Indo-Aryan migrations

For other uses, see Indo-Aryan migration (disambiguation).

Indo-Aryan migration is a necessary corollary of any model of Indo-European origins that locates the original Indo-European homeland outside the Indian subcontinent.

The Indo-Aryans derive from an earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian stage, usually identified with the Bronze Age Andronovo culture at the Caspian Sea, and Indo-Aryan migration to India is consequently assumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India.

Recent revivals of "Out of India" scenarios locating the Indo-European homeland on the Indian subcontinent have found no support in the academic community.

Linguistics

The linguistic center of gravity principle states that a language family's most likely point of origin is in the area of its greatest diversity. Take, for example, the Germanic languages—of which English is one. North America may have more speakers of Germanic languages, but almost all of them are exclusively or primarily speakers of English. Northern Europe, where the Germanic languages are known to have originated, has in significant numbers speakers not only of English but also German, Dutch/Flemish, and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian.

By this criterion, India, home to only a single branch of the Indo-European language family (i.e. Indo-Aryan), is an exceedingly unlikely candidate for the Indo-European homeland; Central-Eastern Europe, on the other hand, is home to the Italic, Venetic, Illyrian, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Thracian, and Greek branches of Indo-European.

Both mainstream Urheimat solutions locate the Indo-European homeland in the vicinity of the Black Sea.

Dialectical variation

Indo-European isoglosses, including the centum and satem languages (blue and red, respectively), augment, PIE *-tt- > -ss-, *-tt- > -st-, and m-endings.

It has long been recognized that a binary tree model cannot capture all linguistic alignments; certain areal features cut across language groups and are better explained through a model treating linguistic change like waves rippling out through a pond. This is true of the Indo-European languages as well. Various features originated and spread while Proto-Indo-European was still a dialect continuum. These features sometimes cut across sub-families: for instance, the instrumental, dative, and ablative plurals in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic feature endings beginning with -m-, rather than the usual -*bh-, e.g. Old Church Slavic instrumental plural synŭ-mi 'with sons', despite the fact that the Germanic languages are centum languages, while Baltic and Slavic are satem languages.

There is a close relationship between the dialectical relationship of the Indo-European languages and the actual geographical arrangement of the languages in their earliest attested forms that makes an Indian origin for the family unlikely. Given the geographic barriers separating the subcontinent from the rest of Eurasia, such as the Hindu Kush mountains and the existence of the various Indo-European sub-families, an Indian Urheimat would require several successive staggered migrations (cf. Out of India theory). However, this would destroy the close arrangement between archaic shared linguistic features and geographical arrangement noted above. This arrangement is better explained by a radial expansion of the Indo-Europeans, a corollary of which is the migration of Indo-Aryan speakers into the subcontinent. In addition, there is a series of successive innovations, from Proto-Indo-European, to Satem, Indo-Iranian, and Vedic Sanskrit that makes the latter a late descendant that in some respects has even younger features than the closely related Iranian (such as the sede perfect, vs. Avesta hazde).

Substrate influence

Main article: Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit

Bryant (2001:76) believes that evidence of a pre-Indo-European linguistic substratum in South Asia is solid reason to exclude India as a potential Indo-European homeland.

Burrow compiled a list of approximately 500 foreign words in Sanskrit that he considered to be loans predominantly from Dravidian. Kuiper identified 383 Ṛgvedic words as non-Indo-Aryan—roughly 4% of its liturgical vocabulary— borrowed from Old Dravidian, Old Munda, and several other languages. Thieme has questioned Dravidian etymologies proposed for Vedic words, most of which he gives Indoaryan or Sanskrit etymologies, and condemned what he characterizes as a misplaced “zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit”. Das even contends that there is “not a single case in which a communis opinio has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rgvedic (and probably Vedic in general) word”. Burrow in turn has criticized the "resort to tortuous reconstructions in order to find, by hook or by crook, Indo-European explanations for Sanskrit words". However, later on he revoked many of his 26 Dravidian etymologies in the Rigveda. Kuiper reasons that given the abundance of Indo-European comparative material—and the scarcity of Dravidian or Munda—the inability to clearly confirm whether the etymology of a Vedic word is Indo-European implies that it is not. In addition, the state of the art of the three language families differs widely.

