THE REASON FOR THE INVENTION OF THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY
The reason for the invention of The Aryan Invasion Theory
In the schools all over India, in the sixth grade when Indus Valley Civilization is taught in the history class, we come across the elaborate story of how a nomadic tribe “The Aryans” came from the north and destroyed the advanced civilization that was the Indus Civilization. The way this particular story is represented in the curriculum of our schools helps us to understand and perceive India’s historical evolution, the sources of her ancient glorious heritage, and indigenous socio-economic-political institutions, and this has been going on ever since the advent of the British colonies. When the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were discovered it was found that the civilization was very advanced. The ruins show a very advanced waste management system an important parameter of a civilization having a sense of hygiene and possessing a scientific outlook. The ruins also show a very elaborate public distribution system, another parameter of a civilization being conscious of well being. In spite of these physical truths, we come across a well spun story of a nomadic tribe calling themselves the Aryans coming from the North and wiping out the civilization.
Megasthenes, one of the earliest European visitor in Chandragupta Mourya’s court in fourth century BC noted in his book Indika, ” All Indians are free and none of them is a slave. Indians neither invade other people, nor do other people invade India. They fare happily, because of their simplicity and frugality. Since they esteem beauty, they practice everything that can beautify their appearance, Further they respect alike virtue and truth. “
In 1068 AD an Arab writer from Spain named Andalusi, wrote: “ The Indians, among all nation, through many centuries and antiquity, have been the source of wisdom, fairness, and moderation. They are creators of sublime thoughts, universal apologues, rare inventions and remarkable concepts.”
Five centuries later Akbar’s friend Abdul Fazl wrote, “The Hindus are religious, affable, lovers of justice, given to retirement, able in business, admirers of truth, grateful and of undoubted fidelity, and their soldiers know not what it is to fly from the battle field”
There are many such accounts of the traits of India in the pre-colonial era. Some European thinkers of the eighteenth century wanted to understand and feel India’s philosophy and religion. They were so awe struck by the wisdom, the ancientness, the richness, that they declared India the seat of civilization, or the cradle of human race. The great French thinker Voltaire said, “ We have shown how much we have surpassed the Indians in courage and wickedness and how inferior to them we are in wisdom. Our European nations have mutually destroyed themselves in this land where we only go in search of money, while the first Greeks travelled to the same land only to instruct themselves.” The richness of India was not only in terms of knowledge but also in terms of economy, and the Britishers in India came with the intention of looting this country and that is exactly what they did. In 1757 after the battle of Plassey all the wealth of Bengal was siphoned to England and this very influx of wealth triggered the Industrial revolution of England. How could then a nomadic tribe calling themselves The Aryans decimate a civilization??
The beginning of Indological studies in India was out of British curiosity towards Indians, especially Hindus. The British had a fair idea of Islam, but they had never encountered Hindus and Hinduism (the non Islamic religions) from such close quarters before. The formation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal was the first step in that direction. William Jones through his profound study on the languages of India came to the conclusion that Greek, Latin, Sanskrit all came from a common root; which was undoubtedly lost. Sanskrit was also more perfect than Greek and more copious than Latin.
Jones during those years was a devout Christian who believed completely in the authenticity and infallibility of Biblical History. This was the beginnings of the one of the deepest tragedies of Indian History where its timelines have had always to be sandwiched in archetypal timescales to the liking of Western literary history, and not its own. Jones was aware that Puranic history gave a chronology of events 4,320,000 years back; but he brushed it aside and instead replaced it with a dubious Mosaic timeline where the history of the world begins from 4404 B.C and all men descend from Noah! He simultaneously through some text torturing and specious speculations arrived at identification of the chief biblical characters from Puranic genealogies.
Jones colossal contribution to Indology would usher in a new wave of interest in Indological studies rightly dubbed as indomania by Trautmann. Although it was restricted to a few elite Britons its output was astonishing. In a few years, Holwell had written an account of Christianity which was completely Hinduized. This view was vehemently criticized by other indologists in the fray.
