historians

• article states that: North Indian languages derived from Sanskrit are part of the Indo-European family of languages; the languages of south India belong to a different linguistic family, the Dravidian languages, with Tamil, a very distinct language in its own right, (with literature and tradition at least as ancient as Sanskrit, and disjoint from the Vedic), as the probable root of linguistic evolution.
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: the earliest Tamil literature dates to 5th century BCE, while Vedic text date back to at least 2000-3000 BCE

• article states that: "While Dravidian languages are primarily confined to the south of India, there is a striking exception: the Brahui, which is spoken in the Indus Valley area, indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-European languages such as Sanskrit."
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: Sure, and as millions of Indians now speak English - maybe Britishers were the original inhabitants of India! Don't you see that such evidence is highly circumstantial? Isn't it equally possible that some small gorup of people form South-India migrated & settled at that place sometime last 4 thousand years? Also, as illustrated by English speaking Indians or Spanish speaking south-Americans, isn't it possible to transfer a language without transfering the culture/population?

• article states that: "Another major argument against identifying the Indus Valley civilization with a continuous, indigenous Vedic civilization is that the society described in the Vedas is primarily a pastoral one, whereas the Indus Valley civilization was heavily urbanized. Few of the elements of such an urban civilization (e.g., temple structures, sewage systems) are described in the Vedas."
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: Not so, Vedas do mention 'Purs' i.e. Walled cities. Also, the geography described in Vedas is quite vast as it encompasses much of the Indus-Saraswati-Ganga basin, which makes it unlikely that vedic people were a bunch of small disjointed tribes.

• article states that: the importance of the tiger in the Indus Valley civilization and its absence in the Vedic texts
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: Vedas as well as the epics frequently mention Vyaghra i.e. Tiger as different from Simha i.e. Lion

• article states that: Attempts to translate the script into some form of Sanskrit have been notable failures
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: 'notable failures' are in fact the only reasonably successful attempts towards the decipherment of the script

• article states that: Proponents say that the identification of the Saraswati with the Hakra would lead to inconsistencies, and that the Saraswati is very probably a particular river in Afghanistan
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: RgVeda's 10th mandala mentions east to west order of Indian rivers - Saraswati comes after Yamuna and before Sutlej - so it cant be any Afgani river. Also, the Vedas mention the river Saraswati to be 'falling into the sea', which is unlikely if it were a river in Afganistan. In fact, Saraswati is mentioned(even invoked as mother goddess) about 60-70 times in the RgVeda, which is much higher than vedic references to Indus.

• article states that: there are many South Indians who have adopted the 'Dravidian' identity as a matter of ethnic pride.
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: South Indians have no affinity for AIT i.e. aryan invasion theory. Communists-e.g.the infamous JNU, pro-muslim political parties, and western-funded christian organisations are the only ones who oppose indigenousness of vedic culture

• article states that: the Aryan Invasion theory indicates that the Indian caste system was probably originally a means of social engineering by the Aryans to establish and maintain a superior position compared to the Dravidians in Indian society
  • 203.197.16.5 states that: Rgveda clearly links Varna to Karma and not to birth, how come this issue can even arise.

Edit war

I am willing to stop changing the original article for a while. However, the doubts raised here should be addressed so that the article is brought closer to NPOV. As for the 'evidence' on my above comments; wherever i refer to vedic texts, i can provide references to corresponding mandala-sutra by next month - i would be visiting my hometown where i have the authorative Sanskrit verions.

You may refer to this online-book for some insights: http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ait/

-- Astavakra

Thanks for that, Astavakra.

I am happy with the way this is going: can people on both sides present their arguments here, with cites if possible. I hope that all concerned will then be able to work towards NPOV statements of the arguments of both sides here, then merge them into the article.

If we can't agree, I suggest asking User:Ed Poor to mediate -- he has been very effective in helping opposing parties to together on other contentious articles. -- The Anome 23:31, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Greeting to All

Fascinating discussion I thought that this article might illicit some more debate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml

SM 31/08/2005 3.17pm (GMT)

People still believe in this theory?

I cannot their are people who still believe in an Aryan invasion theory. The Aryan text books dont talk about any invasion. Their is no mention about an opposite people called the Dravidians. And all the evidence of an Aryan people are in India, Iran, & Afghanistan...Nothing is in Europe...This is a joke. 06:39, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

1. Terming `Aryan' as separate race :

Termination of any special Aryan race is incorrect. It's proved by Genology and recent Oppenheimer's reports that there is no special Aryan race. From whole India to Europe , people belong to only one race and it's Caucasian.

2. Ancient Sanskrit scriptures like Ved,Upnishads,Purana,Ramayan,Mahabharat etc. no where any special Aryan race or people are mentioned. `Arya' in Sanskrit means noble, virtueous and it's mentioned in those scriptures `Arya' as respect gesture like Respected Sir or Madam or called upon as Arya like a Judge is called upon with `My Lords' type of gesture. So, terming any `Aryan' as separate race or people is wrong in its concept.

3. No mention of any place outside Ancient India ( Ancient India included Afghanishtan ) in any of ancient Indian texts.

4. Aryan Invasion or Migration Theory gives credit to ancient Sanskrit language and all ancient Sanskrit texts to `Aryans' coming to India. It was assumed previously that Aryans were far superior than original people who they called them as Dravid people of South India. But when Indus Valley's planned towns were excavated around 1920 then it was modified as Aryans who were nomadic warrior people , they some how invaded much more advanced original people of India and were able to establish their language ( which is Sanskrit ) and culture on them.

They arrived around 1500 BC. They made Vedas and cherished River Saraswati as their Mother River and Greatest River. The supporters were questioning about any river named Saraswati as there is no big river in Modern India named Saraswati. But it's found by Archeologists that in NW India there was actually some river flowing and it ceased to be flowing completely on Indian soil around 1900 BC. They have identified Ancient Saraswati River with it's dry bed which is as big as some kilometers at some places. They have found that modern Ghaggar / Hakra river flowing through India and Modern Pakistan during Monsoons is following same path of ancient river Saraswati. Around 70 % of till excavated all Indus Valley sites are on East of Indus river and on this dry riverbed area.

Saraswati river is mentioned in Rigveda as Greatest River along with other mentioned six rivers from east to west of their modern appearance which includes Ganga and Indus ( Sindhu ) rivers. In Rigveda , it's mentioned that River Saraswati starts from Mountains to Ocean and is having greater width then any Seven rivers mentioned in Rigveda as it’s called Greatest of all rivers.

If aryans who are nomadic people from Central asia who have supposed to come around 1500 BC then how can they write verses praising any dead river during 1500 BC as Mother River or Greatest River.

5. If so called nomadic warrior type Aryans are credited with vast and very rich Sanskrit scriptures then what Indus Valley civilization people were speaking language and do they were not having any scriptures ? Indus Valley civilization is proved by all in the world to be far advanced civilization than it's time with Planned towns, Uniform Weight & Measurement system, ports, underground sewage system, High level of pottery, small metal dancing statues indicating developed arts like dance & music, science of metallurgy & chemistry etc.; seals used for Business purpose ( as similar are found in ancient Mesopotamia ) and vast trade links ; Lipstick, necklace and high quality cotton dyed clothes indicating fashion and urban class people. Indus valley civilization was spread across more than 1,20,000 sq. km area which was bigger than combined area of ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greek.

Findings of Fire Altars, as mentioned in Rig Veda and later Sanskrit scriptures, are found in excavated towns of Indus Valley civilization.

6. Sanskrit language is proved to be very scientific language and it's acknowledged by NASA and Forbes magazine. The artificial intelligence incorporated in Modern Computers , this type of features are found in it. Such a sophisticated language whose name itself says that its ` Perfected, Cultured or Refined = Sanskrit ' can not be language of if any nomad Aryan people but of highly civilized people only. Refer http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Sanskrit.htm

If Sanskrit is told to be very near to some unknown PIE language then why India has highest PIE based words via Sanskrit and not Central Asia or Russian Steppes. Now , if Aryans had migrated to India( as invasion theory is totally ruled even by AIT supporters ) and given Sanskrit language and Vedic culture to India then why only India is having solid foundation of those Aryans and not those Aryans containing area like Central Asia or Russian Steppes. For Aryans as it's told by Migration Theory that they could replace Dravid - South Indian people and their language + culture from Northern India then why their so called homeland areas are showning very very less sign of their so called language + culture.

There are many other points which can be elaborated.

WIN 06:07, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Dravidian languages and diversity

It's mentioned in the article that highest diversity of Dravidian languages is observed in the northern branch. I think this is a very important observation as such must be supported by reference source.

This page reads like an argument between an historian and a nationalist

I... don't even know where to begin here. Every valid historical point made seems to be immediately followed by a revisionist counter-point. I think there should be a distinction made between NPOV and schizophrenic; because atm it just seems like a total mess. --86.135.68.101 11:58, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Every valid historical point is itself a POV.

=============================================================================================

Any Pro-AMT should defend the points by some logical counter points. And not terming schizophrenic. I can call this to Max Muller who had never visited India in his life and then also made such statements that the world is still beleiving this British Kingdom paid `so called' Indologist.

Max Muller has done his work on British Kingdom's requirements. He translated some Sanskrit verses to Britisher's favour and simply discarded some astronomical dating saying verses as absurd. He and British Raj were knowing that in Western world everybody will beleive this English translations and in India also they will crush any opponent voice. The same happened but after independence of India , the Indian opposition has started ( especially in this e-age ) with proper scientific and logical proofs that Pro-AIT/AMT supporter have to rely on downgraded words like POV and schizophrenic and nationalist; instead of defending any points step by step.

Read below books written by David Frawley who is having much more knowledge about India than you & me. http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley After reading those books if find any logical point then you should write that point and not some nonsense words written as above which do not give any idea of your counter points.

Max Müller is basically irrelevent to a modern study on the subject. If you want to dispute it, try attacking something a bit more modern. And I'm not arguing anyway; I don't aim to produce "counterpoints". Infact what I'm saying is that this page is trying too hard to do just this. That's what I meant by saying that it reads like an argument, and that it seems schizophrenic (I hate using that word with that meaning, but it seems fitting here). The argument isn't for us to have here. It basically already took place many decades ago (between people who knew more about India, lingustics, and all the relevent fields to this subject than you and I); the outcome of which was that it became clear that evidence pointed to a non-Indian origin for Aryan culture and language. The modern racist hindutva concept that Indo-European language and culture originated in India, much like the similar Nazi theories that proposed an Urheimat in Northern Europe, is a nationalist driven fringe theory that is just not supported by mainstream scholarship or evidence - and therefore shouldn't be given the credit it is on this page. If such theories are mentioned at all, it should be in a seperate section named something like "competing hypotheses", as it is in pages such as Indo-European languages. This is all I'm saying; that this page gives far too much credit to a theory that is essentially propaganda. --86.135.68.211 12:02, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

My dear friend, many decades ago is long period for this theory when newer proofs of Saraswati river, Dwarka findings , astonomical dating inbuilt in Rig Ved were not found yet. So, that time and today's time is different. And by the way , AIT or now called AMT is hypotheses without any actual evidence.It's totally based on linguistic hyposis. In fact there are plenty of above mentioned & more evidences against any supposed Aryan Invasion Theory. Today there is no acedamic person ( not even Wheeler ) who supports Invasion theory. But there are pro-Migration persons.

And, I am not at all made like Nazi people and nor Hindutva labelled person. You and all pro-AMT PERSONS SHOULD READ WHAT WE ARE SAYING. BUT FOR NON-INDIANS IT WILL BE HARD TO UNDERSTAND AS YOU ARE NOT HAVING ANY KNOWLEDGE ABOUT INDIAN LANGUAGES, SCRIPTURES AND CULTURE. ALWAYS SAME OLD BLA,BLA,BLA WITHOUT ANY SOLID WRITINGS. I THINK NOW YOU ONLY PLAY SAME OLD TAPE AS YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING SOLID TO PUT FORTH. You can read talk page of Aryan Invasion Theory from the same site.

== 'Now read below carefully as you pro-AMT would not have read any Sanskrit scriptures. In Shrimad Bhagat's Eighth Skanth ( Chapter ) and 8th Athyay where Mohini swaroop of Vishnu is mentioned ; there it's mentioned that Vasant ritu in Vaishakh month. But, in today's time Vaishakh month is proper summer ritu. ( Ritu = season ) Which means that 3 months of change in Ritu w.r.t. month. It's proved by all scientist that in 2000 years 1 month of season change take place. So, 3 months of change will correspond to 6,000 years. i.e. 4000 BC. which is Harappan civilization period. THIS YOU WILL NOT GET ANYWHERE ON THE NET AS THIS ARE MY FINDINGS FROM SHRIMAD BHAGAWAT.' ==

And please first get some knowledge about India and then say something.

====== Written by Win

What on earth makes you think I have not read any Sanskrit scriptures, or have no knowledge on India or her languages? I have read portions of the Vedas and the entirety of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad in the original Sanskrit. On top of that I have read multiple translations of all of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Bagavad Gita. Do not assume that because I support science and fact instead of pseudo-scientific nationalism that I have no knowledge of India.

You also seem to be contradicting yourself - first you say there is no "actual evidence" for the AMT, then you say that the evidence is lingustic. But of course THIS is evidence, real hard evidence. Things like sound correspondences to other Indo-European branches, evidence of a Dravidian substrate (retroflex consonants for example, or borrowed words for native Indian floral and fauna), lack of linguistic diversity among Indo-Aryan languages, all point to a non India origin for Aryan language. This is real science, real evidence. Not like your pseudo-scientific rantings. And it's interesting that you cover yourself with "this you will not get anywhere on the net". Of course, something I can get on the net is the actual date of the Harrapan civilization, based on carbon dating: 3300 BC to 1600 BC. Not 4000 BC. Are you proposing that because of a slight inconsistency in the describing of seasons in a religious text the entirety of the modern technique of carbon dating should be dismissed?

In conversations with anti-AMT supporters I'm often reminded of the Evolution/Creationism debate in the USA. I'm not sure if you're aware of the controversy, but there are some conservative Christian groups in the US that follow a completely literal intepretation of their bible that states that the world is only 4000 years old and was created in 7 days. The scienctific community, of course, takes issue with that. One of the biggest points of contention is the theory of evolution, that explains how creatures became the way they are, that through a gradual process of natural selection over millions of years, life as we know has come to exist. The Christians are offended and angered at these ideas; they seem to think that this concept of evolution invalidates their faith by proving the world is older than they believe it to be. So they attack it, with increasingly desperate and laughable attempts at trying to convince the scientific community of something that is patently false, just so they don't have to face up to their own prejudices. But of course evolution doesn't invalidate Christianity. Whether the world was created 4000 or 5 billion years ago doesn't effect the central message of Christianity, concerning the life and death of Jesus. And just as the fact of evolution isn't trying to destroy Christianity, nor are the findings of linguists or historians concerning Indo-European language and culture trying to destroy Indian heritage. A non-Indian origin for the Aryans does not invalidate the importance of their contribution to Indian history, nor does it mean that everything good and beautiful about India is ultimately foreign. The very fact that out of all the places Indo-European culture has touched, India was the place where it lead to such great spiritual achievements shows that it's not just their culture that made India what it is today. --86.135.68.211 14:17, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Linguastic similarity data which previous 18-19 century Europeans found that prompted to Originate AIT ( which now has demised but taken new birth as AMT . These linguastic similarities can not be evidence for AMT. I think that you do not know or pretend not know and write modifying the hard core evidences of Mehrgarh,Baluchistan,Pakistan where excavation findings carbon dating takes you upto 6500 BC. Why you write misguiding data that Harappan Civilization is found to go upto 3300 BC.

Ritu & month marker in Shrimad Bhagwat is rough dating as season changing w.r.t month won't take overnite. So, it will give approx. but exact time duration of composition. And, that argument of 4000 BC and 3300 BC is totally absurd in light of Mehrgarh's 6500 BC dating.Or read some more on submerged IVC type planned city in Gulf of Cambay in Western India which are dated 7,500 BC. Read http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/BadrinaryanB1.php

Your Christian time era and that is irrelevant to actual topic here. Why are you not commenting any Saraswati findings and it's proved demise dating of 1900 BC, Dwarka findings, Sanskrit language etc.

I am just being logical person that some so called nomadic Aryans from Central Asia coming to very vast Harappan Civilization of ancient India can not give their language + culture as told to ancient India. When Britishers who had ruled India for 200 years can not impalnt their language totally on masses then how come so called Aryans who just migrated to ancient India can implant their language + culture on vast advanced civilized people and area. It's totally illogical. These nomads left no evidence of their coming to India , were having highly scientific and perfect language like Sanskrit is total absurd. Then why their brothers & sisters in Central Asia are still deprived of any perfect language. Why they who can give vast Sanskrit scripture are not mentioning abot their central asian homeland. And, where ancient Indians ( Harappans ) scriptures gone as these vast advanced civilized Harappans must have produced something when they can make advances in Science,town planning,strong administration as evident from uniform weights & measurements over very vast Harappan area etc.