Dravidian and other South Asian languages share with Indo-Aryan a number of syntactical and morphological features that are alien to other Indo-European languages, including even Old Iranian. Phonologically, there is the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals in Indo-Aryan; morphologically there are the gerunds; and syntactically there is the use of a quotative marker ("iti"). Several linguists, all of whom accept the external origin of the Aryan languages on other grounds, are quite open to considering that various syntactical developments in Indo-Aryan could have been internal developments (Hamp 1996 and Jamison 1989, as cited in Bryant 2001:81–82) rather than the result of substrate influences, or have been the result of adstratum (Hock 1975/1984/1996 and Tikkanen 1987, as cited in Bryant 2001:80–82). About retroflexion Tikkanen (1999) states that "in view of the strictly areal implications of retroflexion and the occurrence of retroflexes in many early loanwords, it is hardly likely that Indo-Aryan retroflexion arose in a region that did not have a substratum with retroflexes." In fact, retroflexation is strongest in the Northwest, in unrelated languages such as Pashto, Burushaski, Khotanese Saka, and most Dardic (India-Aryan) languages.

Writing specifically about language contact phenomena, Thomason & Kaufman (1988) state that there is strong evidence that Dravidian influenced Indic through "shift", that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages. Even though the innovative traits in Indic could be explained by multiple internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once – it becomes a question of explanatory parsimony; moreover, early Dravidian influence accounts for the several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.

Erdosy (1995:18) states that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Old Indo-Aryan is that the majority of early Old Indo-Aryan speakers had a Dravidian mother tongue which they gradually abandoned.

Material archaeology

Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC).

The vast majority of the professional archaeologists Bryant (2001) interviewed in India insisted that there was no convincing archaeological evidence whatsoever to support any claims of external Indo-Aryan origins. Kenoyer (as cited in Bryant 2001:231) and Shaffer (as cited in Bryant 2001:232) argue that current evidence does not support an invasion of South Asia in the pre- or proto-historic periods.

According to Kenoyer (as quoted in Bryant 2001:190):

Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts...

Similar arguments were made by Haüsler (as cited in Bryant 2001:141), who found that the archaeological evidence in central Europe showed continuous linear development, with no marked external influences. As Bryant (2001:235) points out, "India is not the only Indo-European-speaking area that has not revealed any archaeological traces of immigration." Mallory (in Blench & Spriggs 1997) states that archaeological continuity can be supported for every Indo-European-speaking region of Eurasia, not just India. Several historically documented migrations, such as those of the Helvetii to Switzerland, the Huns into Europe, or Gaelic-speakers into Scotland are not attested in the archaeological record. Cavalli-Sforza (2000) states that "archeology can verify the occurrence of migration only in exceptional cases".

Bryant (2001:236) grants that "there is at least a series of archaeological cultures that can be traced approaching the Indian subcontinent, even if discontinuous, which does not seem to be the case for any hypothetical east-to-west emigration." Erdosy (1995) states that "some support was found in the archaeological record for small-scale migrations from Central to South Asia in the late 3rd/early 2nd millennia B.C."

The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The Gandhara Grave (GGC), Cemetery H, Copper Hoard and Painted Grey Ware (PGW) cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan movements. The Indo-Aryan migration is dated subsequent to the Mature Harappan culture and the arrival of Indo-Aryans in the Indian subcontinent dated during the Late Harappan period. Based on linguistic data, many scholars argue that the Indo-Aryan languages were introduced to India in the 2nd millennium BCE. The standard model for the entry of the Indo-European languages into India is that this first wave went over the Hindu Kush, forming the Gandhara grave (or Swat) culture, either into the headwaters of the Indus or the Ganges (probably both). The language of the Rigveda, the earliest stratum of Vedic Sanskrit is assigned to about 1500-1200 BCE.

The separation of Indo-Aryans proper from Proto-Indo-Iranians has been dated to roughly 2000 BCE–1800 BCE. It is believed Indo-Aryans reached Assyria in the west and the Punjab in the east before 1500 BC: the Indo-Aryan Mitanni rulers appear from 1500 in northern Mesopotamia, and the Gandhara grave culture emerges from 1600. This suggests that Indo-Aryan tribes would have had to be present in the area of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (southern Turkmenistan/northern Afghanistan) from 1700 BC at the latest (incidentally corresponding with the decline of that culture).

