History Forum / General / General Topics / September 2005

Myth of Aryan Invasion

By David Frawley

According to the Aryan Invasion
Theory (AIT), India was invaded and
conquered by nomadic light-skinned
Indo-European tribes from Central
Asia around 1500-100 BCE, who
overthrew an earlier and more
advanced dark-skinned Dravidian
civilization from which they took
most of what later became Hindu
culture.

This idea totally foreign to the
history of India. Today, after nearly
all the reasons for its supposed
validity have been refuted, even
major Western scholars are at last
beginning to call it in question.

The nineteenth century European
scholars followed Max Muller. He had
decided that the Aryans came into
India around 1500 BCE, since the
Indus valley culture was earlier than
this, they concluded that it had to
be pre-Aryan. Max Muller believed in
Biblical chronology. This placed the
beginning of the world at 4000 BCE
and the flood around 2500 BCE.
Assuming to those two dates, it
became difficult to get the Aryans in
India before 1500 BCE!

Muller assumed that the five layers
of the four Ved and Upanishad were
each composed in 200-year periods
before the Buddh at 500 BCE. However,
there are more changes of language in
Vedic Sanskrit itself than there are
in classical Sanskrit.

The Vedic culture was said to be that
of primitive nomads who came out of
Central Asia with their horse-drawn
chariots and iron weapons and
overthrew the cities of the more
advanced Indus valley culture. The
whole idea of nomads with chariots
has been challenged. Chariots are not
the vehicles of nomads. Their usage
occurred only in ancient urban
cultures with much flat land, of
which the river plain of north India
was the most suitable. Chariots are
totally unsuitable for crossing
mountains and deserts, as the so-
called Aryan invasion required.

The Saraswati river, as modern land
studies now reveal, was indeed one of
the largest river in India. Before
1500 BCE it drained the Sutlej and
Yamuna whose courses were much
different than they are today.
However, the Saraswati river went dry
at the end of the Indus Valley
culture. OR before the so-called
Aryan invasion in 1500 BCE.

In fact this may have caused the
ending of the Indus culture. How
could the Vedic Aryans know of this
river and establish their culture on
its banks if it dried up before they
arrived?

Vedic and late Vedic texts also
contain interesting astronomical
lore. The Vedic calendar was based
upon astronomical sightings of the
equinoxes and solstices. Such texts
as Vedaang Jyotish speak of a time
when the vernal equinox was in the
middle of the Nakshatr Ashlesh (or
about 23 degrees 20 minutes Cancer).
This gives a date of 1300 BCE. The
Yajur Ved and Atharv Ved speak of the
vernal equinox in Krittik (Pleiades;
early Taurus). This gives a date
about 2400 BCE. Yet earlier eras are
mentioned but these two have numerous
references to substantiate them. They
prove that the Vedic culture existed
at these periods and already had a
sophisticated system of astronomy.

Vedic texts like Shatapath Brahman
and Aitereya Brahman that mention
lands of the Aryans from Gandhar
(Afghanistan) in the west to Videh
(Nepal) in the east, and south to
Vidarbh (Maharashtr). Hence the Vedic
people were in these regions by the
Krittik equinox or before 2400 BCE.
These passages were also ignored by
Western scholars and it was said by
them that the Ved' had no evidence of
large empires in India in Vedic
times.

Vedic literature was interpreted on
the assumption that there was an
Aryan invasion. Then archeological
evidence was interpreted by the same
assumption. And both interpretations
were then used to justify each other.
It is an exercise in circular
thinking that only proves that if
assuming something is true, it is
found to be true!

The acceptance of these views would
create a revolution in our view of
history. It would make ancient India
the oldest, largest and most central
of ancient cultures. It would mean
that the Ved are our most authentic
records of the ancient world. It
would also tend to validate the Vedic
view that the Indo-Europeans and
other Aryan peoples were migrants
from India, not that the Indo-Aryans
were invaders into India. Moreover,
it would affirm the Hindu tradition
that the Dravidians were early
offshoots of the Vedic people through
the seer Agastya, and not unaryan
peoples.

In closing, it is important to
examine the social and political
implications of the Aryan invasion
idea:  

1.  It served to divide India into a
northern Aryan and southern Dravidian
culture which were made hostile to
each other.  

2.  It gave the British an excuse in
their conquest of India. They could
claim to be doing only what the Aryan
ancestors of the Hindus had
previously done millennia ago.  

3.  It served to make Vedic culture
later than and possibly derived from
Middle Eastern cultures. With the
proximity and relationship of the
latter with the Bible and
Christianity, this kept the Hindu
religion as a sidelight to the
development of religion and
civilization to the West.  

4.  It discredited not only the Ved
but the genealogies of the Puraan and
their long list of the kings before
Buddh like Raam and Krshn were left
without any historical basis. The
Mahabharat, instead of the great war,
became a folk lore. In short, it
discredited the most of the Hindu
tradition and almost all its ancient
literature. It turned its scriptures
and sages into fantasies and
exaggerations.  

5.  It served a social, political and
economical purpose of domination,
[attempting to prove a] superiority
of [inferior] Western culture and
religion.  

Such a view is not good scholarship
or archeology but merely cultural
imperialism. The Western Vedic
scholars did in the intellectual
sphere what the British army did in
the political realm: discredit,
divide and conquer the Hindus. The
compelling reasons for the AIT were
neither literary nor archeological
but political and religious. Such
prejudice may not have been
intentional but deep-seated political
and religious views easily cloud and
blur our thinking.

It is unfortunate that this approach
has not been questioned more,
particularly by Hindus. Even though
Indian Vedic scholars like Dayanand
Saraswati, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and
Aurobindo rejected it, most Hindus
today passively accept it. They allow
Western, generally Christian,
scholars to interpret their history
for them.

Many Hindus still accept, read or
even honor the translations of the
Ved' done by such Christian
missionary scholars as Max Muller,
Griffith, Monier Williams and H. H.
Wilson. Would modern Christians
accept an interpretation of the Bible
or Biblical history done by Hindus
aimed at converting them to Hinduism?
Universities in India also use the
Western history books and Western
Vedic translations that propound such
views that denigrate their own
culture and country.

If Hindu scholars are silent or
passively accept the
misinterpretation of their own
culture, it will undoubtedly
continue, but they will have no one
to blame but themselves. It is not an
issue to be taken lightly, because
how a culture is defined historically
creates the perspective from which it
is viewed in the modern social and
intellectual context. Tolerance is
not in allowing a false view of one's
own culture and religion to be
propagated without question. That is
merely self-betrayal.
- David Frawley

End of forwarded message

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