So, if AMT without any proofs means that some how in very ancient time Indians reached central asia and Europe for which Sanskrit scriptures have notes by way of King Yayati expelling his two sons to far western countries. Rigvedic Anus also gone to far western countries. So, there are evidences of going to West phenomenon which will give idea that why European languages are having some similarity with Perfect language Sanskrit. And not other way round. These is also proved in Oppenheimer's genology findings.

Do not mislead people by overlooking strong anti-AMT points and telling these as pseudo-scientific rantings.

Written by Win=====

Your above post is a superb example of why I use the term pseudo-science. You're identification of Sanskrit as a "scientific and perfect language" has nothing to do with actual linguistics. While Sanskrit is certainly a beautiful and logical language, no real linguist would label any language as "perfect". No one spoken language is inherantly better than any other. Remember also that we only have written Sanskrit, which followed a set of codified grammar rules laid down by Panini, to go on in reconstructing what the original spoken version of the tongue was like. It may well be that, just as with Latin in Rome, the language spoken by the masses was never as "perfect" as the written form.

And what findings are you referring to that take the Indus Valley civ to 6500BC? Possibly the Mehrgarh culture? You should do your research. This archeological culture is not considered to have anything to do with the Indus Valley civilization, as it came into being much earlier. The cultures may have possibly traded with each other for a comparatively brief period during the end years of the Mehrgarh culture, but that would have been the limit of their relationship. Your racist assertation that those from outside India could never equal the advances of a civilization inside India is yet another example of pseudo-science, the idea that there can be an "advanced" civilization that is somehow inherently superior in all respects to any other group. Of course, the reason why Sanskrit literature doesn't mention a Central Asian homeland is simple - because by the time Sanskrit speakers began writing their language down, they didn't live in Central Asia, they lived in India! As the Harrapan civ. did not seem to have a fully formed written language by the time of their collapse, only what seems to be a counting and naming system for organizing produce (certainly not unheard of among city dwelling civilizations, for example the Incan civilization in South America never developed any form of writing at all, and only kept mathematical records on knotted string), it was many years before the idea of writing came again to India. By the time written language DID arrive the people did not consider themselves to be descended from IE migrants. A similar pattern is seen in other places, such as Italy, for example. When the early Romans adopted a written language from the Phoenicians, they never wrote that any aspect of their culture/ancestry came from outside Italy. Infact even though they where living alongside the contemporary non-Indo-European Etruscan civilization, who may very well have been a remnant of a pre-IE Italian prescence, they did not see their culture as being anything other than natively Italian. And of course they where right, to a certain extant. The influence of the Indo-Europeans was mostly cultural. Most people's ancestry would still have been almost entirely from the native population, just as it was in India. Sanskrit speakers living at the time the language was written down would not have seen themselves as anything other than natively Indian.

Your views on comparative linguistics also seem startlingly naïve. The links between Indo-European languages discovered by linguists are systematic, not arbirtrary. You dismiss linguistic evidence as irrelevent, but it isn't at all; as I've already stated it shows quite convincingly a non-Indian origin for Indo-Aryan languages. Sanskrit as well as her descendents all have phonemic inventories containing retroflex consonants. These sounds are characteristic of Indian language, from Dravidian languages in the south to the Austro-Asiatic Munda languages. The other major branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, that found in Iran, contains no evidence of such retroflexivity. Again for every other family of Indo-European languages. If Sanskrit was, infact, the ancestor of all other Indo-European languages, then why is there no evidence of retroflexivity in the ancestry of any other branch? Because there is none, linguists can conclude that before Indo-Aryan languages where adopted by North Indians, they spoke a language that contained retroflexive consonants - the origin of the sounds in Sanskrit and her descendents. This shows that Indo-Aryan language was imposed on a pre-existing population. Other evidence is the lack of linguistic diversity in the Indo-Aryan languages of India. The homeland of a language or language family is often the place where it is the most diverse; as the closer you get to the homeland the more descendent languages you will encounter. Indo-Aryan languages, however, are anything but diverse. Infact all modern Indian languages in the family are descended from a single ancestor language, Sanskrit. This again points to a relatively recent incursion of the language family into India. Now, if you want to propose that Sanskrit was the ancestor of Indo-European languages based on a few references to a king banishing his sons to the west, then you will need a set of plausible sound changes that derive Proto-Iranian, Proto-Armenian, Proto-Hellenic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Anatolian, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Balto-Slavic, Proto-Albanian and Proto-Tocharian from the language. This is how linguists prove links between languages, and how they've shown that Sanskrit must have ultimately been derived from an ancestor outside India. Please, I would be very interested to see such a thing. As it stands however, no such evidence exists.

(btw, I'm also offended by your referring to conservative Christian beliefs as "my Christian time era". I am not a Christian, and most certainly not a conservative one that believes the world is only 4000 years old. I was merely using the absurdity of the creationism movement as another example of misplaced belief vs. scientific findings). --86.135.68.211 15:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

What you are doing that can be termed as pseudo thing as you are not moving from time frame when AIT was proposed. That time also there was opposion from India but due to British rule it was not heard in Western world.That time even communication technology was not like today's one. Then in 1920s when Indus Valley civilization were found then ; Superior Advanced civilized Aryan became primitive barbaric nomads. Now when other recent scientific evidences ( some pointed above ) are discovered then also same notes are played again and again as some big evidence. Expired AIT and AMT's basis is wrong that's why pro-AIT people had to always modify their theory.It's simple speculation without any solid foundation of proofs whatsoever. But due Gobel's propoganda & Eurocentric opinion of that time , it was accepted easily by Western world.

Even later Sanskrit scriptures mention Shak, Huns from Central Asia as Shudra , Non-Arya ( i.e. Non-noble & Non-virtuous as they were barbaric nomads whose ancestors will be so called Aryans as per AMT )

In India also if go towards east in Bengal,Assam there will be typical sound changes. Even in Hindi speaking area there are different sound changes that varies from region to region. This is evident in all regional languages.So, when words travel to very long distance then that word gets transformed depending on locals speaking habit of pronunciation. That's why proper pronunciation was very much important in reciting all Sanskrit scriptures.

And King Yayati's sons or Rigvedic Anus westward movements are not some small points or terming Mehrgarh as different from Harappan civilization is not at all proper. ( " This archeological culture is not considered to have anything to do with the Indus Valley civilization, as it came into being much earlier." taken from your above notes ) ---- That means Mehrgarh people were different than Harappan civilization people. For your kind information , there is continuty in developments from Mehrgarh to peak Harappan time. If this similar sorts of evidences would have arised from Greece then it would have termed as greatest achievements of mankind but when it comes to India then the same will become some rubbish words. This is pseudo thing of Eurocentrism.

All points like horse & chariots, advanced aryans then harappan etc. are not at all valid which were hailed as very big evidence by Eurocentrics are `fused out' points today. So, you have only one liguistic point. And , the source will have less diversity than far flunge areas as source will always linguastically tie its people together and comparatively lesser deviation will be observed than far flung areas. As river from her source is single stream but when it reaches far flung area & it's mouth it diverts into many channels. This is simple understanding.

You are once again betraying your confusion on this subject. As you have already said, the original invasion intepretation of the migration has now been debunked, and yes that theory was plagued by British nationalist sentiment. The current migration model, however, is not. I've noticed that you seem to be playing the "same notes" a lot more than I - I bring up the irrefutable evidence of linguistics, and you invariably bring up the non-point of the Indus Valley Civilization. But how does the Indus Valley findings disprove the theory at all? If anything it puts it into a much better context. It provides clear evidence of a non-Aryan prescence circa 3500 BC, prior to the greatest period of migration. And you also continue playing up this "advanced" vs. "barbarian" angle. This may have made sense in the 19th century, but those kind of distinctions are meaningless nowadays. And the reason why the theory keeps changing? Simple, because it is a scientific theory. Theories are not static, and do not have to remain immobile to prove themselves. Infact quite the opposite. Scientific theories are adapted, added to, and continually improved to reflect current information. This is a process of affirmation, not something that proves fallacy.

I also don't understand why a reference to a king banishing his sons in a religious text and a neolithic archeological culture, if found in Greece, would have been "termed as greatest achievements of mankind". What do you mean by this? Why would they have done? I also fail to see how Sanskrit records showing non-identification of Shaka and Huns (who btw where a mostly Turkic non-Indo-European tribe) as Aryans proves your point. If anything it shows that the seperation of the Aryans groups must have occured long before their adoption of written records, i.e fitting in with the splitting of the Aryan groups occuring when both where steppe nomads - rather than the steppe Aryans coming from a civilization which you claim had a written language. If it was so "advanced", why couldn't it have remembered when it banished it's sons into the west and spread Sanskrit Aryan language onto the steppes, as you're suggesting occured?

And yes, words and language change with time and depending on the substrate language and neighbouring languages. That's exactly what I was talking about. When I say "sound changes", however, I'm asking for specific sets of plausible consonant and vowel shifts. For example, the set of sound changed discovered by Jakob Grimm provide a link between the reconstructed pronounciation of consonants of Proto-Germanic, the earliest Germanic language, and the other Indo-European languages:

**/p/ > /f/; /b/ > /p/; /bʰ/ > /b/

**/t/ > /θ/; /d/ > /t/; /dʰ/ > /d/

**/k/ > /x/; /g/ > /k/; /gʰ/ > /g/

**/kʷ/ > /xw/; /gʷ/ > /kw/; /gʷʱ/ > /gw/, /w/, /g/

(See IPA for an explanation of the characters used)

If what you are proposing is true; that Sanskrit rather than the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language is the ancestor of all Indo-European languages, then to prove it you would have to derive Proto-Germanic (as well as the Proto-Language for every other Indo-European language branch) from Sanskrit using a set of plausible sound changes. Most notably these would have to explain the absence of evidence for any things such as retroflexivity even in those languages outside India deemed closest to Sanskrit. This is the standard method for linguistic relationships to be proven. Without that, your assertation of North India as the Indo-European Urheimat is meaningless.

You're river metaphor for the point of origin being the point of least linguistic change is also flawed. It is found all over the world, infact, that the exact opposite is true: the nearer you get to the Urheimat of a language family, the more likely you are to encounter it's descendents. One very clear example are the Austronesian languages. These are found over a wide region, stretching from Madagascar in the west, through Indonesia, Malaysia, the aborginal (non-Chinese) peoples of Taiwan, and across Polynesia all the way to Hawai'ii and Easter Island in the Pacific. Surely such a huge array of languages stretched over such a wide range would be the source of huge linguistic diversity? But as it turns out, not so much. Infact linguistic change is so small that all the Austronesian languages outside of Taiwan are classed as belonging to a single branch of Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian. In Taiwan, however, we find the exact opposite story. Despite their close proximity, Taiwan aboriginal languages display huge diversity - they're classified into 9 seperate branches. Based on this, linguists can identify that the original point of origin for the Austronesian languages was Taiwan, which recent genetic studies have also supported. Another example are the Romance languages: Latin's most notable modern descendents are Spanish, Italian, French, Portugese, Romanian, Galician, Occitan and Catalan. However if we move outside of Europe, we find that only two of these, Spanish and Portugese, are spoken to any large degree, mostly in South America. From this evidence it is clear that it is highly unlikely that the Romance languages developed in South America, and even more unlikely that they developed in say, somewhere like Quebec, where only one Romance language is spoken. The diversity in Europe however shows that they must have originated there.

This theory basing the origin of a language family in the place of most diversity is born out entirely by comparisons to other similar situations and is not something you can dismiss easily. And it also provides what is one of the most convincing proofs for a non-Indian origin for Indo-European language. --86.135.68.211 13:02, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Finding of Spanish & Portugese outside Europe is due to recent well known ruling of the respective European country in South America. This example is not at all valid due to recent phenomenon and not ancient. Here we are discussing language point for ancient and not recent time. For recent time, we have well documented historical records for Spanish & Portugese occupation of South America. All these languages were imposed on native South Americans who were then less advanced & militarily strengh wise much inferior than Spanish & Portugese. At that time, native South Americans were slaughtered and conquered i.e. invaded. But as Aryans are told to migrate and not invade India as per AMT then imposing Aryan i.e. Sanskit language on highly populus Indus Valley region is totally baseless. If so called Aryans can remember their all Sanskrit verses very well in lieu of proper writing then they can remember their Central Asian / Steppe homeland as their ancient Iranian brothers were remembering. Ancient Iranians in their scriptures clearly noted that they came from outside place whose name they have given. In old Iranian texts , Sapta Sindhu ( land of seven rivers i.e. Punjab ) is mentioned in early occupied land areas mentioning. i.e.Ancient Iranians came from India otherwise in their early places name they will not mention Sapta Sindhu. Where as proper East Iran finds mention in middle texts as their occupied area and in later texts it mentions areas nearer to central asia as their occupied area. This clearly mentions their migration from India to Proper Iran and then beyond. Whereas Indian Vedas mention only Ancient Indian places and do not mention that they came from out of India like how ancient Iranian were remembering about their non-Iranian origin.

In recent excavations in Dholavira ( in Gujarat ) & Kalibangan ( in Haryana - this is much larger town from previously found Harappa & Mohen-jo-daro ), Vedic fire altars are found which proves Indus Civilization's Vedic Root.

Modifing Aryan Invasion to Migration theory can not be termed as some scientific modification. It is modified as Aryan Invasion is not validated due to scientific proofs. PIE theory was proposed from AIT proposal time but other points fabricating like invading on horses, introducing horse in India, saying of invasion of harappa & Mohen-jo-daro town when they were excavated in 1920 based on some skeletons from town containing thousands of people and many more are not at all scientific. Terming this as sceintific is totally pseudo thing.

When there are so many logical & proved scientific points are there then why you are not commenting on it ? Westerner can not accept India's history going back to many thousand years then Babylon and Greece.

In Babylon, Mittani kings & places clear Sanskrit names and their Indian Vedic Gods which are not found in Iran also proves that there was western migration after complete Saraswati river disappearance in 1900 BC.

How Harahvaiti river ( Modern Helmund river's previous name. Helmand is greeco form of Harahvaiti like Ganga is called Ganges ) in Afghanistan which is clear Saraswati but due to speaking sound changes it changed to Harahvaiti. Same way when you go farther from main Indus valley civilization you will find many much more sound & word change due to speaking errors of that local population. That's why proper pronunciation was very much stressed in Sanskrit verses reciting. That's why very less sound changes are found in Indus Valley civilization modern area compared with non-Vedic Indian area. So, your lingustic point is also very shaky one.

Previous Western schollars were swearing of AIT's supportive points ( like how you are swearing for your linguastic point ) but that all so called Scientific points have melted like ice in light of newer findings.

I want to add something here,

The number system was invented by India. Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.

Sanskrit is considered as the mother of all higher languages. This is because it is the most precise, and therefore suitable language for computer software. ( a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987 ).

Chess was invented in India.

Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are studies which originated in India.

The' place value system' and the 'decimal system' were developed in 100 BC in India.

The World's First Granite Temple is the Brihadeswara temple at Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The shikhara is made from a single ' 80-tonne ' piece of granite. Also, this magnificient temple was built in just five years, (between 1004 AD and 1009 AD) during the reign of Rajaraja Chola

The game of snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called 'Mokshapat.' The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. The game was played with cowrie shells and dices. Later through time, the game underwent several modifications but the meaning is the same i.e good deeds take us to heaven and evil to a cycle of re-births.

The World's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to mankind. The father of medicine, Charaka, consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago.

Although modern images & descriptions of India often show poverty, India was one of the richest countries till the time of British in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India's wealth and was looking for route to India when he discovered America by mistake.

The art of Navigation & Navigating was born in the river Sindh 6000 over years ago. The very word 'Navigation' is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word 'Nou'.

Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. His calculations was - Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: ( 5th century ) 365.258756484 days.

The value of "pi" was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, which was long before the European mathematicians.

Algebra, trigonometry and calculus also orignated from India. Quadratic equations were used by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10*53 ( i.e 10 to the power of 53 ) with specific names as early as 5000 B.C. during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera: 10*12( 10 to the power of 12 ).

Until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world. ( Source . Gemological Institute of America )

Sushruta is regarded as the father of surgery. Over 2600 years ago Sushrata & his team conducted complicated surgeries like cataract, artificial limbs, cesareans, fractures, urinary stones and also plastic surgery and brain surgeries.

Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India medicine. Detailed knowledge of anatomy, embryology, digestion, metabolism, physiology, etiology, genetics and immunity is also found in many ancient Indian texts.

Please go through http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/mahabharat/mahab_vartak.html Also read http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/mahabharat/mahab_abhijit.html

You will require Sanskrit Astronomical term names knowledge with it's base to understand.

It's proved beyond any doubts that ancient Indians were having knowledge of Astronomy much more & before than Babylonians and not otherwise as taught to the whole world.

===== Written by Win

1. I'm willing to bet the reason the Iranians refer to their steppe heritage more so than Indians is because they where in regular contact with those peoples. Infact records show that Persia under the Greek dynasty of the Seleucids, imposed by Alexander the Great, was invaded by Parthians (an Iranian steppe people) well into the historical period. This shows that the people of the steppe where certainly an important force in those times, and their constant contact would have reaffirmed the historical links between the groups. Most notably many of the steppe peoples practiced the Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism, and to this day some still (such as in Tajikistan) speak Farsi, the same language as Iran. Although India was certainly not cut off from the world, it wasn't in nearly as regular contact with the steppe as the Iranian Plateau was. You've also ignored the other relevent point I've brought up concerning this, that of course the majority of the "Aryans" in India at that time would only have been culturally so, not purely genetically. Although their language would have changed, the majority of the population would have viewed themselves as culturally Indian because they where. As I've also said previously, which you've failed to provide a rebuttal for, the Romans, much like the ancient Indians, never proposed they where not native to their land. Now whether Latin descends from Proto-Indo-European (as linguists propose) or Sanskrit (as you propose) is irrelevent here - because either way the Romans seem blisfully ignorant of either scenario according to their records. Same for other European cultures, and the Hittites in Anatolia. How come they don't know of the origins of their language and (to a certain extent) culture when ancient Indians apparently would?

When Ancient Iranians are having histoical records in which they have mentioned Sapta Sindhu, then Afghanistan as occupied area in early verses of their texts and not central asian land ( which is mentioned in much latter verses ) is clear evidence in itself. There are plenty of written , astronomic , archelogical evidences that clearly point Vedic nature of Ancient Indus Valley civilization. So, whatever was told previously is getting clearly defied. And, harappan invasion was not proposed is misguiding as Harappan = Ancient India. And, that is told as in invasion theory.

2. Your dismissal of the Spanish/Portugese example in South America based on an artificial distinction between "recent" and "ancient" is naïve and ill-informed. No such distinction exists in reality - the same principals are at work as in any time period. Only comparatively small groups of Europeans from only two major nations got to South America and where able to impose their languages on the native populations, which is why the language diversity is so low. In many regions the languages weren't "imposed" by outright warfare or cultural imperialism either - natives merely had to adopt Spanish or Portugese in order to continue trading and operating in the larger society of their region. This would have been akin to the original process of language change as we would have seen it in the Indus Valley, from a possibly Dravidian substrate to Indo-Aryan. And even though you dispute the South American claim, I see you completely ignored the example I gave of the Austronesian languages - not "recent" enough to dispute, perhaps? Both examples prove that the homeland of a language group is consistently the place with the MOST diversity, not the least as you claim. Theseare not the only cases that prove this theory. Examples can be found all over the world, and it's one of the foundations of comparative linguistics. Because of this the evidence is stacked overwhelmingly against India being the Urhmeit of the Indo-European languages.

3. An actual invasion of Harrapa has not been proposed since, well, since the original AIT. Modern theories are far more likely to see the decline of Harrapa as being pretty much unconnected to the arrival of Indo-Iranians, and certainly not as a result of a direct invasion. You're more stuck in past racist and imperialistic theories than the historians are. As for the Mitanni, current theories are that they came from outside India and split from the Indo-Aryans before they migrated into the sub-continent. This is why they preserve a similar language and Gods, no doubt also through influence from the similar Iranian Gods of the time. However they did not speak Sanskrit.

4. You havn't answered my question by explaining sound changes with "Same way when you go farther from main Indus valley civilization you will find many much more sound & word change due to speaking errors of that local population". I'm asking for specific sound changes. if these pronunciations changes are what created Indo-European language, then list them. Without this evidence, there is absolutely no way you can propose that the Indo-European languages derive from classical written Sanskrit. Infact linguistic evidence have proven the opposite, that Sanskrit derives from a common ancestor to other Indo-European languages through uniform sound changes. You cannot refute this evidence without coming up with sound changes of your own.

5. You also seem to be artificially imposing a sort of racist world view on scientific neutrality again, and I just don't understand it... In what way can "westerners" not accept India's history? "Westerners" from all races, credes and countries fully appreciates India's amazing and huge contribution to human progress, many of which you list, although in a slightly confused way (I can think of no computers that can read program instructions in Sanskrit...). But of course the historical Indo-Aryan migration has nothing to do with any of that. It does not invalidate any of this history. Again, I feel this may be the result of this "us" vs. "them" mentality. The Indo-Aryans where just one of many, many peoples who have come to India throughout history. Accepting their ultimate origin as being outside India does not invalidate the contribitions they made INSIDE India to Indian history. If Europeans are so "Eurocentric" and stuck in the past, how is it that they can accept an origin for Indo-European culture outside of Europe, wheras you can't accept an origin outside of India? --86.135.68.211 14:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Surely, Computers can not read Sanskrit but initial computer languages which were made used same logic of grammer, algorithm etc. that's found in Sanskrit ( Refer Panini- Bakus Alorithm ). Forbes magazine has acknoledged that during those time which I have mentioned above. Any language in the world is not same grametically perfect as Sanskrit. That's mentioned in NASA's study of Sanskrit language.

Indian History through out , do not mention any separate Aryan people coming to India ( this some Aryan as some different people is made to known to Indians by Britishers some 150-200 years before only; while proposing AIT ) and installing their language + culture on Ancient Indian people. For all people coming to India is mentioned but Aryan whose Sanskrit language + culture is told to erase previous language + culture from original people then those powerful Aryans must mention their achivements (& forget their original homeland memories within 200-400 years as told by Max Muller & their followers )

The highly developed nature of Sanskrit language suggests that it can not be formed in 200 - 400 years after their arrival in India ( and that time Aryans must be very very busy imposing their language + culture on original Indians and must not be having peaceful time to constuct or refine their original homeland Sanskrit language ).

Initially, britishers had suggested some Aryans from European steppes and not Indians. They had mentioned White Aryans and Dark Dravidians etc. by purposely mis-interpretating Rig-Ved verses.So, racist idea was of Britishers & then Germans took over it with Superior White Aryans concept. It was never an Indian idea in Ancient times also and that's why there was always very good cohesive relations between North and South India. It was Britishers idea for their famous `Divide & Rule' purpose.

PLEASE READ http://www.atributetohinduism.com/aryan_invasion_theory.htm FOR MORE DETAILS AND REFERENCES.

Your entire argument seems based on the fallacy that Sanskrit, and by extension Indian culture, is somehow perfect and above everything else; and therefore couldn't have been contributed to by some "barbarian" steppe peoples. However no real language is any more "highly developed" than any else. To think anything else quite honestly sounds like cultural supremacism, if not racism. In reality spoken Sanskrit was never perfect. The name Sanskrit, meaning "well formed" or "perfected", was given to it AFTER the reforms to the written language proposed by Panini. That's why it's been proposed as a perfect computer language, because it follows a highly regular prescriptivist grammar laid down by a single person. Spoken Sanskrit never followed those "perfect" rules - it was a living language, after all. Living languages are spoken by imperfect people, not perfect computers.

And who are these "powerful Aryans" as told by "Max Muller(sic) and his followers"? Again, you betray your point of reference for this discussion. This is the talk page for the AMT, not the AIT... If you want to debate racism in linguistics during the 19th century, fair enough. But I was under the impression we where having a discussion on the modern AMT. But, apart from that, why is it these Aryans (powerful or otherwise) must have mentioned their achievements? Like I said, it was most likely a very small amount of people, who by the time they adopted written language would have viewed themselves as being as much Indian as the people they settled amongst and who adopted their culture and language. Again, you have completely ignored my examples of Indo-European culture spreading to other parts of the world and being unmentioned in later records. Are you proposing that there is something inately special about Indian culture that would allow them to remember such a prehistorical event, wheras all other cultures wouldn't be able to? This again seems like cultural supremacy, not history. --86.135.68.211 13:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

As you & other pro-AMT supporters are now saying ( instead of previously same way told for invasion ) that Aryans were very small in numbers then how & why local town dwelling vast civilization can adopt their language + culture. Even today also we see no great things in nomadic steppes people so how come some 3,500 years before can they have any better culture + language than today. 3,500 years is fairly big time for language development then how come they could not improve on language when their brothers & sisters in India who peacefully migrated to India could impose Sanskrit + Vedic religion on very high population of India when there were no cars , Satellite TV channels, Mobile and Internet to communicate.And they were not rulers like Britishers of last 2 centuries on India. Britishers were not able to suppress any regional language + culture despite being rulers.

Forget, North Indians but even South Indians are not having any memory of some nomadic Steppes Aryans. Ancient Indians seem to remember ancient things properly but they only forgot some nomadic Aryans on which they got so much impressed that they adopted their nomadic Sanskrit language and Vedic region. There you are going wrong in this AMT which is pure theory without any logical & scientific proof to debate.

So, be logical my dear friend in your very own points. It's like saying that Eskimos came from North to USA and local US citizens overwhelmedly changed their language, culture & religion by getting impressed with Eskimos. There are many many points which represent continuation of Indian culture throughout and that's the reason for Indian culture's profound depth and knowledge which West is slowly realizing AGAIN.

Except, of course, Americans don't speak an Inuit language! tbh I don't even know why I continue this discussion. You seem to ignore everything I try to tell you about languages and culture in favour of nationalist idealism. As I've said before, languages do not inexorably get "better"; and there are no automatically better or more "impressive" cultures. As I've said before, the view that there is something special about Indian culture that automatically makes it better than any other culture is quite frankly bordering on racist. Back then, of course settlers from the North could easily have settled within (what we now know) as India and communicated and spread their culture to others with little or no problems - because of course during that period Indians probably wouldn't have the same racist attitude you seem to have towards foreigners... The modern conceptions of borders or even "native" culture where non-existent. The natives would not have seen themselves as being "superior" or somehow inherantly better than anyone else. These sort of ideas are relatively modern in human thought. You're consistently forgetting my own examples of similar occurances that invalidates your theory - let's just go with the Rome/Italy example. The exact same thing happened there. Indo-European settlers from the north moved in and the native culture was, to a certain extant, eventually subsumed and converted. Not entirely, of course - there where still native groups such as the Etruscans for a long while. Now I'm going to ask you a direct question here, and although I'd very much like an answer, I don't expect one: why do Italian records, or Etruscan records, or any other force within the region, not show a memory of these events of prehistory? Why is it Indians are expected to be able to "remember" such a thing, but everyone else isn't?

You're also completely missing a very important point here that I've brought up several times. The point is that Indian's culture heritage is not in any way invalidated by the Indo-Aryan migration. It is not an attack on India, formulated by "Britishers" to destroy it's history. It's merely a logical explanation of the facts - that Indo-European language and culture exists in India, and that a lack of linguistic diversity and the evidence of a Dravidian substrate shows that it did not originate there. From those two observations an historical incursion from outside is the only real possible explanation. The profound depth and knowledge of India is not in any way invalidated by the finding that not every single Indian culture originated completely from the sub-continent. It is the contributions they made after their settlement in India that are important. --86.135.87.74 10:07, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

I am not plagued to think about some Indian superiority but in ancient Harappan times Indians had far more advanced and very vast civilization is acknoledged the world over.And, I am giving that example v/s central asian / steppes people. There is nothing wrong in saying it and giving logical points of comparision between these two areas.

Itaty-Enstucan culture may be one point as they may not have vast cultural heritage like ancient India & Iran in time antiquity. Ancient Iran remebers their non-Iranian homeland and their ancient brothers i.e. Indians do not say about their non-origin of India or do not mention anything beyond of ancient Indian boundries which is natural one by Himalaya & Hindukush mountains. So,small culture of Entrusan of Italy not speaking about non-Italian v/s ancient Iranian speaking of Sapta-Sindu ( Modern Punjab - Haryana ) area , Afghanistan area and then proper Iran area and then nearby central asian areas as occupying area is much much more valid proof then non-speaking of ancient Indian literatures. Secondly, can you give idea of comparision between any ancient Entrucan literature against Vast literatures of ancient India which is highest and oldest available in the world today.

Ancient Iranians leaving from Steppes area must have come first with Indo-Aryans brothers in India on some guided tour and might have said good-bye to them on their way to Iran and then to Central asia from Sapta Sindhu area of Indo-Aryans in India !!! Now pro-AMT ( which is modified version of AIT ) people can use this modification in their theory.

I am wondering how pro-AMT persons can be so `scientific' that they ignore all clear evidences and repeat their hypotheisis always.

All very well and good... except the Sindhu spoken of in Iranian records, as far as I can tell, is NOT identified as a homeland. There's a huge difference between the Iranians knowing about the river after having settled on the Iranian plateau, and them considering the river to be their point of origin.

I'm wondering how you can put such emphasis on the importance of "clear evidence" when you a) misrepresent the available evidence to support your view b) totally ignore other evidence (linguistics) that shows you're views to be false. --86.135.87.74 13:10, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

AIT is now dead in Aryans invaded India sense but how the same Aryans coming to India is put in form of migration. So, pro-AIT who are now pro-AMT naturally will not have accepted above Avesta point. In Ancient Iranians clearly mention Sapta-Sindhu area ( not Sindhu river as told by you above ) as their occupying area ( I have mentioned above also as " occupying " and not " knowing " but how to twist the facts in their favour is very well known to pro-AIT/AMT people since it's inception.

So, till now Iranians and Indians diverting from Steppes separately will have to be modified that Iranians came to India to leave their Indian brothers safely in Sapta Sindhu area and from there before reaching Iranian plateau they had toured Afghanistan area also !!!!!

Also, in whole of Rig-Ved only 4 times `Arya' and not English `Aryan' term is mentioned. This term is also used in respect gesture and not special people. In Rig-Ved also Seven Rivers name start from Eastern to Western rivers with Ganga as first and Sindhu river as the last.

Ramayan is said as warfare between Aryan Ram and Dravidian Ravan. But this is to misguide Western people who naturally will read their twisted English versions. It's mentioned in Ramayan also that Ravan was Brahmin son and having knowledge of all 4 vedas. He was strong divotee of Lord Shiv.Also, Ram had woshipped Shiv Linga at present Rameshwar sea shore in Tamilnadu where the present temple lies. So, how to twist any point or hide some data & mention some point is usual phenomenon with pro-AIT/AMT. But now with Internet this knowledge will be open to every interested reader without any efforts.

Near Surat coast in Gujarat state of India some ancient city is found submerged in sea. The carbon dating gives date of 7500 BC. Fire altar mentioned in Rig-Ved is found at Kalibangan and Dholavira. Swastik sign and yoga postures are found as small terra cota statues which are very Vedic traditions. Saraswati river's mention in Rig-Ved was also told as absurd by pro-AIT people but now every one accepts Ancient Saraswati river's existence and the reasons for it's demise.

You're resorting to pop-history and populist theories instead of reality. The AMT is not undermined, is not in danger, and does not have to incorperate your fantastical revisionist viewpoint of history. The fact that Iranians settled in Afghanistan of course does not prove they originated in India at all. You're citing of a few artifacts and misentepretation of scripture also proves nothing - swastikas are found in North America too, does that mean Aryans came from there?

You also once again consistantly ignore the linguistic facts that show India cannot be the origin of Indo-European language and culture. Although it might have been a viable theory say 200 years ago, it's just ridiculous to assert such a thing given what we now know about the spreading of languages. Therefore Indo-Iranian language must have come into India from the outside. All you've essentially shown in this little discussion of ours is that anti-AMTists live in a nationalist fantasy world that revises fact and twists scripture to suit it's own purpose. --86.135.87.74 11:39, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Ancient Iranians had settled in Afghanistan but before that in Sapta Sindhu area of Indian subcontinent. Why that mentioned point is ignored continuosly( in natural habit of pro-AIT/AMT ). When there was not findings of any horse remains in first excavated Harappa & Mohen-jo-dara in 1920s then horse point was very big point for AIT supporters but when latter excavations in same or other Harappan places found Harappan time horse bones and mention of native Indian 18 pair of ribs instead of Steppes breed of 17 rib paired horse in Rig-Ved ( as mentioned above also ) is told to pro-AIT/AMT people then what happened to your BIG horse point.