The Gandhara grave culture is the most likely locus of the earliest Indo-European presence east of the Hindu Kush of the bearers of Rigvedic culture, and based on this Parpola (1998) assumes an immigration to the Punjab ca. 1700-1400, but he also postulates a first wave of immigration from as early as 1900 BC, corresponding to the Cemetery H culture. However, this culture may also represent forerunners of the Indo-Iranians, similar to the Kassite invasion of Mesopotamia early in the second millennium BCE.

Rajesh Kochhar (2000:185–186) argues that there were three waves of Indo-Aryan immigration that occurred after the mature Harappan phase: the Murghamu (BMAC) related people who entered Baluchistan at Pirak, Mehrgarh south cemetery, etc. and later merged with the post-urban Harappans during the late Harappans Jhukar phase; the Swat IV that co-founded the Harappan Cemetery H phase in Punjab and the Rigvedic Indo-Aryans of Swat V that later absorbed the Cemetery H people and gave rise to the Painted Grey Ware culture. He dates the first two to 2000-1800 BCE and the third to 1400 BCE.

Andronovo

early 2nd millennium introduction of the chariot to India is consistent with the overall picture of the spread of this innovation (Mesopotamia 1700, China 1600, N Europe 1300).

Main article: Andronovo culture

The conventional identification of the Andronovo culture as Indo-Iranian is disputed by those who point to the absence south of the Oxus River of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe.

Based on its use by Indo-Aryans in Mitanni and Vedic India, its prior absence in the Near East and Harappan India, and its 16th–17th century BC attestation at the Andronovo site of Sintashta, Kuzmina (1994) argues that the chariot corroborates the identification of Andronovo as Indo-Iranian. Klejn (1974) and Brentjes (1981) find the Andronovo culture much too late for an Indo-Iranian identification since chariot-wielding Aryans appear in Mitanni by the 15th to 16th century BC. However, Anthony & Vinogradov (1995) dated a chariot burial at Krivoye Lake to about 2000 BC and a BMAC burial that also contains a foal has recently been found, indicating further links with the steppes.

Mallory (as cited in Bryant 2001:216) admits the extraordinary difficulty of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern India, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans". However he has also developed the "kulturkugel" model that has the Indo-Iranians taking over BMAC cultural traits but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India.

Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC)

Main article: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex

Some scholars have suggested that the characteristically BMAC artifacts found at burials in Mehrgarh and Baluchistan are explained by a movement of peoples from Central Asia to the south.

Jarrige and Hassan (as cited in Bryant 2001:215–216) argue instead that the BMAC artifacts are explained "within the framework of fruitful intercourse" by "a wide distribution of common beliefs and ritual practices" and "the economic dynamism of the area extending from South Central Asia to the Indus Valley."

Either way, the exclusively Central Asian BMAC material inventory of the Mehrgarh and Baluchistan burials is, in the words of Bryant (2001:215), "evidence of an archaeological intrusion into the subcontinent from Central Asia during the commonly accepted time frame for the arrival of the Indo-Aryans".

Indus Valley Civilization

Indo-Aryan migration into the northern Punjab is thus approximately contemporaneous to the final phase of the decline of the Indus-Valley civilization (IVC). Many scholars have argued that the historical Vedic culture is the result of an amalgamation of the immigrating Indo-Aryans with the remnants of the indigenous civilization, such as the Ochre Coloured Pottery culture. Such remnants of IVC culture is not yet present in the Rigveda, with its focus on chariot warfare and nomadic pastoralism in stark contrast with an urban civilization.

The decline of the IVC from about 1900 BC is not universally accepted to be connected with Indo-Aryan immigration. A regional cultural discontinuity occurred during the second millennium BC and many Indus Valley cities were abandoned during this period, while many new settlements began to appear in Gujarat and East Punjab and other settlements such as in the western Bahawalpur region increased in size. Shaffer & Lichtenstein (in Erdosy 1995:139) stated that: "This shift by Harappan and, perhaps, other Indus Valley cultural mosaic groups, is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium B.C.." This could have been caused by ecological factors, such as the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and increased aridity in Rajasthan and other places. The Indus River also began to flow east and floodings occurred. Shaffer (as cited in Bryant 2001:192) contends: "There were no invasions from central or western South Asia. Rather there were several internal cultural adjustments reflecting altered ecological, social and economic conditions affecting northwestern and north-central South Asia".

