The
Imaginary Aryan
By Sudhakar Raje
http://www.organiser.org/15oct2000/mus.html
THIS is a book
with a difference. During the last couple of decades or so some scholars, both
Indian and Western, have produced works of research effectively nailing the
Aryan invasionist lie. The Aryan invasion theory cannot be treated even as a
myth, as myths make mythology, and mythology has an important role in religion.
The Aryan invasion theory is a lie, and it can be called a white lie in the
literal sense, as it was a figment of the White man's imagination specifically
meant for denigrating everything Hindu, especially in the context of everything
Christian.
It was this lie that was exposed by scholars like Navratna Rajaram
and Shrikant Talageri at home and David Frawley and Koenraad Elst abroad in
their books which stand testimony to their scholarship. And yet this is a book
with a difference. It is different in two important respects. The first is that
instead of going into the 'invasion' part of the theory concentrates on the
'Aryan' part of it, and the second is the author's almost clinical attitude to
the research he uses as his source material.
Shorn down to
the basics, the theme of this book is that there was no Aryan invasion because
there was no Aryan. To put it a little more explicitly, there was no such thing
as an invasion of ancient (and Dravidian) India by Aryans living somewhere
outside India, because there was no such thing as an Aryan race, either genetic
or even linguistic. Waradpande opens his dissertation with approvingly quoting Dunn
and Dobzansky in 'Heredity, Race and Society'—"Max Muller, on an unluckly
day, used the word 'Aryan Race'. Thus arose,
truly out of talk alone, an imaginary creature: 'Aryan Man'." One would
rather say it was a far from unlucky day for the likes of Max Muller, for this
was the very basis of the concept of an Aryan man and his invasion of India, an
idea that Boden sought to develop as a tool for
the spread of Christianity under the guise of scholarship. When Col Boden gave
an endowment for establishing a Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University he
specifically stated in his will that the purpose of establishing the Chair was
to aid the conversion of the natives of India to Christianity.
Unfortunately but not surprisingly, many 'native' scholars brought up in the
days when the Raj was accepted as a matter of 'divine dispensation' built upon
Max Muller's motivated theory, giving it such a sheen that the Aryan invasion of
India became a universally accepted historical truth.
While the
motive of Max Muller & Co was to bring the Aryans as near the Christian era
as possible, there was also an opposite Indian
fallout, in the sense that some Indian scholars accepted Aryans as outsiders but
argued that they were far more ancient than anything Christian. The most
noteworthy example of this was Lokmanya Tilak's 'Arctic Home in the Vedas'. On
both these fronts, the Western and the 'native', Waradpande moves with
confidence, the polymath in him bringing his erudition in such diverse
disciplines as philosophy, psychology, logic, linguistics, mathematics and
Sanskrit into effective use, leading the reader step by step, argument by
argument, to his central thesis that there was neither a genetic race called
Aryans nor a linguistic community called Aryans, and that wherever the word 'Arya'
has been used, it has always meant 'cultured'. Starting with the basic question
"What is meant by 'Arya'?" the author begins with an examination of
the concept of 'Race', takes the reader through anthropometric and other genetic
characteristics of the human body, discusses the Western classification of the
different races in India and their characteristics, and shows with the help of
tables, charts and graphs how the race-concept itself has no scientific basis. Here
it is interesting to note that a recent foreign study comparing the genetic
composition of Western Eurasian and Indian populations also shows that the
supposed Aryan invasion is not supported by genetics. In articles published in
the British Journal Current Biology T.R. Disotell
and T.Kivisild observe that "the supposed
Aryan invasion of India 3000-4000 years ago was much less significant than is
generally believed".
A key
mitochondrial DNA of the Western Eurasian strain accounts for only about 5 per
cent in Indian populations as compared to 70 per cent in Europe. This rules out
a recent common origin as postulated by the 'Aryan invasion'. Max Muller,
originator of the genetic Aryan race theory, later changed this view and said he
does not regard the 'Aryans' a race in the genetic sense but in the linguistic
sense. According to him, the Aryan invaders spoke a language from which Sanskrit
is derived. This language was conveniently named 'Indo-European'. Waradpande
bluntly states that a language called Indo-European is a figment of the European
imagination. Going into the details of the principles of linguistics and
examining—and ripping up—the guesswork of philologist after philologist, he
asserts that presupposition of a mythical pre-vedic language called
Indo-European is an outrage on logic. In fact in the 'linguistic' part of his
thesis Waradpande brings to bear the full weight of his erudition. He quotes as
many as 250 Richas from the Rigveda, examines the various meanings given to them
by commentators from Sayana to Tilak, and delves into a detailed examination of
the frequent assertion that the Rigveda contains abundant references to the
Aryan-non-Aryan conflict.
At the end of
it he says even if the Dasas, Dasyus and Panis, mentioned in the Rigveda as
enemies of the 'Vedics' are regarded as human beings, the Aryan Invasion theory
receives no support, because it is quite justifiable to hold that they were
non-Indian enemies of the Indian Vedics and the Vedics made expeditions outside
India from time to time to make war on them. However, he says, he does not
advocate this view because he finds unmistakable descriptions in the Rigveda to
show that the Dasas, Dasyus and Panis were superhuman evil powers—that is,
destructive elemental forces—and the battles with them were waged by the gods,
not by the Vedics, though on their invocations. Here it must be noted that while
Waradpande does not dismiss the Dashrajnya war as a comptere metaphor, as Tilak
does, he does propound that it was a combat, at least partly, between natural
forces, either beneficial or malignant for man. While this interpretation marks
a distinct divergence from that of scholars like Talageri, who treat it as a
temporal event, and is hence open to debate, it reinforces the central thesis
that there was no Aryan invasion of Vedic India.
The amount of
research that has gone into this book is impressive, but still more impressive
is the author's meticulous—almost clinical—altitude to it. This is in
evidence in the care he takes to equip himself with first hand knowledge of some
astronomical event or archaeological find that he might use to corroborate his
thesis. And even with his insight into the processes of language formation on
the one hand and his erudition in the Sanskrit language on the other, he does
not lose sight of the fact that philology is a far from exact science.
Compounding this inherent inexactitude is the other fact that as the world's
ancient most hymnal literature the Rigveda is almost by definition obscure, in
which every other hymn is open to a variety of interpretations. That the author
does not get lost in the melange of meanings is an index to his intellectual
balance. All in all, this book is a must for students of the Aryan invasion
theory—and especially for its brainwashed advocates. It would help disabuse
their minds of a dear delusion. The Mythical
Aryans and their Invasion, by N.R. Waradpande;
published by Indramohan Sharma, Books & Books, 903, Kirti Shikhar, 11,
Janakpuri District Centre, New Delhi-110 058, on behalf of Shri Babasehab Apte
Smarak Samiti; Price Rs. 450, pages 215.
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