Linguastic changes is not Science where it's 2 + 2 = 4 or H2 + O = H2O. Language & word developement is not pure linear process but mixtures of so many affecting conditions. During English rule of India, they modified several city/town/place name as per their speaking habit like Ganga river is spelled & written Ganges river, Vadodara to Baroda,Thiruanantpuram to Trivendrum,Mumbai to Bombay etc. It is similar to Sanskrit Tri becoming English Three , Matru / Mata of Sanskrit becoming Marther in German & Mother in English. So, language sound change & word change which is also seen in Indian regional languages but much lesser than European languages is not valid point but false fabrication. If that is so then why Lithuanian & Latvian language is very nearer to Sanskrit language ( in word similarities, with sound pronunciation similarity & grammer structure with Sanskrit ). As per Language sound change theory of Western Linguastics it can not happen and that's why it is given as separate Baltic group otherwise which can be staightly placed under Indo-Aryan group.But if that is done then how to expalain this similarity. So, make separate Baltic group for these languages.

Now explain me why so called Baltic group is showing very much similarity then Romance languages of Modern Europe like Italian,German,French,English etc. ? So, your so called Linguastic point is total absurd. Secondly , Baltic region of Lithuania & Latvia was very Celtic region and the last to convert to Christianity in Europe due to heavy killings & physical torchures. But still today they have preserved their roots with their ancient culture.

Finding of very ancient Swastika sign in North America is in accordance with Oppenheimar's genology & very scientific findings of origin of Non-African people from Indian subcontinent.

" AMT does not have to incorporate your fantastical revisionist viewpoint of history " ( as told this above by you ) but they are very scientific & logical one and is real example of ANY NEGATION OF VALID PROOF WHICH IS AGAINST pro-AIT/AMT AND it's nothing new for them. Due to PREVIOUS Anti-AIT REVISIONIST points only AIT is modified to AMT

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• • • You say, 'according the the Indian Census of 1961, there were about 1500 dialects and 110 languages in India', comparing this with the fewer languages in Europe. You conclude that 'there is a greater linguistic diversity in the Indian subcontinent.' With respect, this indicates a complete misunderstanding of what is meant by 'linguistic diversity'. The number of 'languages' is irrelevant. Firstly there is no clear definition of what constitutes a 'different' language (some people insist that Scots is a different language from English). But more importantly, the question concerns structural diversity within the I-E group as a whole. Probably all Indian I-E languages derive from Vedic, the I-A sub-section of the Iranian subsection of I-E. There is relatively little structural diversity here. There is much greater diversity within I-E in Europe than in India. That's simply a fact. Paul

Speakers of Konkani from Goa, Karnataka and Kerala states of India barely find each other intelligible (rather like Scots and English). Yet, they are classified as a single language. Unless you've lived in these regions for a while, you are unlikely to know this fact. The most objective metric for diversity would be the number of sound changes per 100 kilometers (or such). Until someone enumerates the sound change results for a few thousand words, we cannot claim greater IE diversity in Europe as simply a fact. None of us here possibly know the vareity of a given IE branch or region since we do not really speak all IE languages. So barring the laborious sound change evidence, we only can rely on other objective metrics such as number of languages or dialects. Not to be dismissive, but Probably all, relatively little, much greater are subjective, i.e., this is what I think arguments. As usual, if anyone knows of any such data, it would save us all a lot of typing :) Codebytez | Talk 04:58, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Codebytez, this is not 'subjective'. Any one individual does not have to speak all these languages because this is not about personal feelings or opinions, but about the science of linguistics. This can be challenged for sure, but you have to challenge the modelling of liguistic categories. The 'number of sound changes per thousand meters' has nothing whatever to do with this. We can be fairly confident that all I-A languages derive from Vedic. Paul

It depends what you mean by "diversity". In a historical linguistic context, however, the kind of diversity being looked for isn't just number of languages (whaterver that means!) but how different they are from each other, since the amount of difference generally indicates the time depth. In terms of different branches of Indo-European, Europe has Italic, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Albanian, and Greek; India just has Indo-Aryan and maybe Dardic.

The rule certainly isn't infallible, but it works most of the time; other good examples of the rules are Romance languages (Sardinian is the first branch, and the Italian "dialects" would be considered separate languages anywhere else); Slavic (contrast Russia with the Balkans); Bantu (highest diversity in Cameroon); Turkic (highest diversity in Central Asia rather than Turkey); and Austronesian (highest diversity by far in Taiwan; the Formosan languages are as different from each other as from other Austronesian languages). - Mustafaa 21:33, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

I suspect that linguistic "diversity" is rather difficult to quantify. All of the Indo-European languages in India are fairly obviously members of a single family, and also quite closely related to the Iranian group. Moreover, simply counting the number of languages spoken in India will not give you an accurate picture; at least half of them are Dravidian languages, and we know those are spoken nowhere else. Smerdis of Tlön 19:00, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Officially, there are 26 dravidian languages. Out of 398 that's a small slice. Does anyone have a reference to the actual number of Dravidian languages? Codebytez | Talk 04:58, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Point of Origin

The point is, that if point of origin is a valid argument, then the alleged Aryan homeland, namely western Iran/northern Anatolia should have the largest variety of IE languages and the furthest points, western/northern europe and the Indian subcontinent must have the least. In reality, its the opposite. All I'm saying is while Linguistics is great at describing the structure and relationships between languages, any conclusion drawn using the discipline is simply a semantic jump that can rarely stand on its own.

Aryan Relics

I see that the line the total absence of Aryan relics... has been deleted. The fact of the matter is, there is no bone, artifact or piece of pottery exhibited in any museum that has been definitely proven to belong to the Aryan Invaders of 1500 B.C. (If there was such an article, we wouldnt be debating anything here, would we?) I do think that line is relevant and should be reinstated.

BTW, does anyone know why no one has bothered to exacavate the route from western Iran to Afghanistan? Any archaeological signs of the route taken by Aryan travellers (wheels/ horse bones) should be sufficient to put this matter to rest.

Codebytez | Talk 02:00, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

"The point is, that if point of origin is a valid argument, then the alleged Aryan homeland, namely western Iran/northern Anatolia should have the largest variety of IE languages and the furthest points, western/northern europe and the Indian subcontinent must have the least." Before the Turks got there, that area had Greek, Anatolian, Armenian, Iranian, and Celtic (in Galatia). The only area that can really compare nowadays is the Balkans next door (Greek, Albanian/Illyrian, Slavic, Romance). Much of that diversity has been inconveniently obliterated by subsequent events, but it is nonetheless observable. India, by contrast, only has one branch of IE, unless you count English. Mere number of languages isn't the point; on a dialect continuum, drawing lines between different languages is pretty arbitrary anyway. - Mustafaa 05:26, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Greek/Armenian/Iranian/Celtic?. Surely, you dont count languages that are not indigenous. If not, New York City is the Aryan homeland. Codebytez | Talk 23:25, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, Celtic certainly isn't indigenous. Greek I would consider close enough to Anatolia to count, and Armenian certainly is indigenous to Anatolia (much more so than it is to Armenia!) Iranian can be disputed, but there's a good chance they've been in SE Turkey longer than they've been in Iran itself (where the Elamites. among other groups, preceded them). Of course, "indigenous" is a relative term; in the sufficiently long run, only Africans are ever indigenous! Later invasions can, of course, cause difficulties; that's part of the reason this method is not infallible. However, even these can often be detected - if you see a relatively tightly knit language family spread across a large area, as Turkic (or English!) is, then you know some sort of invading has been going on... - Mustafaa 06:03, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Good arguments. However, my objection is that the point of origin is offered into evidence as if it is an empirical formula. As we all know, New York City has the maximum density of world languages in a relatively small area. Are we to conclude that NYC is indeed the origination point of all world languages? In the 1640s there were 18 spoken languages in New York (then called New Amsterdam) when the population was around 1000. Economic opportunity, invasions, political and geographic boundaries, natural disasters, relegious persecution, etc. have far more influence in language distribution than point of origin. Point of origin arguments are not based on hard science nor rooted in empirical truth. Until the logical, scientific or mathematical basis for point of origin is stated, it is inadmissible as evidence for/against AIT. Sometimes yes, sometimes no does not qualify. Codebytez | Talk 19:44, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no" applies to virtually any historical principle. If you are concerned about its foundation, though, perhaps the best solution is to cite the linguists themselves rather than letting me argue the case, eg Lyle Campbell (Historical Linguistics, Edinburgh U. 1998, p. 352):

The other technique, called linguistic migration theory, looks at the classification (subgrouping) of the family and the geographical dispersion of the languages, and, relying on a model of maximum diversity and minimal moves, hypothesises the most likely location of the original homeland. The underlying assumption is that when a language family splits up, it is more likely for the various daughter languages to stay close to where they started out and it is less likely for them to move very far or very frequently. Therefore, turning this process around, if we look at today's geographical distribution of related languages, we can hypothesise how they got to where they are now and where they came from. This procedure deals nopt with the actual geographical spread of the languages within the family, but rather with the distribution of members of subgroups in the family. The highest branches on a family tree (the earliest splits withing the family) reflect the greatest age, and therefore the area with the greatest linguistic diversity - that is, the most representatives of the higher-order subgroups - is likely to be the homeland. This is sometimes called the centre of gravity model (after Sapir 1949:5). Lower-level branches (thopse which break up later) are also important, because they may allow us to postulate the direction of later migrations or spread of members of the family. In this model, we attempt to determine the minimum number of moves which would be required to reverse these migrations or spreads to bring the languages back to the centre of gravity of their closest relatives within their individual subgroups, and then to move the various different subgroups back to the location from which their later distribution can be accounted for with the fewest moves. In this way, by combining the location of maximum diversity and the minimum moves to get languages back to the location of the greatest diversity of their nearest relatives, we hypothesise the location of the homeland.

And for balance, a quote from the section on "Cautions concerning linguistic homelands migration theory":

(p. 359) On the whole, the inferences afforded by this method are strong, and few documented cases fail to conform. In principle, however, it is not difficult to imagine rather straightforward situations in which linguistic migration theory would fail to produce reliable results.

Well, there you go... his explanation of the reasoning is hopefully clearer than mine. - Mustafaa 07:39, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the title and some of the content of the section that was previously called 'Theory that the IE languages originated in India'. I think there is a lot of confusion between the 'Aryans' and 'Proto-Indo-Europeans', confusion that persists throughout this whole article (and has also been introduced into the Aryan race one). It's true that some Indians adopt what they call 'OIT' (Out of India Theory) - the claim that IE originated in India, but others simply claim that IE entered India much earlier than proposed and that Vedic/Aryan identity developed within India, possibly alongside the IVC. Paul

"the area of highest linguistic diversity of a language family is usually fairly close to the area of its origin": Can anyone provide any supporting evidence for this "rule of thumb"? It seems like most linguists take this on its face value, but I haven't seen any conclusive supporting evidence. Also what exactly do they mean by "linguistic diversity"? Are French and Spanish more linguistically diverse from each other than Telugu and Gujarati?

Influence in Religion

This article is about the Aryan invasion theory, not the Aryan invasion. The Aryan invasion, if it happened, may well have influenced religion. The Aryan invasion theory has not influenced religion- it has influenced the study of religion, viz. theology. So the section should be called Influence in theology. Incidentally, neither of the existing "sentences" in this section is a grammatical sentence. Markalexander100 06:51, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

User:68.251.112.161's contentions on Aryan invasion theory#Genetic Evidence on caste system and its origins

This study and its 2004 follow-up have many structural problems. I see that my previous article was revised without a discussion. But here is a brief summary of the problems with these studies:

- The Correleation = Causation Bias: The authors assume because of genetic similarities between Europeans and certain Indian populations, that Europeans invaded India and not vice-verse. In fact all extensive genetic studies have shown the opposite. "Contrary to established thinking, it appears that our human ancestors took a more southerly route out of Africa, traveling east across the Red Sea into what is now Yemen, and then through India and all the way to the far reaches of Australia, before they swung up into Europe." [1].

- Limited Geographic Scope: The study sample was limited to one Indian southern state Andhra Pradesh. A better sample would be drawn on random from all regions of India.

some (incomplete) comments on the genetics section

• Some other studies:

• ‘There is much greater homogenization in terms of morphological and genetic traits at the regional level’, says the report. For example, the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu (esp. Iyengars) share more traits with non-Brahmins in the state than with fellow Brahmins in western or northern India. (Koenraad Elst, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate: N. V. Subramaniam: “The way we are. An ASI project shatters some entrenched myths”, Sunday, 10-4-1994. about a report by Kumar Suresh Singh) (...)Kailash C. Malhotra: “Detailed anthropometric surveys carried out among the people of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bengal and Tamil Nadu revealed significant regional differences within a caste and a closer resemblance between castes of different varnas within a region than between sub-populations of the caste from different regions. .... “A more detailed study among eight Brahmin castes in Maharashtra on whom 18 metric, 16 scopic and 8 genetic markers were studied, revealed not only a great heterogeneity in both morphological and genetic characteristics but also showed that 3 Brahmin castes were closer to non-Brahmin castes than [to the] other Brahmin castes. P. P. Majumdar and K. C. Malhotra (1974) observed a great deal of heterogeneity with respect to OAB blood group system among 50 Brahmin samples spread over 11 Indian states. (Koenraad Elst, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate: K. C. Malhotra: “Biological Dimensions to Ethnicity and caste in India”, in K. S. Singh: Ethnicity, Caste and People, Manohar, Delhi 1992, p. 65. Reference is to H. K. Rakshit: “An Anthropometric Study of the Brahmins of India”, in Man in India #46; and P. P. Majumdar & K. C. Malhotra: OAB Dynamics in India: A Statistical Study, Calcutta 1974. )

• The anthropology of Harappan skeletons has shown a substantial similarity with modern populations from a nearby area (Dutta , 1984)

• Anthropologists have observed that the present population of Gujarat is composed of more or less the same ethnic groups as are noticed at Lothal in 2000 BC. Similarly, the present population of the Punjab is said to be ethnically the same as the population of Harappa and Rupar four thousand years ago. (David Frawley, Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory)

• (...) two recent articles in Current Biology (London), vol.9, nrs.22 and 24, by T. Kivisild et al. ("Deep common ancestry of Indian and Western-Eurasian mitochonrdial DNA lineages") and by Todd R. Disotell ("Human evolution: the southern route to Asia"), about genetic connections between India and "Western Eurasia". One finding is that during or before the Ice Age, a group of human beings migrated from Ethiopia and Somalia through Yemen and Oman to Gujarat and into India. The more important finding for our present purposes is that for the parameters studied, there is no north/south or Aryan/Dravidian divide in India; that one of the lineages showed a common origin between Indians and West-Asians in ca. 53,000 years before the present (this may be the spread of homo sapiens outside Africa, hence not very informative about more recent splits in the human family); that the West-Asian connection was highly minoritarian in the Indian gene pool, indicating only a small contribution by invaders from the West; and that the youngest split indicated by the genetic material dates to ca. 9,300 years BP. This neatly fits the earlier findings of non-genetic (morphological) physical anthropology, viz. that the population type of northwestern India has remained the same for at least 8,000 years. Also: "Recent work suggests that the supposed Aryan invasion of India 3,000-4,00 years ago was much less significant than is generally believed." In deference to established indological opinion, they make a perfunctory nod toward the "supposed" Aryan invasion, only to state that they have found no evidence for this popular supposition...There is no trace of their descending on India after 8000 BC, since when the skeletal record shows the same population living in the Indus basis as lives there today. (Koenraad Elst)

• An examination of human skeletal remains also does not show any discontinuity from 1900-800 BCE, the period of the proposed Aryan entrance into India. In a recent article, Hemphill et al state that there are two discontinuities in the area in so far as the human remains are concerned. One occurred between 6000-4500 BCE and the other occurred between 800-200 BCE. In the intervening period, there is a general biological continuity, notwithstanding a limited interaction with the populations from the west that has always occurred to some degree. (David Frawley Update on the Aryan Invasion Theory)

• Most of the mtDNA diversity observed in Indian populations are between individuals within populations; there is no significant structuring of haplotype diversity by socio-religious affiliation, geographical location of habitat or linguistic affiliation (Roychoudhury et al 2000).

• Oppenheimer, Stephen (2003), "The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey ouf of Africa,"

One of the major points that Oppenheimer harps on is that India is the major node in Eurasia. He argues that the origin of most Eurasian haplogroups can be found in the subcontinent.