At Kalibangan (at the Ghaggar river) the remains of what some writers claims to be fire altars have been unearthed. Some of their characteristics suggest that they could have been used for Vedic sacrifices, while others, such as the presence of animal bones in them, strictly speak against this. In addition the remains of a bathing place (suggestive of ceremonial bathing) have been found near the altars in Kalibangan. S.R. Rao found similar "fire altars" in Lothal which he thinks could have served no other purpose than a ritualistic one, , which howver can refer to any other civilization as well.

Gandhara grave culture

Main article: Gandhara grave culture

About 1800 BCE, there is a major cultural change in the Swat Valley with the emergence of the Gandhara grave culture. With its introduction of new ceramics, new burial rites, and the horse, the Gandhara grave culture is a major candidate for early Indo-Aryan presence. The two new burial rites—flexed inhumation in a pit and cremation burial in an urn—were, according to early Vedic literature, both practiced in early Indo-Aryan society. Horse-trappings indicate the importance of the horse to the economy of the Gandharan grave culture. Two horse burials indicate the importance of the horse in other respects. Horse burial is a custom that Gandharan grave culture has in common with Andronovo, though not within the distinctive timber-frame graves of the steppe.

Physical anthropology

Main article: Genetics and Archaeogenetics of South Asia

Distribution of R1a (purple) and R1b (red)

Chaubey et al. (2007) find that most of the India-specific mtDNA haplogroups show coalescent times of 40 to 60 millennia ago. Sahoo et al. (2006) states that "there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India" and that

It is not necessary, based on the current evidence, to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny. Recent claims for a linkage of haplogroups J2, L, R1a, and R2 with a contemporaneous origin for the majority of the Indian castes' paternal lineages from outside the subcontinent are rejected, although our findings do support a local origin of haplogroups F* and H. Of the others, only J2 indicates an unambiguous recent external contribution, from West Asia rather than Central Asia.

However, Bamshad et al. (2001) state:

For maternally inherited mtDNA, each caste is most similar to Asians. However, 20%-30% of Indian mtDNA haplotypes belong to West Eurasian haplogroups, and the frequency of these haplotypes is proportional to caste rank, the highest frequency of West Eurasian haplotypes being found in the upper castes. In contrast, for paternally inherited Y-chromosome variation each caste is more similar to Europeans than to Asians. Moreover, the affinity to Europeans is proportionate to caste rank, the upper castes being most similar to Europeans, particularly East Europeans. [...] Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes. Collectively, all five datasets show a trend toward upper castes being more similar to Europeans, whereas lower castes are more similar to Asians.

Kennedy (as cited in Bryant 2001:230), who examined 300 skeletons from the Indus Valley civilization, concludes that the ancient Harappans “are not markedly different in their skeletal biology from the present-day inhabitants of Northwestern India and Pakistan”. The craniometric variables of prehistoric and living South Asians also showed an "obvious separation" from the prehistoric people of the Iranian plateau and western Asia. Furthermore, the results of craniometric variation from Indus Valley sites indicate "significant separation" of Moenjodaro from Harappa and the others.

Kenoyer (as quoted in Bryant 2001:231) states that "there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities...with no biological evidence for major new populations."

Kennedy (in Erdosy 1995:54) concluded, "there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.” Comparing the Harappan and Gandhara cultures, Kennedy (in Erdosy 1995:49) remarks that: “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.”

Hemphill and Christensen (as cited in Elst 1999) report on their study of the migration of genetic traits: "Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era." In a more recent study, Hemphill concludes that "the data provide no support for any model of massive migration and gene flow between the oases of Bactria and the Indus Valley. Rather, patterns of phenetic affinity best conform to a pattern of long-standing, but low-level bidirectional mutual exchange."

