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Aryans : A nation or a code that defined a civilization?

The words

Arya

and

Aryan

are among the most widely used terms

while speaking of ancient history, and yet they are seldom if ever

clearly defined. The most familiar usage is as a race or a tribe that

invaded India in the second millennium BC which gave rise to the

famous Aryan invasion theory. To add to the confusion, Max Muller

himself used Arya to mean both race and a family of languages — a

family that included Indian, Iranian and European languages. To

further confuse the issue, Arya became a racial term among Europeans,

especially Germans in their efforts to free themselves from the Judaic

heritage of Christianity.

The notion of the “Aryan nation” was a very potent force in the

political movement that led to German unification'. This, as Max

Muller noted, added confusion to both linguistics and anthropology.

Recognizing this, he denounced the idea of Aryans as a race or nation

in no uncertain terms, in the following famous statement made in 1888

“I have declared again and again that if I say ‘Aryan’ I mean neither

blood nor bone, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak the

Aryan language. To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race,

Aryan blood and Aryan eyes and hair is as great a sinner as a linguist

who speaks of dolicocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic gram-

mar. ”

It is clear that when he gave vent to this expression of frustration,

Max Muller had firmly decided that Aryan was a linguistic concept.

But the issue is not so simple for he himself had contributed to the

confusion by using the term in the racial sense before 1871. Recent

research has established that German unification following the Franco-

Prussian War (1870-71) was a major factor in this shift from race to

language.

Modem science, especially the emergence of Molecular Genetics

in this century has fully exploded the notion of Aryan as a race.

Nonetheless the discredited notion of the Aryan race continued to be

invoked in Europe at least until the defeat of Hitler in 1945. Thus the

European uses of the terms Arya and Aryan represent no more than

popular political and academic fashions and provide no help whatso-

ever in trying to understand the meaning of the word as used in ancient

India where the term originated. In order to understand the real

meaning of the word we must look to the original Indian sources.

The term Arya in India is extremely ancient going back to the

Rig

Veda

itself. The

Amarakosha

(c. 500 AD), the authoritative lexicon of

classical Sanskrit defines Arya as

mahakula kulinarya sabhya sajjana sadhavah

which may be translated as : “An Arya is one who hails from a noble

family, of good conduct and of gentle behaviour and demeanour.”

There is no reference to any race, nation or language. Aryans according

to the originators of the term referred to those who observed a code of

conduct; people were Aryans or non-Aryans depending on whether or

not they followed this code.

This is made entirely explicit in the

Manudharma Shastra

or the

Manusmriti

which states :

“But in consequence of the omission of

sacred rites, and of their not heeding the sages, the following people of

the noble class (Arya Kshatriyas) have gradually sunk to the state of

servants

—

the Paundrakas, Chodas, Dravidas, Kambojas, Yavanas,

Shakhas, Paradhas, Pahlavas, Chinas, Kiratas and Daradas. ”

Two points about this list are worth noting:

Their fall from the Aryan fold had nothing to do with race, birth

or nationality; it was due entirely to their failure to follow certain

sacred rites.

The list includes people from all parts of India as well as a few

neighbouring countries like China and Persia (Pahlavas).

Kambojas are from West Punjab, Yavanas from Afghanistan

and beyond (not necessarily the Greeks) while Dravidas refers

probably to people from the southwest of India and the south.

Thus the modem idea of Aryan-Dravidian racial divide is fully dis-

credited by ancient records. We have it on the authority of Manu that

the Dravidians were also part of the Aryan fold. Interestingly, so were

the Chinese. Race never had anything to do with it until the Europeans

adopted the ancient word to give expression to their nationalistic and

other aspirations.

The

Rig Veda

uses the word mainly as an adjective, invariably as

a term implying finer qualities. The closest to a definition of Arya that

one can find in the

Rig Veda

is probably the following :

....praja arya jyotiragarh

Children of Arya seek and are led by jyoti (light)

(C.R.V.

VII 33.7)

The word “light” here, is to be taken in the spiritual sense of enlight-

enment. Once again the idea of Aryan as a race is fully refuted by

ancient records going back thousands of years. It refers to a code of

conduct that defined a civilization. The following description of Rama

given in the great epic

Ramayana

of Valmiki is a singularly eloquent

expression of the Aryan ideal.

aryah sarva-samashcaiva sadaiva priyadarshanah

Arya — who cared for the equality of all and was dear to everyone.

In summary, it can safely be asserted that the word Arya denoted

certain spiritual and human values that defined and sustained an

ancient civilization. The entire Aryan civilization — the civilization

of Vedic India — was driven and sustained by this ideal. The whole

of ancient Indian literature from the Vedas, the Brahmanas to the

Puranas to the epics like the

Mahabharata

and the

Ramayana

can be

seen as records of the struggles of an ancient people to live up to the

ideal. Anyone regardless of birth, race or national origin could become

Aryan by following this code of conduct. It was not something to be

imposed on others by the sword or by proselytization. Viewed in this

light, the whole notion of any “Aryan invasion” is a contradiction of

terms.

(N.S.R.)