In a trail blazing work prominent geneticist Stephan Oppenheimer has convincingly argued that all the non African peoples of the world have descended from the first Out of Africa Eve mtDNA strain known as L3 and the first Out of Africa Y chromosome line labeled as M168. Moreover, South Asia and in particular India has been a major location of flowering for L3 and M168 as they spread through out the rest of the world about 90,000 years before present. The story according to Oppenheimer (2003) is as follows. The African people carrying L3 and M168 left that continent across south Red sea across the southern part of the Arabian peninsula towards Pakistan and India. On the maternal side the mtDNA strain L3 split into two daughters which Oppenheimer labels Nasreen and Manju. While Manju was definitely born in India the birthplace of Nasreen is uncertain tentatively placed by Oppenheimer in southern Iran or Baluchistan. Manju and Rohani (should be Rohini), Nasreen's most prolific daughter both born in India are the progenitors of all non African peoples.

The story on the paternal side is a lot more complex. M168 had three sons, of which Seth was the most important one. Seth had five sons named by Oppenheimer as Jahangir, H, I, G and Krishnna. Krishnna born in India turned out to be the most prolific of Seth's sons. Krishnna through his son Ho, grandson Ruslan through Polo, and great grandson M17 through Ruslan, played a major role in the peopling of South Asian, East Asia, Central Asia, Oceania and West Eurasia (see Appendix 2, p. 374-375 of Oppenheimer 2003). Oppenheimer (2003) has this to say about M17 and his father Ruslan:

"For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity *characterizes* its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a `male Aryan Invasion of India', (p. 152)."

"Study of the geographical distribution and the diversity of genetic branches and stems again suggests that Ruslan, along with his son M17, arose early in South Asia, somewhere near India, and subsequently spread not only south-east to Australia but also north, directly to Central Asia, before splitting east and west into Europe and East Asia (p. 153)."

Indeed, nearly all Europeans — and by extension, many Americans — can trace their ancestors to only four mtDNA lines, which appeared between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago and originated from South Asia.

See [2] and [3]

• Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen report on their study of the migration of genetic traits (with reference to AIT advocate Asko Parpola): “Parpola’s suggestion of movement of Proto-Rg-Vedic Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley by 1800 BC is not supported by our data. Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era.”(Hemphill & Christensen: “The Oxus Civilization as a Link between East and West: A Non-Metric Analysis of Bronze Age Bactrain Biological Affinities”, paper read at the South Asia Conference, 3-5 November 1994, Madison, Wisconsin; p. 13. ) The inflow which they do find, around the turn of the Christian era, is apparently that of the well-known Shaka and Kushana invasions. Kenneth A. R. Kennedy reaches similar conclusions from his physical-anthropological data: “Evidence of demographic discontinuities is present in our study, but the first occurs between 6000 and 4500 BC (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations of Mehrgarh) and the second is after 800 BC, the discontinuity being between the peoples of Harappa, Chalcolithic Mehrgarh and post-Harappan Timargarha on the one hand and the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age inhabitants of Sarai Khola on the other. (K. A. R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed. : The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p. 49. On p. 42, Kennedy quotes the suggestion that “not only the end of the [Harappan] cities but even their initial impetus may have been due to Indo-European speaking peoples”, by B. and F. R. Allchin: The Birth of Indian Civilization, Penguin 1968, p. 144. ).....“Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.” (K. A. R. Kennedy: “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?”, in George Erdosy, ed. : The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p. 49. )

• Archaeogenetics: The skeletons of Timargarha (“Vedic Aryans”) are similar to the the ones of the ancient Harappans. The Indus-Valley population appears, on the available evidence, to have remained more or less stable to the present day.”There are no indications that the racial composition and distribution of the Indian population has substantially changed since the start of the IE dispersal, which cannot reasonably be placed much earlier than 6,000 BC.(K. Elst: Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate)

• Limited study: The Bamshad study is limited to one single Indian state, Andrah Pradesh. It is also limited to a small sample size of people.

Michael Bamshad also wrote in 2004: In India alone, for example, thousands of different castes/sub-castes and ~450 tribal groups comprising approximately one-fifth of the world population have been documented, but molecular genetic data are available for only a handful. Indeed, much of the genetic data available on many populationsis limited to genotypes of the mitochondrial genomeand the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome. But assessments of patterns of variation based onsingle-locus analyses fundamentally lack power. What is needed instead is an unbiased sampling of variation (for example, through resequencing) across the genome from individuals in well-characterized communities sampled from contiguous geographical regions throughout the world.(DECONSTRUCTING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GENETICS AND RACE, Michael Bamshad et al, 2004)

• The Michael Bamshad et al (2001) study:

• The coalescence estimate of Indian haplogroup-M haplotypes is 48,000 ± 1500 yr, suggesting that Indian-specific mtDNA haplotypes split from a proto-Asian ancestor in the late Pleistocene.

This does not agree with other studies. The "M" group is said to be the earliest "out of Africa" group. The earliest out of africa goes back to some 120 -> 170 K years, depending on who writes what. The timeline doesn't agree. The earliest "out of Africa" group WAS the wrongly termed "proto-Asian ancestor". It can't be "proto" anything as in the context it is an artificial and theoretical concept. This claim of "proto-" ASSUMES an existence, unproved and undefined earlier group of people. It is a totally unsubstantiated claim and belongs with the fairies. [4]

Slide no3 indicates the first haplogroup-M. The following slide shows Australia and refer to Mungo Man, older than 40K years. Population in Australia is argued to go back to about 60 -> 65K ago, and are indeed related to people in India. This places early HS (Homo Sapien) in India before the attributed date in the study.

• Therefore, to resolve further the relationships of Europeans and Asians to contemporary Indian populations, we defined the identities of specific mtDNA restriction-site haplotypes. ...... defines a haplogroup ... M,... (...)Most of the common haplotypes found in Telugu- and Hindi-speaking caste populations belong to haplogroup M...

This is absolute CRAP! Table 2 makes this a lie, it shows a similar Dravidic % (if that table can be understood at all)!

Haplogroup M is but ONE of MANY haplogroups all people have. It is totally BOGUS to claim anything on a single haplogroup alone. It is far, far too narrow a comparisonto be of any value. FACT: ALL people (as a group of people) share haplotypes. To what extent is the guide, is the one that indicates, in the case of mtDNA, a maternal migration and admixture of people. Focusing on a single haplogroup HIDES a lot of admixture of other groups.

The proof is this. In fig 2 notes it says "ancestral to haplogroups B, F, H, T, J, V, and U ". The "U2" is a sub group of U.... which is a subgroup of V, IIRC.

Also "About 99% of European mtDNAs fall into one of ten haplogroups: H, I, J, K, M, T, U, V, W or X" - (Torroni et al. 1996a). So from this we see that the common "European" hap-groups are, H, J, M, T, V, U at the very least. Note "H" is also an African hap. The other haplogroups identified in fig 2 notes B, F belong to Mongolian -> Siberian areas, while others point to China and Asia in general.

• Table 2. MtDNA Haplogroup Frequencies in Dravidic and Hindi-Speaking Indians

God only knows what they intend to show with this table. The % in "()" are error margins. These error margins are often as large as the claimed incident of haplotype. But there are TWO very serious erroneous claims! There are NO haplogroup known as "asian" (after all INDIA is in ASIA). There are NO haplogroup known as "West Eurasian"!! It is wrong to show BOTH the top level haplogroup AND the sub-groups as well - they are already in the top level count! This on its own renders the table USELESS, even IF one was able to decipher what they hell they try to show with it.

• It is also possible that haplotypes with an older coalescence were introduced by Dravidians, This claim is pure fluff and raw speculation.

• Our analysis of 40 autosomal markers ... How odd!! Up to this point they speak ot mtDNA which is NOT part of the nucleus of a cell, as an autosome is (part of the non-sex chromosomes). Then they go on and say "The high affinity of caste Y chromosomes...." is that intended as "caste Y" or "Y-chromosomes" - I'll assume the latter. Strictly speaking there is no "Y-chromosome", as it is only counted as HALF a chromosome - and this is one "half" that cannot and is not called an "autosome".

• The autosomal Alu and biallelic Y-chromosome polymorphisms, in contrast, have a slower rate of drift than Y-chromosome STRs because of a higher effective population size, and their mutation rate is very low. Thus, the Y-chromosome biallelic polymorphisms and autosomal Alu markers may serve as more stable markers of worldwide population affinities.

Fact is that Y-chromosomes are rather prone to drift, and are NOT good for long term studies. Hell the oldest Y-chromosome "Adam" is only 80K years, while the mtDNA Eve is about double that. This means certain lineages of Y-chromosomes have disappeared completely. See: [5]

A human has 23 PAIRS of chromosomes, only ONE is not an autosome, chromosome 23 and it is the sex chromosome of XY or XX. Some count this as TWO chromosomes X AND Y. The Y-chromosome has a portion that is re-mixed at every passing, and an offspring (male only) has merely a 25% chance of inheriting the fathers same genes. See fig 1, it is the top half, the important bits of a person's physical makeup. The rest of it is what makes a person a male, produces more testosterone than oestrogen... etc etc....

The study mentions 5 CLASSES of casts, the 5th being the "untouchables". Yet the study itself only recognises 3 CLASSES of humans, but that claim is contradicted in the Abstract, where it says "...265 males from eight castes of different rank...." -the sample size and composition. BUT then they also go on to say they compared them to ".....and other Indians." among others!! It therefor cannot support anything claimed for it, as it crosses the class boundaries. The study is LIMITED in geographic scope, otherwise appears to have a reasonable numbers purely - I would have liked family connection to be far more remote than the study's criteria was.

Conclusion: The study is seriously lacking in that it does NOT show, rather than what it DOES show. A study WITHIN "classes" always shows a greater genetic diversity than there ever is BETWEEN "classes". This is missing as the three groups have been averaged to make the diversity disappear.

There is a division based on language - a serious danger exists that it is understood by some that a "language" is inherited or "genetic based".... or that it is an "ethnicity" therefor classification as "Ubermenchen" or not is justified on the basis of language.

The abstract says: "For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians." - this does give a hint of the least difference is BETWEEN groups. That is to say "most similar to each other"!! But the claim "most similar to Asians" is not rocket science either, as (1) India IS part of Asia. (2) that was "the road" early migration took to the rest of SE and E Asia, Australia and PNG and therefor NZ as well (though via a much longer road). A road that began in Africa and eventually ended up in the Americas and Australasia.

• Also, even though the Bamshad study is more constructed to support a theory, than to illuminate the facts, some of the conclusions reached in the Bamshad 2001 paper are not mentionned in the article:

The distance between Europeans and lower castes is larger than the distance between Europeans and upper castes, but the distance between Europeans and middle castes is smaller than the upper caste- European distance.

This is underscored by the observation that the Kshatriya (an upper caste), whose members served as warriors, are closer to Europeans than any other caste (data not shown).

This pattern is further accentuated by separating the European population into Northern, Southern, and Eastern Europeans; each caste group is most closely related to Eastern Europeans.

• Unlike the mtDNA papers, there are those who dispute the exogenous origins of the haplogroups in question, so I tend to think that a predominantly indigenous (that is, lineages extent in South Asia prior to 10,000 years ago) narrative is more probable (that is, the case for mtDNA being indigenous is stronger than that of the Y being exogenous).

• The similarities between upper castes and Eastern Europeans should not be overplayed; it really depends what locus you look at. Some loci (especially on the Y) appear to be very similar to Eastern European populations among upper castes, while some autosomal loci do not.

some references:

Important references are the studies of Kivisild et al. They include a lot of relevant information that cannot be summarized here. See the links. Then there are also studies by Metspalu, Hemphill, Kennedy, etc.

• Kivisild et al 1999, Deep common ancestry of Indian and western-Eurasian mitochondrial DNA lineages [6]

• Kivilsind et al 1999b, The Place of the Indian mtDNA Variants in the Global Network of Maternal Lineages and the Peopling of the Old World [7]

• Kivisild et al 2000, An Indian Ancestry: a Key for Understanding Human Diversity in Europe and Beyond [8]

• Kivilsid et al 2003a, The Genetics of Language and Farming Spread in India [9]

• Kivilsid et al 2003b, The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal

and Caste Populations [10]

• Mait Metspalu et al, 2004: Most of the extant mtDNA boundaries in South and Southwest Asia were likely shaped during the initial settlement of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans [11] and [12]

• Oppenheimer, Stephen (2003), "The Real Eve: Modern Man's Journey ouf of Africa," See also [13] and [14]

• Science Forum [15]

• Koenraad Elst: Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate [16]

• N.S. Rajaram [17]

--Ilyacqd 15:26, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Judging dead people by appearance is not always accurate

mtDNA of Scytho-Siberian skeleton Human Biology 76.1 (2004) 109-125

Genetic Analysis of a Scytho-Siberian Skeleton and Its Implications for Ancient Central Asian Migrations

François-X. Ricaut et al.

Abstract The excavation of a frozen grave on the Kizil site (dated to be 2500 years old) in the Altai Republic (Central Asia) revealed a skeleton belonging to the Scytho-Siberian population. DNA was extracted from a bone sample and analyzed by autosomal STRs (short tandem repeats) and by sequencing the hypervariable region I (HV1) of the mitochondrial DNA. The resulting STR profile, mitochondrial haplotype, and haplogroup were compared with data from modern Eurasian and northern native American populations and were found only in European populations historically influenced by ancient nomadic tribes of Central Asia.

...

The mutations at nucleotide position 16147 C→A, 16172 T→C, 16223 C→T, 16248 C→T, and 16355 C→T correspond to substitutions characteristic of the Eurasian haplogroup N1a (Richards et al. 2000). The haplotype comparison with the mtDNA sequences of 8534 individuals showed that this sequence was not found in any other population.

...

The N1a haplogroup was not observed among the native American, east Asian, Siberian, Central Asian, and western European populations. The geographic distribution of haplogroup N1a is restricted to regions neighboring the Eurasian steppe zone. Its frequency is very low, less than 1.5% (Table 6), in the populations located in the western and southwestern areas of the Eurasian steppe. Haplogroup N1a is, however, more frequent in the populations of the southeastern region of the Eurasian steppe, as in Iran (but only 12 individuals were studied) and southeastern India (Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh territories). More precisely, in India haplogroup N1a is absent from the Dravidic-speaking population and is present in only five Indo-Aryan-speaking individuals, four of whom belonged to the Havik group, an upper Brahman caste (Mountain et al. 1995).

...

The absence of the Eurasian haplogroup N1a in the 490 modern individuals of Central Asia (Shields et al. 1993; Kolman et al. 1996; Comas et al. 1998; Derenko et al. 2000; Yao et al. 2000; Yao, Nie et al. 2002) suggests changes in the genetic structure of Central Asian populations, probably as a result of Asian population movements to the west during the past 2500 years.

AAPA 2004

East of Eden, west of Cathay: An investigation of Bronze Age interactions along the Great Silk Road.

B.E. Hemphill.

The Great Silk Road has long been known as a conduit for contacts between East and West. Until recently, these interactions were believed to date no earlier than the second century B.C. However, recent discoveries in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang (western China) suggest that initial contact may have occurred during the first half of the second millennium B.C. The site of Yanbulaq has been offered as empirical evidence for direct physical contact between Eastern and Western populations, due to architectural, agricultural, and metallurgical practices like those from the West, ceramic vessels like those from the East, and human remains identified as encompassing both Europoid and Mongoloid physical types.

Eight cranial measurements from 30 Aeneolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and modern samples, encompassing 1505 adults from the Russian steppe, China, Central Asia, Iran, Tibet, Nepal and the Indus Valley were compared to test whether those inhabitants of Yanbulaq identified as Europoid and Mongoloid exhibit closest phenetic affinities to Russian steppe and Chinese samples, respectively. Differences between samples were compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity were assessed with cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis.

Results indicate that, despite identification as Europoid and Mongoloid, inhabitants of Yanbulaq exhibit closest affinities to one another. No one recovered from Yanbulaq exhibits affinity to Russian steppe samples. Rather, the people of Yanbulaq possess closest affinities to other Bronze Age Tarim Basin dwellers, intermediate affinities to residents of the Indus Valley, and only distant affinities to Chinese and Tibetan samples

Neutrality

This is about the section currently titled “Genetic Evidence on caste system and its origins.”

The section on genetics is a one sided POV (much of it originated from User Water Fish and Mustafaa, see talk and main page), the other side is mentioned in only one single sentence: (However see Kivisild [7] (http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild2003b.pdf) and [8] (http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Kivisild2003a.pdf),for a slightly different view.)

There are genetic studies that come to different conclusions than the studies by Michael Bamshad. To be NPOV, both sides should be (equally) mentionned.

See the comments under some (incomplete) comments on the genetics section. (See above.)