Kivisild et al. (2003) point out that, although northwest India was ruled for several centuries by dynasties descended from the armies of Alexander the Great, neither the M170 nor M35 genetic markers associated with Greeks and Macedonians has been found anywhere in India, and cautions that the shared prehistoric genetic inheritance of Indian tribal and caste populations "does not refute the existence of genetic footprints laid down by known historical events. This would include invasions by the Huns, Greeks, Kushans, Moghuls, Muslims, English, and others." Kennedy (in Erdosy 1995:60) states that discontinuities in the prehistoric skeletal record occur either too early or too late to fit the classic scenario of a mid-second millennium B.C. Aryan invasion, but that this does not preclude "a gradual infiltration of foreigners". Witzel (in Erdosy 1995:113) states that 'their genetic impact would have been negligible and, as was the case with the Normans in England, would have been "lost" in a few generations in the much larger gene pool of the Indus people.' Vijendra Kashyap, one of the authors of Sahoo et al. (2006), states that the people of the Indian subcontinent are indigenous to South Asia, but that Indo-European languages aren't, and that language change resulted from the migration of numerically small superstrate groups that are difficult to trace genetically. Cavalli-Sforza (2000) states that "Archeology can verify the occurrence of migration only in exceptional cases" and identifies the introduction of Indo-European languages to India as an instance of language replacement, when the language of a population changes accompanied by only modest genetic effects.

The spread of the Indo-European languages is associated with Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1, which is identified with genetic marker M17. Kivisild et al. (2003) "suggests that southern and western Asia might be the source of this haplogroup". However, the Genographic Project conducted by the National Geographic Society states that M17 arose "in the region of present-day Ukraine or southern Russia." The decrease in the frequency of M17 "southward into India overlaps exactly with the inferred migrations of the Indo-Iranians during the period 3,000 to 1,000 B.C." M17 "shows that there was a massive genetic influx into India from the steppes within the past 10,000 years. Taken with the archaeological data, we can say that the old hypothesis of an invasion of people – not merely their language – from the steppe appears to be true."

Textual references

Mitanni

See also: Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni

The earliest written evidence for an Indo-Aryan language is found not in India, but in northern Syria in Hittite records regarding one of their neighbors, the Hurrian-speaking Mitanni. In a treaty with the Hittites, the king of Mitanni, after swearing by a series of Hurrian gods, swears by the gods Mitrašil, Uruvanaššil, Indara, and Našatianna, who correspond to the Vedic gods Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, and Nāsatya. Contemporary equestrian terminology, as recorded in a horse-training manual whose author is identified as "Kikkuli the Mitannian," contains Indo-Aryan loanwords. The personal names and gods of the Mitanni aristocracy also bear traces of Indo-Aryan. Because of this association of Indo-Aryan with horsemanship and the Mitanni aristocracy, it is generally presumed that, after superimposing themselves as rulers on a native Hurrian-speaking population about the 15th-16th centuries BCE, Indo-Aryan charioteers were absorbed into the local population and adopted the Hurrian language.

Brentjes (as cited in Bryant 2001:137) argues that there is not a single cultural element of central Asian, eastern European, or Caucasian origin in the Mitannian area and associates with an Indo-Aryan presence the peacock motif found in the Middle East from before 1600 BCE and quite likely from before 2100 BCE.

However, received opinion rejects the possibility that the Indo-Aryans of Mitanni came from the Indian subcontinent as well as the possibility that the Indo-Aryans of the Indian subcontinent came from the territory of Mitanni, leaving migration from the north the only likely scenario.. The presence of some BMAC loan words in Mitanni. Old Iranian and Vedic further strengthens this scenario.

Rigveda

Geography of the Rigveda, with river names; the extent of the Swat and Cemetery H cultures are indicated.

The Rigveda is by far the most archaic testimony of Vedic Sanskrit. Bryant suggests that the Rigveda represents a pastoral or nomadic, mobile culture, still centered on the Indo-Iranian Soma cult and fire worship. With all the effort to glimpse historical information from the hymns of the Rigveda, it should not be forgotten that the purpose of these hymns is ritualistic, not historiographical or ethnographical, and any information about the way of life or the habitat of their authors is incidental and philologically extrapolated from the context.Nevertheless, Rigvedic data must be used, cautiously, as they are the earliest available textual evidence from India.

