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This paper provides a case for rejecting the Autochthonous Aryan theory
and proposes an alternative to the Aryan Migration Theory,
i.e., it examines why the genetic input from Central Asia may have been extremely small and how
the spread of Indo-European (IE) language and culture in India might have
occurred in trickle in scenarios, i.e., when movements of IE speakers were small. It
suggests that the IE speakers first migrated into and settled in the northernmost tip
of the sub-continent, trickled into the plains due to climatic changes in
the northernmost tip of India, synthesized with the Harappans, fused with
them and got the upper hand when the transfer of population from North-West
India into the Gangetic plains took place around 1900 BC, and then
desynthesized with whatever was left of the Harappan civilization till it vanished
around 1400 BC. Cultural contacts with West Asia and then with South India
would complete the process of spread of IE language and culture in India. This
paper suggests the need for delinking race with spoken and written forms of
language and culture while studying the identity of the Harappans, analyzes the role
of internal and external migrations in shaping Indian culture and questions
some other long-held assumptions about post-Harappan India.
It also suggests that an integrated framework be developed for studying Ancient India.
The paper stresses the need for adopting via media approaches for resolving the
Aryan issue and comes up with a new hypothesis which will be taken up for a
debate and discussion. It also proposes a concurrent dating paradigm and a new
heuristic framework which will be useful both for future cultural studies of Ancient
India and for conducting further archaeological excavations, and then uses
this framework to make inferences about the cultural and religious history of
the sub-continent. The methodology adopted takes the Aryan Migration
Theory (1500 BC) as a base and works backwards to arrive at a fresh set of conclusions.
The Aryan issue has been the subject of academic and polemic debate for decades and
has seen much sophistry particularly in the recent past. The Aryan Migration Theory (AMT)
was first postulated by Max Muller, a German Indologist over 150 years ago. The origin of
this theory however probably harks back even further in time, when William Jones observed
in the 18th century that Sanskrit bore a very striking resemblance to classical
European languages. This, he believed, could not be attributed to coincidence alone. Max
Muller, finally put forth his theory that the Aryans had migrated into India somewhere in the
middle of the second millennium BC, from an unknown urheimat or homeland postulated to
be somewhere in Central Asia. It was then believed that there was no civilization
of consequence before 1500 BC in India and that these people had subjugated various
primitive indigenous tribes and had established the Vedic culture in India.
After the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) in northwestern India in
the 1920s, a civilization which, through consensus, was recognized as having been
advanced for its time, the theory had to be completely revised: it then came to symbolize
the destruction of a very advanced civilization of indigenous origin by either invaders
or nomadic, pastoral tribes. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was thus born with
Mortimer Wheeler's denouncement of Indra as an invader.
Although some people are of the mistaken notion that criticism of this theory is of
a relatively recent origin, the AIT was controversial from the start. Criticism of this theory
has however, undeniably fortified in the recent past as it does not seem to have withstood
the incessant battering it was subject to, especially in the light of most recent
contradictory evidence. Quietly, it has had to be buried, many of its erstwhile supporters having
already acknowledged it as a dead horse. Many proponents of this theory replaced the
word `Invasion' with `Migration' in due course—despite the apparent ambiguity of
most manifestations of this theory, such theories have not been abandoned, the ostensible
reason being the lack of a viable alternative. |