To be NPOV, the genetics section of the article should a) also mention the genetic studies that come to different conclusions (e.g. the studies of Kivisild), and in similar length. The section only focuses on one or two studies, without discussing in a similar length other studies which come to different conclusions. For a npov view in the article, conclusions reached in other studies (e.g. Kivisild, Brian E. Hemphill, Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, Mait Metspalu, etc.) should also be discussed. and b) have a more critical approach.(see also comments above) --Ilyacqd 23:01, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hello Dbachmann, please read the comments I made above. I also recommend to read a few of the abstracts and conclusions of the studies of Kivisild posted above under references (links). I was thinking to write a text summarizing the main points of the above information. Please understand that unfortunately I won't have time to work on this in the next two months. I was also hoping that somebody who is a geneticist would possibly write something about some of the different studies mentioned above. I don't know very much about genetics, and when I wrote the above notes, I knew even a lot less about it than I do now. But despite this, the information given above, even incomplete as it is, is relevant to the genetics section of the article.

Regards, --Ilyacqd 22:57, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

ok, thanks. maybe we can restrict the npov warning to that section then? there is Template:SectNPOV. And, what on earth is the meaning of "'gotra' system of mating, which results in non-random samples."? link gotra system of mating, or explain. I cannot access Kivisild (broken links) dab (ᛏ) 14:31, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not taking either side as I don't have complete information. AFIK, there is a practice among Brahmins of not marrying people belonging to the same Gotra, which is inherited patrilineally by the children. Marrying within the same Gotra is considered to be on par with incest. I'm not sure if it prohibits marrying people within or outside the gotra. Different castes have similar prohibitions, some of which is matrilineally inherited. This is supposed to prevent inbreeding, but is ineffective when it comes to patrilineal relationships. -- Sundar 15:08, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Not sure if the above results in non-random samples. -- Sundar 15:10, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

The point about gotra is that if a sample is taken from a small area or caste or tribe(where all the males would be desended from a single male under the gotra system),the frequency and diversity would be over/under estimated.In Kivisilds paper he has taken samples from a wide are (the whole of the Punjab) and various castes.This is more likely to be representitive of the population as a whole.If you take a random sample of a single group or caste the result would be skewed,this would not represent a accurate sample.

Caste and Aryans, is there a relationship ?

However, most of the pro-invasionist papers imply that R1a1 is the genetic marker that is representative of an invasion, due to its high frequency in Euro-asia. But an equally likely genetic marker is haplogroup L. This haplogroup is present in Greek, Turkish, Lebonese, Iranians, Central Asian and Indian populations (and Europe, see Kivisild). This marker is found in locations where written sources record the presence of Indo-European languages and people: i.e. Greek, Hittite, Hyksos, Mitanni, Iranians and Indians. Its peak frequency is found in Indo-Iranian populations. Another possible marker is J2. Also the 'Western Euroasian' components that are found in Indian mtdna show a distribution closer to that found in the Southern Caucasus and Middle East, than in Eastern Europe. There is also the question of why one should assume only one Y haplogroup is representative of the Aryan gene pool. R1a1, R1b, J2, L and H - all of which are present in India and Central and West Asia - are all possibilities.

Interestingly,studies show that there has been very little mixing of the male line between castes,clans for sometime.They show distinct haplotypes even though many clans(castes) within a region have similar haplogroups.For instance North West Indians contain mainly haplogroups R1a1,R1b,J2 and L ,yet there is very little sharing of haplotypes with other castes(clans) in the same region.In fact according to the yhrd.org database Jats (mainly Jat Sikhs(Punjab)) have more haplotypes in common with Germans ,Balts and Slavs (between 2%-10% ,1-5 haplotypes ,mainly R1a1) than with neighbouring Indo-Iranians.The question arises that if Aryans came from outside India(or Pakistan) ,how is it that they where able to separate into distinct clans without any of the clans sharing a considerable percentage of haplotypes?.[18]

If we make a similar comparison within European populations we see these populations share a number of haplotypes (R1b?).For example comparing Irish-Italian haplotypes using the Yhrd.org database,we see that they share a considerable frequency ,even though these two populations have been separated from each other by the Alps, the Western European landmass and the English Channel since the end of the last ice age,(or at least since Celtic migrations relating to the spread of the Urnfield culture about 3000 years ago.

Even if one assumes a high mutation rate for haplotypes,the Irish-Italian example shows that for a complete mismatch of Y chromosome haplotypes in the Indo-Iranians to occur (as seems to be the case),these castes(clans) would need to have formed much earlier than the supposed aryan invasion about 3500 years ago ,(possibly as far back as the end of the last ice age).Since the mismatch in the Indo-Iranians seems to apply within all haplogroups (J2,L,R1a1,R1b) one has to question associating the Kurgan culture with the origin of R1a1 .Alternatively ,if we assume a more recent separation of castes(clans),we are still left with the result that before separation the population consisted of a mixture of haplogroups (J2,L,R1b,R1a1).Hence the Kurgan/Aryan/caste/R1a1 connection is untenable,(although this does not exclude the possibility that Aryan males consisted of a subset of R1a1)

I now added some material to the article. I couldn't to this earlier because I hadn't the time. I think I will remove the npov tag from the text. But that does not mean that I think that the section is completely npov, but that now at least other studies are mentioned and discussed in more than approx. one sentence, and not only the study of Bamshad (2001). I think that the section could still be much improved. It would be nice if a geneticist could to this. Since I'm not a geneticist, I couldn't of course write as much as I otherwise would have done. There's still a lot of information that could be added, and the results of the Bamshad study, despite its length in the article are only mentionned but not discussed or criticized. --Ilyacqd 17:40, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Anti AIT summaries by 66.46.232.178

There seem to be some repeated additions - repeatedly deleted by Water Fish - here that need to be challenged. The author states:

"Although Max Muller proposed migration of the speaking people responsible for the phonologically regularities of commonly used words in different Indo-European vocabulary, it is only but one of the possible process of language transfer. The words can be transferred through diffusion to neighboring areas and keep moving like a wave ending up influencing the languages of far off places. It also takes place by loan-words from one culture to another usually associated with the development of new products or processes."

This is not an accurate account of the concept of a language group. There is no support that I know of for the claim that individual loan-words can just be accumulated to the point that a language becomes sufficiently similar to another one to be deemed part of the same group. The 'language group' concept is defined by systematic similarities and differences in grammar and vocabulary. There's no way that one language can just 'merge' into another one, as seems to be implied here.

"There are no archaeological evidences suggesting people invading Indian sub-continent in successive waves. It is highly unlikely that Aryan people took off from their homelands with the specific purpose of invading Indian sub-continent. They must be the people on the move for any of a number of possible reasons."

As far as I know, no-one has ever suggested that a nation called 'the Aryans' decided one day to invade and take over India like Hitler invaded Russia. This is the stawiest of straw men. It was always assumed that the 'invasion', if it occurred, took the form of progressive incursions.

"The Neolithic age came to Indian sub-continent much earlier than previously thought. A French archaeologist named Jean-Francois Jarrige, has conducted an outstandingly successful excavation at the site of Mehrgarh, near the Bolan pass in Balochistan. Most surprising of this excavation is the evidence of cultivation of cereal crops (barley, einkorn, emmer and wheat) dating back to circa 6000 BC."

What relevance does this evidence have to claims of Aryan Invasion? There seems to be a confusion here with Renfrew's theories about a correspondence between IE and Neolithic expansion.

"Not only it is impossible for small bands of invaders to overtake tens of millions of people; it also suggests a cultural or trading relationship between Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Indian sub-continent as a result of the cultivation of cereals of Mesopotamian origin. Thus appearance of the names of Indian deities in Hittites-Mittani accord is irrelevant to a supposed Aryan invasion from the northwest."

Fistly the Aryans are not supposed to have supplanted the entire population of India, only the north. Secondly, language replacement is not the same as total population replacement, as we know from the spread of Latin in France and English in Britain. The point about the Mitanni and Hittites seems to be similar to the 'merging' claim. Sure, the presence of Vedic gods in their pantheon is not proof of their distinctive Aryan/IE identity - but it is evidence of ethnic connections.

"Being semi-nomadic pastoral should actually be a handicap to Aryans. It was farming which increased the population very quickly. The total number of Aryans must have remained lower than farming communities."

By that logic no invasion of Huns ever occurred. Patstoral culture may create a more mobile population conducive to military elites and to expansionist adaptability.

"Both horses and chariots were already present in the Indus valley. The Neolithic age and links with Mesopotamian and Anatolian civilizations during the preceding 4000 years must have introduced horses to the Indus valley."

Evidence for this is weak. Again ther dogmatism here ('must') is surely inappropriate. But anyway - it's what you do with it that counts. The presence of horses does not mean that there was a culture of horse-use for military purposes.

"The current scholarship suggests Indus valley to be a plural society with archaic Sanskrit speaking living side by side with Dravidians, Australoids (speaking Munda languages) as well as Negroid and some Mongoloids."

This equation of race-categories with language is problematic. I know of no 'current scholarship' that asserts that Sanskrit existed side by side with Munda and Dravidian - still less that these language differences can be equated with race categories. It's possible, but it's speculation so far as I know.

"It is almost certain that Aryan invasion never took place and Hinduism is the legacy of Aryan/ non-Aryan Indians. The Rig-Veda in archaic Sanskrit was in the making as far back as Mehrgarh flourishing period of circa 6000 BC."

There is no justification for these assertions at all IMO, certainly not the view that Sanskrit existed in India as far back as 6000 BC. It certainly cannot be claimed that this is 'almost certain'.

"coinciding with the arrival of Mediterranean people (Dravidians) through Bolan pass in Balochistan."

There is a suggestion that Dravidian is related to Elamite, but I don't see how that makes the Dravidians 'Mediterranian people'. Where does this concept come from? user: Paul Barlow

Article needs references

This article no longer complies with the guidelines for featured articles, namely it doesn't cite sources. This can be fixed by adding a References section listing the original sources used to write this article. If a references section is not added, the article might be nominated for removal from the Featured Article list. -- [[User:Solitude|Solitude\^talk]] 13:38, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)

Still needs references (e.g. for the alleged genetic examination of ancient Indus-Valley dwellers. What did they use? bones? mummies?). Also, why is the NPOV warning here, and what are the disputed points? dab (ᛏ) 11:04, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hello Dbachmann, please see my reply under "Neutrality".

Was Max Müller a 'missionary?

The following sentence has been repeatedly added by an anonymous contributor (65.50.145.205). "Müller was a Christian missionary; therefore he looked to undermine the superior civilization and religion of India, Hinduism." Firstly, this is is inappropriate because it is thouroughly POV to assert that India has a 'superior civiliation and religion'. Secondly it is false to say that Müller was a missionary. He was not a clergyman. He was a philologist. See Nirad Chaudhuri's "Scholar extraordinary : the life of Friedrich Max Müller". Müller failed to get the post of Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford because he was not a 'missionary', but was too sympathetic to non-Christian religions - and Hinduism in particular. After all, it was Müller's lectures that were described by a bishop as "a crusade against divine revelation, against Jesus Christ and Christianity". Yes, that was Max Müller the alleged 'Christian missionary.'

Monier Monier-Williams, the person who did get the job, was indeed missionary in his intent towards India, as he indicated in his inaugural lecture ("the special object of his munificent bequest [the chair] was to promote the translation of Scriptures into Sanskrit; so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion."). None of this has anything but the most oblique relevance to AIT. Also, strangely, Monier Williams has been largely forgotten by Indians today, and for unfathomable reasons some Indians have displaced this complaint onto Müller, a writer and scholar who did more to create Western interest in Hindu thought than almost any other! Anyone who reads Müller's books cannot possibly see him as a 'missionary'.

However, it's true that he was a Christian, and at the very end of his life he did try to get some of the members of the Brahmo Samaj to declare themselves to be Christian. They were very surprised by this, given his record as a supported of Hindu spirituality. I think it was very much a case of an old man wanting to believe that he could achieve religious fusion: that the 'best' of Christianity was identical to the 'best' of Hinduism.

Aramaic and the Persians

(However note the use of Aramaic as the official language of the Persian empire).

I'm sorry, this doesn't mean anything to me. Perhaps the significance could be elucidated?

I've tried to elucidate it. I think the point is that Darius's decision to adopt Aramaic as the official language of the empire was motivated by administrative considerations, not by the supplanting of 'Aryan' peoples with 'Semitic' ones in Persia at that point. I'm not sure that the point is valid, because it really applies to the 'Semitic' part of the Persian empire, not to Persia itself. But I'll leave it, as it at least points to the difficulties of equating language change with ethnic change. Paul B 10:55, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks.

State formation and replacement of Languages

State formaton and replacment of languages is valid .A state enables a small group of people to impose their language on a large populations eg Turkey.According to Han and Roman histories Scythians invaded India on mass they spoke an Iranian Language.Coins of Scythian(Saka),Greeks and Kushans used Greek Iranian and Indic languages.Most of the people of punjab are believed to be of Saka (Scythian)origin,yet all speak Indo-Aryan language Punjabi, which contains some turkish and arabic words.They probably now speak indic languages due to the spread of hinduism and buddism and the later dominance of the Gupta empire.Pastun speak an Iranian Language yet they are genetically identical to Punjabis ,more or less.They have been less influenced by Indic states due to they nomadic life style and geography ,unlike Sindh which has large cities and the people speak sindhi, an indo-aryan language.The Punjabis may have spoken many Indo-european languages before the spread of Indo-aryan.Indo-aryan with its dravidian elements may have been introduced from the east or south.There is no written evidence that German or Slavic where spoken in europe before 500BC.In fact germanic texts date no earlier than 200AD.Also note the uncertain position of various kashmiri languages and the close proximity of tocharian (Kashgar is accessable via mountain passes to and from kashmir)(but we await genetics results of tarim mummies which are soon to be published)

Internal evidence from the Rig Veda

Although one might say these are metaphorical verses for some type of spiritual victory, rather than literal histories, one also has to wonder just what kind of experiences one would have to have to understand such metaphors, to invent such metaphors. Therefore, perhaps they are not metaphors after all.

"Let these who have no weapons suffer sorrow." RV4.5.14

"Upstanding in the Car the skilful Charioteer guides his strong Horses on whithersoe'er he will" RV6.75.6

"Thou, Indra, also smotest down Kulitara's son Sambara, The Dasa, from the lofty hill. Of Dasa Varcin's thou didst slay the hundred thousand and the five, Crushed like the fellies, of a car.... For Divodasa, him who brought oblation, 1ndra overthrew A hundred fortresses of stone. The thirty thousand Disas he with magic power and weapons sent To slumber, for Dabhiti's sake." RV4.30.14-15 and .20-21

"Thou, kindly giving Raji to Pithinas, slewest with might, at once, the sixty thousand...So may we he thy friends, thy best beloved, O Indra, at this holy invocation... Best be Pratardani, illustrious ruler, in slaying foemen and in gaining riches" RV 6.26.6 and .8

"He, self-reliant, mighty and triumphant, brought low the dear head of the wicked Dasas. Indra the Vritra-slayer, Fort-destroyer, scattered the Dasa hosts who dwelt in darkness. For men hath he created earth and waters, and ever helped the prayer of him who worships. To him in might the Gods have ever yielded, to Indra in the tumult of battle. When in his arms they laid the bolt, he slaughtered the Dasyus and cast down their forts of iron." RV 2.20.7-8

"Lower than all besides hast thou, O Indra, cast down the Dasyus, abject tribes of Dasas. Ye drave away, ye put to death the foemen, and took great vengeance with your murdering weapons" RV4.28

"They laud the mighty acts of him the Mighty, the many glorious deeds performed by Indra. He in his strength, with all-surpassing prowess, through wondrous arts crushed the malignant Dasyus...Indra obtained the Cow who feedeth many. Treasure of gold he won; he smote the Dasyus, and gave protection to the Aryan colour." RV3.34.6 and .9

I'd like to point out that one contemporary interpretation of the invasion theory cannot be used to justify imperialism; namely the Chalice and the Blade theory of Rianne Eisler, which doesn't concern South Asia much at all, but points out that advanced cultures were frequently invaded by less advanced ones, who often had offspring with the females among the original inhabitants. Rather than justifying imperialism, Eisler's theory reveals its consequences. --Munge 07:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hello Munge. It is not possible to answer such a complex theme like the Rig Veda in a few lines. A lot has been written about the Rig Veda by writers like David Frawley, Shrikant Talageri, Subhash Kak and many more. I note that in four of your citations the term Dasa or Dasyu occurs. It was suggested by some early orientalists that Dasa or Dasyu might refer to Dravidian, a view that is now generally considered as incorrect (that is, by believers in a migrationist/invasionist and by believers in a indigenious scenario). There is a lot of information about the Rig Veda (apart from the Sanskrit text itself), but some good starting points are:

• About different interpretations of the Rig Veda: Shrikant Talageri
• About Indra: Koenraad Elst, David Frawley
• About Dasa and Dasyu: Koenraad Elst

Regards, --Machaon 20:41, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nobody reads the Bible and states that it implies a mass invasion of Jews into Europe.