Rigvedic society as pastoral society

Fortifications (púr), mostly made of mud and wood (palisades)

Indra in particular is described as destroyer of fortifications, e.g. RV 4.30.20ab:

satám asmanmáyinaam / purām índro ví asiyat

"Indra overthrew a hundred fortresses of stone."

However, according to Gupta (as quoted in Bryant 2001:190), "ancient civilizations had both the components, the village and the city, and numerically villages were many times more than the cities. (...) if the Vedic literature reflects primarily the village life and not the urban life, it does not at all surprise us.". Possehl (as cited in Bryant 2001:195) argued that the "extraordinary empty spaces between the Harappan settlement clusters" indicates that pastoralists may have "formed the bulk of the population during Harappan times". The Rigveda is seen by some as containing phrases referring to elements of an urban civilization, other than the mere viewpoint of an invader aiming at sacking the fortresses. For example, Indra is compared to the lord of a fortification (pūrpatis) in RV 1.173.10, while quotations such as a ship with a hundred oars in 1.116 and metal forts (puras ayasis) in 10.101.8 all occur in mythological contexts only.

Rigvedic reference to migration

There is no explicit mention of an outward or inward migration in the Rigveda. Kazanas interpretes a mythological passage, RV 7.6.3, as: Agni turned the godless and the Dasyus westward, and not southward, as would be required by some versions of the AIT. Talageri speculates that some of the tribes that fought against Sudas on the banks of the Parusni River during the Dasarajna battle have maybe migrated to western countries in later times, as they are possibly connected with some Iranian peoples (e.g. the Pakthas, Bhalanas).

Just like the Avesta does not mention an external homeland of the Zoroastrians, the Rigveda does not explicitly refer to an external homeland or to a migration. Later texts than the Rigveda (such as the Brahmanas, the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas) are more centered in the Ganges region. This shift from the Punjab to the Gangetic plain continues the Rigvedic tendency of eastward expansion, but does of course not imply an origin beyond the Indus watershed. However, the Rigveda contains names (such as Rasa/Raha, Sarayu/Haroyu) that represent memories of the Volga, as well as the Pani (Parni) tribe and the Herat Rivers in western Afghanistan.

Rigvedic Rivers and Reference of Samudra

Cluster of Indus Valley Civilization site along the possible course of Sarasvati/Ghaggar-Hakra River. See this for a more detailed map.

Main article: Sarasvati River

Main article: Samudra

The geography of the Rigveda seems to be centered around the land of the seven rivers. While the geography of the Rigvedic rivers is unclear in the early mandalas, the Nadistuti hymn is an important source for the geography of late Rigvedic society.

The Sarasvati River is one of the chief Rigvedic rivers. The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later texts like the [Bbrahmanas]]and Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.

Most scholars agree that at least some of the references to the Sarasvati in the Rigveda refer to the Ghaggar-Hakra River, while the Afghan river Helmand is sometimes quoted as the locus of the early Rigvedic river. Whether such a transfer of the name has taken place, either from the Helmand to the Ghaggar-Hakra, and the or conversely from the Ghaggar-Hakra to the Helmand, is a matter of dispute. Identification of the early Rigvedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra before its assumed drying up would place the Rigveda well before 1700 BC, and thus well outside the range commonly assumed by Indo-Aryan migration theory.

A non-Indo-Aryan substratum in the river-names and place-names of the Rigvedic homeland would support an external origin of the Indo-Aryans. However, most place-names in the Rigveda and the vast majority of the river-names in the north-west of India are Indo-Aryan.They are, however, frequent in the Ghaggar and Kabul River areas

Two alternative dates for Zarathustra can be found in Greek sources: 5000 years before the Trojan War, i.e. 6000 BCE, or 258 years before Alexander, i.e. the 6th century BCE, the latter of which used to provide the conventional dating but has since been traced to a fictional Greek source. Most linguists such as Burrow argue that the strong similarity between the Avestan language of the Gāthās—the oldest part of the Avesta—and the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rgveda pushes the dating of Zarathustra or at least the Gathas closer to the conventional Rgveda dating of 1500–1200 BCE, i.e. 1100 BCE, possibly earlier. Boyce concurs with a lower date of 1100 BCE and tentatively proposes an upper date of 1500 BCE. Gnoli dates the Gathas to around 1000 BCE, as does Mallory (1989), with the caveat of a 400 year leeway on either side, i.e. between 1400 and 600 BCE. Therefore the date of the Avesta could also indicate the date of the Rigveda.

