SmartSurat  #  Hinduism

The Aryan migrations

The Aryans originally came from the plains of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea. They were one group of many Indo-Europeans who filtered out from this area over many centuries from about 2000 BCE, other groups migrating into Europe, possibly even Ireland, and to Irari. Links between the early Iranian religion of Mazdaism, the religion of Zarathushtra and the Vedic religion of the Aryans, rather suggests that those who migrated to India may have done so via ancient Iran. But the picture once given by archeologists of a forceful invasion of the Indus valley in the mid-second millennium, as we have seen, is an erroneous one: it is probable that waves of settlement took place over a long period of time, though the Aryan scripture, the Rug Veda, suggests that at least part of those incursions were sizable and hostile enough to facilitate the taking of the strongholds of some of the Indus valley cities - at least what remained of them.        The first settlements of these Aryans were in the Punjab and from there they gradually spread southward along the Gangetic plain until they dominated the northern part of India. They called themselves Arya, a term meaning ' noble '. It is derived from the Sanskrit root ru or ar, terms which are connected with the earth in some way, and really meant ' agriculturalist', but the connotation ' cultivated ' or ' noble ' was the one which the Aryans had in mind - a nuance of meaning which served to differentiate them from the ' barbarians ' they believed they had conquered. The Indo-European origins of Old Persian, Greek, Latin, German, English, Armenian and Slavic languages are evidenced in similar linguistic cognates even today: Iran and possibly Eire, for example, come from the same root. as arya, as does the English word arable. The word Aryan is an anglicized form of the Sanskrit Arya.        The Aryans were a pastoral people rather than urban like the Harappans. They were not as ' civilized' as they would have us believe in their scriptures for, though they brought the Iron Age to India, they were illiterate, their scriptures being orally handed down. They built no cities, and their artistic efforts in pottery were utilitarian and mundane: under their influence, India lapsed into a village culture for a thousand years. But they considered themselves superior to the indigenous races of India particularly because they were tall, fair-skinned and had more aquiline features. As a semi-nomadic people, their social structure was patriarchal and tribal, led by the male rajas, the tribal chieftains who, centuries hence, were to become monarchs. They had domesticated the horse and cow - the latter being of considerable importance -in their economy and prestige. As they settled in India they built houses of wood and reed - a far cry from the spacious kiln-burnt brick houses of the Harappan culture - with cattle-rearing their main occupation, although metal workers, carpenters, potters, tanners, weavers and reed-workers were employed in the villages. Their influence was considerable and in half a century the northern part of India had become culturally Aryanized.