Lack of actual material

I know the AIT is a very sensitive issue, particularly because of its open criticism of Hinduism and Persian influence (which is supposed to have to led to "Islamisation" of South Asia), but I went through the article and after my first perusal, it appears that the article is very ambivalent in its tone. The actual theory is never really explained; neither are its implications! While the parts on alternate theories are very important, they make little sense unless the reader is first informed why such oppositions might exist. For example, little or no mention is made of how the AIT proponents constantly try to potray Ravana as a hero and Ram as a failed king and how AIT is used as a way to consider non-Dravidians as invadors of India rather than natives. I completely agree that those are POVs but well that's what the theory is made to imply. If the theory itself has POVs what can be done. We can't start changing Nazi theories that Aryans were the only innovative race! I am not an expert on this issue, but do other wikipedians feel that the article needs more material on the actual theory and its implications, rather than having 80% of the article discuss oppositions to the theory? -- 65.95.33.34 21:20, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well I think the ideas of Nazis and other Aryanists as such are covered in the Articles Aryan and Aryan race. The latter also discusses the point that AIT can be used to define Dravidians as 'natives' and Indo-Aryans as 'invaders', as does the article Dravidian race. I don't think the Aryanist ideas are central here, since this aricle is about whether or not Vedic culture emerged as a result of the migrations of IE speakers into into India. The point about Dravidian identity is covered. I don't reallt understand your point about Ravana and Ram. Which AIT proponents present Ram as a 'failed king'? I don't think the theory itself has POVs', as you put it. In itself it's a fairly neutral question. After all the history of the world is full of invasions and migrations. Most countries have experienced various 'waves' of migration. There's nothing special or unique about this one. It's only significant because this one, if it occurred, has implicationds for some entrenched ideologies and sensitivities. Paul B 14.00 18 March (UCT)

remove sentence

I am removing this sentence added on 28 March by anonymous user 69.65.155.66.

"It is believed that European interests can be reflected in the formation of this theory by disregarding that the Aryans were originally from India and migrated to Europe."

Very few people believe these days that the "Aryans" (in the sense of PIEs) came 'originally' from India and migrated into Europe, though that was certainly a view held by August Wilhelm von Schlegel and other early Indo-Europeanists. The basic PIE migration model of a latish spread into India was and is entirely logical on linguistic gounds. India is a very unlikely starting point. Other questions - dating of events; relationship between proto I-As, I-Is and PIEs - remain a matter of legitimate debate. Paul B 8 April, 2005, 13:28 (UTC)

It seems the above contributor has not been reading this article,The fact that the Aryan/Indo-European homeland has in european eyes moved from India to the Baltic and back East again to the urals,all of which has been based on "facts".It is likely this homeland based on new facts will shift again (much like the nomadic Indo-Europeans).The Indus valley is a large area it is certain that is has accommadated many languages over the last 50,000 Years.

Of course I've read the article, but I don't think you quite get the point I was trying to make. Maybe I wasn't clear. Apart from very early Indo-Europeanists, the notion that the IE languages as a whole began in India has very few scholarly adherents and has not had for 150 years. There are legitimate reasons to take the view that there was a late spread into India, so I think it is misleading to say that 'European interests' were served by denying an Indian stating point. The "India or Europe" antithesis is itself misleading. How was it in 'European interests' to develop the Central Asian migration model? As for the claim that the 'homeland' will move as new evidence comes availible, yes, probably it will. That's how we progress. It's also worth remembering that the concept of a 'homeland' is itself a kind of fiction. After all, the 'first' speakers were not really the first. They were preceded by other speakers of a language that was the 'PIE' of PIE, as it were. And they had to have to got where they were from somewhere else! So I think it's really about how we can usefully model stages of development.Paul B 21 Apr 2005, 19:07 (UTC)

move?

both "Aryan" and "invasion" are outdated (19th century) terminology that smack of colonialism. Much of the hostility the concept receives is due to this terminology. In contemporary terms, it is properly called Indo-Aryan migration, so I suggest we move the article there. dab (ᛏ) 11:08, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm OK with it. -- Sundar (talk · contribs) 11:24, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

I would agree with such a move. Indo-Aryan migration for the migration of Indo-Aryan people and/or languages would be better and less pov. It would also be less pov because both scholars from the migrationist school and from the Indigenous Aryan school believe in a Indo-Aryan migration. The latter do usually believe in a migration of Indo-Aryan speakers or languages from the Northwest of India to the rest of India, but argue that there is no evidence that there was a migration or invasion of Vedic people from outside of India to NW-India. And also the migrationists themselves speak today of a migration rather than an invasion, using more subtle models of language change. Perhaps another possibility would be to make of "Aryan invasion theory" a disambiguation page, because the theory does not only apply to India (although the present article does not reflect this, perhaps because it is the best known variant), but more generally to migrations (or invasions) of speakers of Indo-European, Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages in Eurasia between ca. 3000-1000 BC. The concept of the Aryan Invasion Theory from the very beginning (Max Müller's idea of the expansion of IE-languages from an hypothetical Urheimat in Central Asia) does also apply to the migration of IE/IA-languages and/or speakers to Iran, Central Asia, Mesopotamia (the Mitanni), Europe (Kurgan, IE-languages), Bactria-Sogdiana, Afghanistan etc. So perhaps another possibility would be to make a disambiguation page that links to Indo-Aryan migration, Indo-Iranian migration, Mitanni, Kurgan, BMAC, IE-languages, etc. I think you're right that the current title is outdated terminology, for example Edwin Bryant in his book on the Indo-Aryan migration debate (2001, p.306) writes: "In actual fact, no informed Western scholar speaks of "invasions" anymore anyway; more subtle models of language change and more nuanced forms of migrations are currently in vogue." Regards, --Machaon 14:13, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't disagree about the argument against the AIT label, but I think we should be cautious. "Aryan Invasion Theory" and its abbreviation (AIT) is very well established. It is the most familar term, and is widely used elsewhere. As far as I know, it is only used to refer to the advent of I-A peoples in India/Pakistan, and not to the supposed invasions of "Aryans" into anywhere else. If readers have come across the phrase Aryan Invasion Theory in a book or website it will almost certainly be a reference to India. However, I do agree that the article as it stands is very confusing because of the multiple overlapping uses of the A-word. It's so easy to slide between different meanings. Nevertheless trying to undo that would be a mammoth task. As it stands, the article attempts to cover the whole history of the idea, and clearly places the chariot-riding-white-invader model at the beginning. So if it were to be relabelled it would also need a rewrite. Paul B 15:35, 13 June 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it would be a mammoth task to fix this article, even if there were no disagreement. The best way forward would seem to be splitting it into archaeological, linguistic, history of idea, etc., short sub-articles, and make Indo-Aryan migration a short summary pointing to them all. dab (ᛏ) 07:59, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Whose this Gil Guy

In Beowulf you have Eadgils,Father of Hengest you have Wihtgil,Celtic historian Gildas,Sykes determined that Somerled(Origin of clan Mcdonald) was R1a1 whose father was Gille Bride,Attilla Father/uncle was called Rugila ,Indian Hun Coins show Khigilas.Gills are a clan in NW India is there an Aryan invasion link,or am I thinking through my proverbeal.

New Revolutionary Theory

Aryans migrated out of Punjab due to the increase in population after the arrival of farming.Migrate to the Ukraine due to its rich soils.A change in climate causes economic and cultural changes resulting in adoption of nomadism.Trade routes develop between growing populations of East Asia,India,Middle East and Europe.Drought hits the Indus valley,damning of the Upper Indus.Indo-aryans invade Punjab from south displacing Iranian Dasas.Tocharians settle in Tarim basin from BMAC .Iranians push into East Iran and so on.Scythians pressed by East Asians migrate to the Black Sea and onto Scandinavia.Scythian Massagetae retreat into the Punjab clash with Iranians on the way.

Comparison with the Chinese and other people.

Instead of focusing on language as proof. One could do a comparison study about how the Chinese population was divided: geographically therefore genetically (genetic adaptation) and also by language.

Japanese people come from the mainland China. But still they look different: Japanese are relatively taller and have different facial characteristics even their complexion are different. Did they have relationship with each other? Yes, of fcourse. Maybe a silly proof, but still karate (martial arts) is basically from the mainland China.

Second point there are dark-skinned Chinese. What are they, a mix of Africans and Chinese? Well, the Bushmen (most problably the first homo sapiens in Africa)in southern Africa have the facial appearance of Chinese.

In China there are many languages and dialects.

In China also invasions occured even from the west: mummies found of European people.

Other same differences also found in other parts of the world, like in Peru: people living in the mountain areas are taller and have longer arms and legs (more reach to grap a safety point/ground and to lean more forward). But people in the river area are more robust and short (lower gravity point, stand more stable on slippery river stones to fish). And they don't live too far apart from eachother.

People reproducing in their own group (because of geographic isolation) will have less genetic variaty: inbreeding, which leads to creation of subspecies. Note!!! we are part of nature we adapt to the changes of our environment and climate also earth magnetic switch: evolution.

About the Aryan invasion. Isn't the white skin colour genetically dominant over brown? Shouldn't the white/light skin coloured Indians not have the same skin colour genes as the whites? However not all genes are passed on to the next generation!!

My primary focus is: with differences still equality. With other words why can't we just live respectfully with eachother? This whole debate would not get any political agenda, if we would live with respect with eachother.

Grammar/punctuation

What's with the excessive lack of spaces, or misuse of spaces (such as before a comma) in this article? It looks like most of this was either typed really fast, typed with a faulty space bar, or typed really fast with a faulty space bar.

I have gone through fixing spacing problems wherever I could find them. I also fixed comma splices. There may be some that I missed. Judging by the pattern of the syntactic errors and the fact that they occurred in gluts, my guess is that they were all sections added by the same person. These sections also include redundancies and possible non-neutral POVs that should be addressed. --InformationalAnarchist 03:45, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

POV

The article is very POV. It states arguments against the AIT as accusations or claims:

Supporters of the migration theory are faced with several accusations. The major one is that the British Raj and European Indologists from the 19th century to the present day promoted the...

but arguments for the AIT as facts:

In contrast, the proponents of a continuous, ancient, and sophisticated Vedic civilization are seen by some as Hindu nationalists who wish to dispense with the foreign origins of the Aryan for the sake of national pride or religious dogma. Another motivation may arise from the desire to eradicate the problem associated with the Indian caste system; the hypothesis that it may originally have been a means of social engineering by the Aryans to establish and maintain a superior position compared to the Dravidians in Indian society may be a source of discomfort.

This just one example. It completely presents the pro-AIT view and tries to paint a picture that the evidence for AIT is scientific and its supporters are scientists but the evidence against AIT is non-scientific and its detractors are politicians/people with vested interests. It almost claims that all detractors are Hindu nationalists. And it completely rubbishes any possibilities of AIT originating from white supremacist euro-centric beliefs which were widespread when this theory was first proposed and scientific evidence provided. It ignores facts like sanskrit documents dating as far back 5th century BC have been found. BTW, the article talks about general consensus about issues among all experts and people, but most of this is only among Europeans/Americans who only form a small percentange of the world population.

Aryan Filter

This article assumes that religion and language spread from the same source.Christian religion did not spread with semitic languages,it was filtered through the Latin Roman state, nor did Arabic with Islam to South/South East Asia,nor did Indo-aryan languages to China/Japan with Buddism.Likewise could not Kurgan Religion have been passed to Indo-European people through a similar filter eg BMAC.So who were the Early Kurgannites ?; may be proto-Turks .

References

I collected all the sections titled Bibliography, Literature, or References together, placed them just before See also, alphabetised them, and reformatted the first few citations according to the guide in Wikipedia:Cite sources.

Some of the references are unattributed. I sorted these separately from attributed ones, but authors should be found for these if possible so that they can be incorporated into the main list of references. MichaelSlone 20:45, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

oh man

o dear, this article is still in rather sad shape. For one thing, it is still obsessed with the 19th century. So rather than suggesting a move, I am now suggesting a split between Aryan invasion theory and Indo-Aryan migration. AIT can look at the flaws of Max Muller's views to its heart's content, but the Indo-Aryan migration article will be organized as representing the current discourse. I hope this will reduce the strawman attacks that the theory was originally forwarded by colonialists, which is unrelated to it still being accepted as a matter of fact (with modifications), by non-colonialists. dab (ᛏ) 12:20, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps most of the discussion on the "international conspiracy against Indians" founded by Max Muller and the colonialists can be moved to an article named History of the Aryan invasion theory?--Wiglaf 14:48, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. The article is such a mess now that it need to be sorted out with radical measures. Paul B 10 August, 15:52 2005 (UTC)

I was about to comment that the article is a complete mess, and I see that others are before me on this. As so often with these kinds of articles, it seems as though generally acknowledged flaws in 19th century theories are being used to attack the generally accepted present-day theory and prop up highly dubious nationalist claims. Personally, I don't see that radical Hindu nationalist theories should be mentioned in the introduction at all. john k 16:30, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

It is not only radical Hindus who support the counter-theory. [19] --goethean ॐ 16:56, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

LOL! Goethean, your authority is an authority on YOGA [20].--Wiglaf 17:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Please be civil. I don't recall using the word authority. I didn't write, and don't support, all of the material that is currently at "Theory that Vedic Aryan culture originated in India". That said, I think that it is appropriate to mention the counter-theory briefly in the intro. --goethean ॐ 17:14, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

There are so many fringe theories out there and I never think that they deserve being mentioned in the intro.--Wiglaf 18:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Ah, Hindu nationalists and crackpots, I'm sorry. The idea that the Indo-European languages arose in India simply contradicts everything we know about linguistics. The idea that the Indus Valley civilization spoke Indo-Aryan languages and represents the civilization described in the Vedas seems nearly as problematic. john k 18:25, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Warning ,Warning another interpretation of history by Europeans.The question of were Indo-Europeans languages originated is very much open to debate.Linguistics says nothing about geographical origin ,but only relationships between languages and interactions between them.Given Indo-Europeans where wholely or partly migratory it very unlikely linguistics alone can determine origins.Although it is not suprising that en.wikipedia is biased to the English/European view.It is very likley that this article like others will become one sided.Wikipedia R.I.P.

I have also noticed that Wiglaf and dab seem to be working together to charge every Indo-european related article according to there view of the world.

I support a truthful, honest reference to the Saraswati theory in the article. But your ignorant, tribalistic equation of academia with racism is indicative of the problem, not the solution. You think that only third-world or oppressed people can have a correct theory of history or linguistics? If you want to join in this debate, you need to read some history and then defend your beliefs logically rather than throwing around accusations that have no merit or meaning. The irresponsible anonymous changes to this article is why it needs to be completely overhauled. The new version will probably ignore the Saraswati theory completely, and that's the fault of the anonymous irresponsible editors, not the fault of adherents to the Aryan invasion theory. It is your attitude and lack of integrity, rather than the kneejerk reactions above that make me embarrassed to even be interested in the Sarswati theory. Either contribute or stop complaining. --goethean ॐ 17:02, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Linguistics can give strong evidence as to the geographical origins of languages, although it can't be decisive. The fact that of all the known branches of Indo-European, the vast majority are not in India, but are (mostly) in Europe or, in the case of Anatolian and Armenian, very close to Europe; while in India we only have the Indic languages which are themselves only a single subbranch of the Indo-Iranian languages - by all principles of historical linguistics this indicates that India was not the point of origin for the Indo-European languages. If India were the point of origin, you'd expect there to be tons and tons of branches of Indo-European in India, and then one "European" branch which accounts for all the languages outside India. This not being the case, the Indo-European languages cannot have originated in India. john k 16:13, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

In an attempt to defuse this conflict, I will summarize Feuerstein's arguments for the Saraswati civilization in a new article at In Search of the Cradle of Civilization. Perhaps the migration proponents here will allow a link to that article in lieu of Saraswati-pushing verbiage at Aryan invasion theory. --goethean ॐ 19:36, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Goethean - a link would seem completely appropriate. I'd venture to say that a brief discussion of the theory is in order in this article. I just don't think it should be mentioned in the intro. john k 21:40, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Message Posted 18/8/2005:

If nobody replies to this message by 25/8/2005, I would like to go ahead and make this not quite a disambiguation, but atleast a redirection page with maybe a bit of history of the Invasion Theory proper left on the page but beyond that just a pointer to a page on the Aryan Migration Theory, in which the objections to the part of the theory referring to external migrations could be presented or an entry on them linked. It seems that a major structure change and reorganization has been discussed for over a year. If nobody objects by inserting a message immediately after this one I will reorganize the set of entries on the topic of Indo-Arya Origins.