There is mention in the Avesta of Airyanəm Vaējah, one of the '16 the lands of the Aryans' as well as Zarathustra himself. Gnoli's interpretation of geographic references in the Avesta situates the Airyanem Vaejah in the Hindu Kush. For similar reasons, Boyce excludes places north of the Syr Darya and western Iranian places. With some reservations, Skjaervo concurs that the evidence of the Avestan texts makes it impossible to avoid the conclusion that they were composed somewhere in northeastern Iran. Witzel points to the central Afghan highlands. Humbach derives Vaējah from cognates of the Vedic root "vij," suggesting the region of a fast-flowing river. Gnoli considers Choresmia (Xvairizem), the lower Oxus region, south of the Aral Sea to be an outlying area in the Avestan world. However, according to Mallory & Mair (2000), the probable homeland of Avestan is, in fact, the area south of the Aral Sea.

Other Hindu texts

Some Indologists have noted that "there is no textual evidence in the early literary traditions unambiguously showing a trace" of an Indo-Aryan migration. Texts like the Puranas and Mahabharata belong to a later period than the Rigveda, making their evidence less than sufficient to be used for or against the Indo-Aryan migration theory.

Later Vedic texts show a shift of location from the Panjab to the East: according to the Yajur Veda, Yajnavalkya (one of the Vedic Seers) lived in the eastern region of Mithila. Aitareya Brahmana 33.6.1. records that Vishvamitra's sons migrated to the north, and in Shatapatha Brahmana 1:2:4:10 the Asuras were driven to the north. In still later texts, Manu was said to be a king from Dravida. In the legend of the flood he stranded with his ship in Northwestern India or the Himalayas. The Vedic land (e.g. Aryavarta, Brahmavarta) is located in Northern India or at the Sarasvati and Drsadvati River, according to Hindu texts. In the Mahabharata Udyoga Parva (108), the East is described as the homeland of the Vedic culture, where "the divine Creator of the universe first sang the Vedas." The legends of Ikshvaku, Sumati and other Hindu legends may have their origin in South-East Asia.

Puranas

The evidence from the Puranas is often disputed because they are a comparably late text. They are often dated from c.400 to c.1000 CE. The Rgveda dates from before 1200 BCE. Thus the Rgveda and the Puranas are separated by approximately 1600 to 2200 years, though scholars argue that some contents of the Puranas may date to an earlier period.

The Puranas record that Yayati left Prayag (confluence of Ganga & Yamuna) and conquered the region of Saptha Sindhu. His five sons Yadu, Druhyu, Puru, Anu and Turvashu became the main tribes of the Rigveda.

The Puranas also record that the Druhyus were driven out of the land of the seven rivers by Mandhatr and that their next king Ghandara settled in a north-western region which became known as Gandhara. The sons of the later Druhyu king Pracetas are supposed by some to have migrated to the region north of Afghanistan. This migration is recorded in several Puranas.. However, these texts do not mention migration but merely mention that the "100" sons of Practeas were adjacent (āśrita) to Gandhara.

Vedic and Puranic genealogies

The Vedic and Puranic genealogies indicate a greater antiquity of the Vedic culture. The Puranas themselves state that these lists are incomplete. But the accuracy of these lists is disputed. In Arrian's Indica, Megasthenes is quoted as stating that the Indians counted from Shiva (Dionysos) to Chandragupta Maurya (Sandracottus) "a hundred and fifty-three kings over six thousand and forty-three years." The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (4.6.), ca. 8th century BCE, mentions 57 links in the Guru-Parampara ("succession of teachers"). This would mean that this Guru-Parampara would go back about 1400 years, although the accuracy of this list is disputed. as student-teacher generations do not correspond to normal father-son generations of 20/30 years. The list of kings in Kalhana's Rajatarangini goes back to the 19th century BCE.