Charles Grant made the first vicious attack on those Orientalists who had dared to claim a common descent between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton, for that would amount to allowing that there was no difference in the faculties of the people that produced Homer and Shakespeare and those that have produced nothing better than the authors of the Mahabharat and Ramayana; no difference between the home-keeping Hindus who never made a foreign conquest of any kind, and the nations who discovered, conquered, and peopled a new world . After 1857, the British education system in India had been deliberately designed to assist in the development of a narrow but influential class of deeply indoctrinated and predominantly loyal agents of British colonial rule in India. British elaborations of the Aryan invasion theory became powerful and convenient ideological tools in generating legitimacy for British rule. In its most classical and colonially tinged incarnation, it portrayed the Aryans as a highly advanced and culturally superior race in the ancient world, locating their original home in Northern Europe. It then went on to suggest that some time in antiquity, the Aryans migrated from their original home in Europe and brought with them their language and their superior culture and transcendental philosophy to civilize the primitive and materially backward Dravidian people of the subcontinent. All the greatness of Indian civilization was ascribed to the Aryans, thus implying that if India were to ever achieve greatness again, a return to Aryan rule was imperative.
And by claiming a cultural continuity between this noble race of ancient times and themselves, the British could become inheritors of the grand Aryan tradition and assert their "legitimate" civilization right to rule over the people of the subcontinent - not to exploit them, but so as to "reinvigorate" Indian civilization by reintroducing Aryan rule that had been disfigured and corrupted by the violent and barbaric incursions of the Muslims. Preposterous and distorted as it was, this absurdly racist proposition was made palatable to a self-doubting and repressed class of upper-caste Hindus who were told that they were descendants of the Aryans, and could identify with the manifold and globally encompassing achievements of the Aryan people by accepting British authority so as to participate in this great Aryan renaissance in India. It is a known fact that most of the original proponents of AIT were not historians or archaeologists but had missionary and political axe to grind. Max Muller in fact had been paid by the East India Company to further its colonial aims, and others like Lassen and Weber were ardent German nationalists, with hardly any authority or knowledge on India, only motivated by the superiority of German race/nationalism through white Aryan race theory. And as everybody knows this eventually ended up in the most calamitous event of 20th century: the World War II. Even in the early times of the AIT's onward journey of acceptability, there were numerous challengers like C.J.H. Hayes, Boyed C. Shafer and Hans Kohn who made a deep study of the evolution and character of nationalism in Europe. They had exposed the unscientificness of many of the budding social sciences which were utilized in the 19th century to create the myth of Aryan Race Theory.
Max Muller, a renowned Indologist from Germany, is credited with the popularization of the Aryan racial theory in the middle of 19th century. Though later on when Muller's reputation as a Sanskrit scholar was getting damaged, and he was challenged by his peers, since nowhere in the Sanskrit literature, the term Arya denoted a racial people, he recanted and pronounced that Aryan meant only a linguistic family and never applied to a race. But the damage was already done. The German and French political and nationalist groups exploited this racial phenomenon to propagate the supremacy of an assumed Aryan race of white people, which Hitler used to its extreme absurdities for his barbaric crusade to terrorize Jews and other societies. This culminated in the holocaust of millions of innocent people. Though now this racial nonsense has mostly been discarded in Europe, but in India it is still being exploited and used to divide and denigrate the Hindu society.
Interest in the field of Indology during the 19th Century was of mixed motivations. Many scholars such as August Wilhelm von Schlegal, Hern Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Arthur Schopenhauer lauded praise upon the Vedic literatures and their profound wisdom, others were less than impressed. To accept that there was an advanced civilization outside the boundaries of Europe, at a time before the Patriarchs Abraham and Moses had made their covenant with the Almighty was impossible to conceive of for most European scholars, who harbored a strong Christian tendency. Most scholars of this period were neither archeologists nor historians in the strict sense of the word. Rather, they were missionaries paid by their governments to establish western cultural and racial superiority over the subjugated Indian citizens, through their study of the indigenous religious texts. Consequently, for racial, political and religious reasons, early European indologists created a myth that still survives to this day.
The aryan invasion theory has been one of the most controversial historical topics for well over a century. However, it should be pointed out that it remains just that – a theory.
Bibliography:
http://suratnews.rediffiland.com/blogs/2006/06/09/Myth-of-Aryan-Invasion.html
http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html
Demise of the Aryan Invasion Theory
By Dr.Dinesh Agrawal
http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/A-dead-end-for-Aryan-Invasion-Theorys-Racism-Part-II/blog-119.htm
http://india_resource.tripod.com/aryan.html