--Blue

move/split

I finally attempted to separate the "Hindu nationalists vs. 19th century colonialists" debate from the factual debate. It is still an enormous mess. A lot of stuff had to be pruned, since it was simply repetitive or offtopic. This article cannot be the place to explain Indo-European linguistics, the Indus Valley civilization, the Rigveda, or Hinduism. These concepts all have their own articles. The focus of this article is evidece pertinent to Indo-Aryan migrations from

• Linguistics
• the Rigveda
• Mitanni records
• Archaeology
• Genetics

A Vedic continuity theory may deserve its own articles, but as far as it is simply attacking 19th century strawmen, it can go on Aryan invasion theory. Naturally, all criticism dealing with contemporary, genetic, linguistic or archaeological, views, is relevant here, but let's just try to keep nationalism and religion out of this (wishful thinking, I know). dab (ᛏ) 07:39, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Removed essay by 203....

I removed the following essay (original research?) with no sources [21]. Please try to give some sources to your text. --Machaon 20:51, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

What are the sources that you are expecting? I suppose most of the facts covered are known to anybody who is well-versed with Hinduism.

1. Indo-Aryans gods showing similarities with other Indo-European gods. Aren't they similar except for Hindu trinity? Replace Indra with Thor, Zeus or somebody.

2. Vedic texts commenting upon people worshipping penis.

http://www.colmex.mx/centros/ceaa/sitioceaa/recursosacademicos/textossitioceaa/articulosrecibidos/textolorenzen.htm You can find the mention of it in the above link.

3. Saraswat Brahmins and Kashmiri Pandits were indeed considered as Saivites.

4. Well, I was not able to find literature on the web about archeological evidences proving that Southern Maharashtra was indeed a Dravidian region centuries back. I'll try to find some later.

5. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh Muslims have made Urdu their mother-tongue. Well, we Indians never had the kind of nationalist linguistic identity like European had. Language issue should not be viewed from European angle.

6. I obviously consider there was indeed an invasion/migration of Indo-Aryans considering linguistic and religious evidences. However, the genetic study showing higer admixture(Bamshad et al.) in the uppercastes doesn't imply that Indo-Aryans placed themselves higher in the caste hierarchy. The present religious situation shows Dravidian priestly class having a greater influence in the religion. Otherwise, it's difficult understand why a petty penis won but great Indra lost out. Most probably, this caste system was created in the north-west of India, meeting point of Dravidians and Indo-Aryans. And they obviously mixed.

7. I hope you know about Mlechchas

Please let me know if you have any issues with this argument. Well, none of the facts I stated here are my original. However, I have just tried to make sense out of them.

--Manjunatha (25 Aug 2005)

Many points in your texts about gods, Lingam, Caste and Aryan/Dravidian divides are also disputed. Maybe a part of your text belongs to the Linguistics section? Why is your section titled Hinduism although it is mainly about Aryan/Dravidian divide? I'm just saying that your text could use some references to sources and be written more npov. --Machaon 09:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I suppose I said there was indeed an Indo-Aryan invasion/migration but the caste system might not be their creation completely on the contrary there is a heavy Dravidian(or native ) influence in the religious form. And for me it's striking that Indra, Agni, Vayu became minor gods(you can rarely find a temple devoted to them). For me, Hinduism does show a clear line between these two forms of worship. I'm arguing about initial Aryan/Dravidian divide and the later assimilation from this religious point of view. The argument is based upon division between Indo-European gods and Dravidian gods. The caste and Aryan/Dravidina divide are the logical conclusion. Perhaps, I didn't articulate it properly. Anyway, I'm interested in understanding disputed facts about gods and lingam. Is there a argument claiming that phallus worship was indeed part of original Vedic religion? Why such big group of Brahmins were considered Saivites?

Cordaux et al. study

I wonder why nobody questioned this report. Will somebody work on this report and check for the validity of all the claims?

• It's mentioned in the article that the fifth class (called untouchables) was introduced in South India to integrate local population. As far as I know Uttar Pradesh has the biggest population of Dalits. Primitive form of untouchability was supposed taking shape during Gupta's period in North India.
• If as the authors claim, all the caste populations entered India ~3500 years ago and all were Indo-European speakers why North India remained puritanical when it comes physical and linguistic identities, however South Indians completely lost their linguistic identity and showed very liberal attitude towards the tribals?
• Were the authors infering that both Dravidian and Astro-Asiatic languages found in India were basically indigenous tribal languages?
• Even with all the admixture, Southern caste groups supposed to exhibit 68% 'nonindigenous' markers as north caste groups. Why only 4-5% can be called as 'twice born' or dvija castes and rest notwithstanding their social and economic standings were grouped under broader 'shudra' category?
• Southern caste groups from only ~25% of total caste population in India whereas Northern caste groups ~70%. However, when it comes to calculation of admixture and distance of total caste population these factors won't refelct. Will somebody clarify on this?
• Somebody please check that 'preferential female infanticide' theory cited by the authors to explain the homogeniety of Indian females.

Manjunatha (26 Oct 2005)

This article may need to be overhauled

I went through the article and removed the most inflammatory claims, but have still left in the competing theories for the sake of NPOV. What needs to be changed is the weight given to the "alternative" theories. The standard Kurgan hypothesis is pretty much completely ignored in favor of fringe Indocentric models of IE migrations and, to a lesser extent, Colin Renfrew's minority view. Completely irrelevant studies about paleolithic population movements are in the genetics section, although I tried to delete most of them. The claims of there being no evidence for population movements from Central Asia into India in the second millenium are just false- the Gandhara Grave culture of the Punjab shows ceramic links with the Grey Ware tradition of Iran and the East Caspian (Mallory, 1989).

Why there's so much controversy here is beyond me. Yes, racists have abused Indo-European studies for their own agendas. That doesn't mean you throw out historical linguistics as a whole.--Rob117 03:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't agree with many of your deletions. Instead of deleting sourced information (without even moving it somewhere else) in a pov-ish manner,it would make more sense to add information supporting your viewpoint and to expand the section on "historical linguistics" because it is this section which still contains the most important arguments for the AMT. This linguistics section is still too small. I don't think that your deletions of sourced information was npov. You deleted sourced information on river-names, RigVeda Philology, to the Sarasvati River, to horses, to chariots (it is indeed important to mention that it highly unlikely that such a perishable item like the chariot could have been preserved in the Indian climate since Harappan times, especially considering under what circumstances the oldest chariot in Russia was found), Pottery, Mitanni and other. To selectively delete information without moving it somwehere else or refuting it with other sources is a pov in itself.

The genetics section is very large, so I propose to move all genetics related material to Genetics and Archaeogenetics of South Asia and linking that article from here. And the Kurgan hypothesis is not accepted by all scholars, at least opinions vary on significiant details. And there is no consensus that the Ghandara Grave culture was a culture of indo-aryan migrants, archaelogists differ in their opinion. Also, one should keep in mind that the term "Indo-Aryan migration" is not as clearly defined as one could wish. --Machaon 11:08, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

The information I deleted consisted mostly of excuses and "yeah but" statements. The linguistics section contained unsourced (and sometimes irrelevant) misappropriations of philology; the genetics section contained material dealing with the paleolithic that is irrelevant to the topic in question; the entire article is heavily leaning towards the claim that Indo-European languages originated in India, which is in no way considered a mainstream view. The dominant Kurgan model of IE archaeology is almost completely dismissed or ignored. Scholars like JP Mallory, who represent the majority of Indo-Europeanists, are not even referenced. Yes, minority views have a place on the page, but they do not have a right to dominate the page as they currently do. Someone said this earlier in the talk page, but this article does indeed read like an argument between a historian and a nationalist.

There is no universal consensus on the Gandhara Grave culture, but there is certainly a general consensus which I believe deserves to be mentioned. Regardless, the claim that there is no evidence for for foreign cultures moving into India after the decline of the Harappan Civilization is misleading, as it completely ignores the status of the Gandhara Grave culture in the Kurgan framework. The fact is that the article as it stands depicts the entire idea of an Indo-Aryan migration into India as an obsolete theory of the 19th century, when it is still a majority view among Indo-Europeanists.

Sorry for the somewhat polemical tone by the way. The truth is that my interest in this area is purely academic, and I hate it when politics get involved, as I believe they do in the current version of the article. There's a similar situation with the articles dealing with Ancient Israel.--Rob117 01:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

About your deletions: The flora and fauna part in linguistics was one of the few cases without sources, so it would be appropriate to put at least a "fact" tag there. The reference to place and river names was referenced and was important (but it could be elaborated). In the Rig Veda section you deleted that there is no clear reference to an external homeland or origin of the Aryans which is an important and relevant fact. You also deleted the part on the ordering of the Mandalas. The sourced Sarasvati statements were also important, though they might be moved to the main Sarasvati article. I already wrote above that the chariot statement is relevant and you also deleted sources statements on horses and pottery. The sourced Mitanni statements you deleted were also relevant, though they could maybe be rewritten but without losing the information. To call all astronomical interpretations "pseudoscientific" is pov, some of them may be, but not all. You're saying that "the entire article is heavily leaning towards the claim that Indo-European languages originated in India". IE-languages are only discussed in the Linguistics section, not in the entire article. The various arguments in the archaeology, philology and physical anthropology sections do not necessarly prove or indicate that there was no migration of languages. For example, Mortimer Wheeler's theory of the violent destruction of the IVC is now discredited by most scholars, which does not necessary say that a migration didn't occur. Or the physical anthropology section states "that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity". This does also not prove that there was no migration, but indicates that if there was one, that the migrants weren't very distinct from the other population. There is however a growing consensus among archaeologists that the current evidence does not prove an invasion or large migration, and this should be mentionned. The Kurgan hypothesis is not accepted by all scholars (e.g. Krell 1998) and at least opinions vary on significiant parts of the theory. But yes, there could be some more references to Kurgans, as long as it is in the scope of this article. JP Mallory is an important scholar and he is quoted at least once in the article, and we could need more references to his work. Please, as I said above, if you feel that your viewpoint is not represented enough, then add sourced information about topics like linguistics and others, but don't just deleted every sourced information that doesn't suits to your viewpoint by only calling it "excuses and yeah but satements" or "politics". Politics are almost only mentioned in the history section and should be treated in the AIT article. The article does not and should not state if there was a migration of IA languages/people or not, for the simple reason that not one of the various theories has been proven by prevalent standards at present. The article can only give arguments for and against these theories, but should not try to draw any conclusions or even try to present any theory as an accepted fact. --Machaon 03:21, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

To make a long story short, the Arian Invasion Theory (AIT) and it's bastard-daughter The Aryan Migration Theory (AMT) has been revealed to be what it has always been: A fundamentalist-Eurocentric fairy-tale which can only be sustained by MONOPOLIZING information distribution canals and AUTOMATICALY-dismissing and branding the most authoritative point of view i.e. the point of view(s) of INDIANs.

Basically it is like making-up the history of ancient-greece by automatically dismissing Greek POV, funny.

You mean, "Kazakhstan centric", and "like discussing Greek history by dismissing Greek fairy tales". dab (ᛏ) 11:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Aryan invasion theory

Discussion of contemporary Indian politics, and of 19th century scholarship, goes to the AIT article, thanks. Saty on topic please. This article is not about the IVC, so why do we have a major section on IVC archaeology? Of course the IVC should be discussed for context, but details should go on articles about the IVC. dab (ᛏ) 11:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

The IVC and related archaeology is an important aspect of the debate, and most of the information is related to the Indo-Aryan migration in particular. Since archaeology is such an important aspect, I think it will have to be discussed in some detail somewhere. But if one section is too long, we should probably export it a separate article. For example, the History section to AIT, Sarasvati to Sarasvati River, Ayas to Ayas, some of Horse and Chariot to "Horse in South Asia", some of Linguistics to Indo-Aryan languages etc. Maybe we could make an article "Archaeology of the Indus Valley Civilization" or Archaelogy and the IA migration debate? BTW, we also have an image in the archaelogy section that is not clearly related to the AMT, even in its Andronovo variant, because Arkaim is "probably post-dating the breakup of Proto-Indo-Iranian." I don't object much to the image, but is seems a bit off-topic? --Machaon 15:50, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

POV

Firstly, 'Indo-Aryan migration' is incorrect term for 'Indo-Aryan Invasion'. Secondly, using 'India' to define South Asia is unacceptable. User:Siddiqui 06:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the geographical term South Asia is better here, but I think "migration" is more neutral - how much conflict there was during the process is unclear, and should not be prejudged by the choice of terminology. -- Danny Yee 07:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I dont get your pathological hatred for the name "India". I see even your family website lists Bareilly in South Asia. Excuse me. India is a term in use since 2nd century BC. You fail to comprehend that India historically refers to whole subcontinent while Republic of India is a different entity alltogether. अमेय आर्यन DaBroodey 19:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, Mr Siddiqui has apparently done a lot of work in Wikipedia replacing Indian subcontinent with South Asia. In that site of his, he mentions every other possible country except India. Bareilly near the border of Nepal in South Asia. Ridiculous! pl keep yr bullcrap ideology out of Wikipedia. --Spartian 11:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

PNAS study

FYI, a major new study has been done analyzing haplogroups within the Indian subcontinent and comparing them to external populations. The abstract is available here and can be downloaded as an e-publication from PNAS. I've read the study; it's quite good and has lots of data to validate it. The essential conclusion is for an indigenous origin for both Indian caste and tribal populations and argues against any external migrations from Central Asia. Graft 13:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense, considering the exact same thing is true of Indo-European speaking Europeans as well - they have more in common genetically with Pre-Indo-European populations. It was a "migration" of language and culture, not genetics. --86.135.217.213 18:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Whuut? I'm not sure how you draw the latter conclusion, or how the former is similar to the conclusions reached by the above study. A "migration" of language and culture seems unlikely without a migration of peoples - there was no radio or internet at the time, or even written language to speak of, so how could culture be propagated if there was no migration of peoples? And if we see no evidence of the latter, why should we conclude the former? Graft 19:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I meant that it is more accurately viewed in terms of language and culture, not genetics. The initial migration of the Indo-Aryans across Central Asia and to India was obviously one of people physically moving, but the subsequent gradual mixing of their culture with that of the natives in South Asia was not a matter of genetics - you don't need to be Indo-Aryan to speak an Indo-Aryan language. Just as in Europe, the much larger native population remained and remains almost unchanged, genetically, despite their adoption of Indo-European language. --86.135.217.213 23:16, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Language and Climate

The statement "This reconstructed language had clearly come from a temperate climate, north of the Himalayas. Hence the Indo-Aryan languages had migrated down into the North Indian plains." seems to be ludicurous. How can a "reconstructed language" can "clearly" [mean definitely] come from a temperate climate. This assumes that the reconstructed language was definite - which is a mis-leading statement since a reconstructed language can never be definite until it is actually compared to a definite sample and if that is the case then why the reconstruction. Second what methodology pins down the language to a temperate climate?

I am removing the above statement unless somebody proves that a reconstructed language is correctly reconstructed and is definitely from a temperate climate User:Abhijna

Removed a self-contradictory set of arguments, until it can be clarifed.

Proponents of the claim that Indo-European originated in India further note that Sanskrit names of purely Indian animals have IE etymologies: mayUra for peacock; vyAghra for tiger; mahiSa for buffalo; pRshatI for spotted deer; iBha and hastin for elephant. -- The claim for mayUra is disputed: one specialist (Prof. M. Witzel) finds that the word has nonIE -- Dravidian -- roots.

Indo-Europeanists note that these names appear to be derived rather than basic words — for instance, hastin is Sanskrit for "having a hand" (i.e. its trunk) — and that they cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Anti-migrationists find this last unsurprising, since one would expect such words to have been lost by people traveling to regions without peacocks and elephants. But:- PIE is older than IE. Therefore such words must be reconstructible in PIE -- if, that is, PIE arose in India.

However, many animal names reconstructable in PIE are also derivatives (cf. rkþos "harmer, bear", wlkwos "ripper, wolf", and bhebheru "brown one, beaver/mongoose"). The roots of these words retain their meanings in Sanskrit (rksh "harm", vrk "rip", bhr "brown"). -- This point cuts both ways, of course.

This seems to be claiming that some Sanskrit words have PIE etymologies, but that they can't be reconstructed. So how do we know that these supposed etymologies exist? User:Ben Standeven as 70.249.220.170 07:27, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Maintaining standards for URL references

The following URL for the right article should have been referenced http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/11/6/994

instead of a news plug from genome news network.