History and political background

Further information: Historical definitions of races in India and Indigenous Aryans

In the earliest phase of Indo-European studies, Sanskrit was assumed to be very close to (if not identical with) hypothetical Proto-Indo-European language. Its geographical location also fitted the then-dominant Biblical model of human migration, according to which Europeans were descended from the tribe of Japhet, which was supposed to have expanded from Mount Ararat after the Flood. Iran and northern India seemed to be likely early areas of settlement for the Japhetites.

In the course of the 19th century, as the field of historical linguistics progressed, and Bible-based models of history were abandoned, it became clear that Sanskrit could no longer be given priority. In line with mid to late 19th century ideas, an Aryan 'invasion' was made the vehicle of the language transfer. Max Muller estimated the date to be around 1500–1200 BC, a date also supported by more recent scholars.

The Indus Valley civilization, discovered in the 1920s, was unknown to 19th century scholars. The discovery of the Harappa and Mohenjo-daro sites changed the theory from an invasion of implicitly advanced Aryan people on an aboriginal population to an invasion of nomadic barbarians on an advanced urban civilization, an argument associated with the mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler. The decline roughly contemporaneous to the proposed migration movement was seen initially as an independent confirmation of these early suggestions.

Among the archaeological signs claimed by Wheeler to support the theory of an invasion are the many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro. They were interpreted by Wheeler as victims of a conquest of the city, but Wheeler's interpretation is no longer accepted by many scholars. Wheeler himself expressed no certainty, but wrote, in a famous phrase, that "Indra stands accused".

In the later 20th century, ideas were refined, and so now migration and acculturation are seen as the methods whereby Indo-Aryan spread into northwest India around 1700 BCE. These changes are exactly in line with changes in thinking about language transfer in general, such as the migration of the Greeks into Greece (between 2100 and 1600 BCE), or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe (between 2200 and 1300 BCE).

Political debate

The debate over such a migration, and the accompanying influx of elements of Vedic religion from Central Asia is politically charged and hotly debated in India. Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) organizations, especially, remain opposed to the concept, for political, religious, and scientific reasons, while many Indian Marxists and a fraction of the Dalit Movement support the theory in opposition to the Hindu nationalists, mostly for political reasons. Outside India, the perceived political overtones of the theory are not pronounced, and it is discussed in the larger framework of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European expansion.

"Out of India" scenarios

Main article: Out of India theory

Even though it lies outside the mainstream academic consensus, an Indian Urheimat has its proponents, such as Elst (1999) and Kazanas (2001, 2002).

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See also

• Indo-Aryans
• Aryan
• Arya
• Aryavarta
• Indo-Aryan languages

• Rigveda

• Indo-Iranians
• Indo-Iranian languages

• BMAC
• Andronovo culture

• Ancient India and Central Asia

• Kurgan

External links

• The Myth of Aryan Invasion Theory
• Witzel, Michael: The Home of the Aryans
• Web Index to AIT versus OIT debate
• `What is Aryan Migration Theory ?' by Vishal Agrawal
• Agarwal, Vishal: Is There Vedic Evidence for the Indo-Aryan Immigration to India? (pdf)
• Thapar, Romila: The Aryan question revisited (1999)
• Kazanas, Nicholas homepage Articles by Nicholas Kazanas
• Elst, Koenraad: Update on the Aryan Invasion Theory - K. Elst's Online book, Articles, Book reviews

Archaeology

• Cache of Seal Impressions Discovered in Western India
• Central Asia 2000-1000BC (Metmuseum.org)
• Lal, B.B.: The Homeland of Indo-European Languages and Culture: Some Thoughts By Archaeologist B.B. Lal
• Danino, Michel: The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question Article by Michel Danino
• Agrawal, D.P.: The Indus Civilization = Aryans equation: Is it really a Problem? By D.P. Agrawal (pdf)

Genetics

• Genetic Evidence on the origins of Indian Caste Population, Genome Research, 2001
• A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios, PNAS paper, 2006
• Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists, AJHG paper, 2006
• Peopling of South Asia: investigating the caste-tribe continuum in India

Religious and political aspects

• A Tribute to Hindusim - compilation
• Frawley, David: The Myth of the Aryan Invasion