Aryans - Im a little confused.

Look, im confused, its never made straight. Was hinduism or sanatan dharma a religion brought by aryans (who were european right?) Or was hinduism already in India? Please tell me!

penguino said:

Look, im confused, its never made straight. Was hinduism or sanatan dharma a religion brought by aryans (who were european right?) Or was hinduism already in India? Please tell me!

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Some aspects of Hinduism were introduced by an Indo-European people known in India as the Aryans. Other aspects of Hinduism were present when the Aryans arrived in India. So Hinduism is a mix of influences. For instance, it seems Shiva was already present in India when the Aryans arrived.

Thanks Sunstone, now i know.

Well, there's some debate as to whether or not these nomadic people came to India, the theory that has gained the most acceptance at the moment, is that several groups of nomadic people from Iran, Afghanistan or Russia had traveled to India, and mixed their ideas and beliefs with the local indigenous population of India. Personally, I'm rather unsure of this myself, but I think it has enough evidence backing it up, that it can be taught in schools.

I'd prefer to believe that they adapted to India.

penguino said:

I'd prefer to believe that they adapted to India.

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That's actually the most probable. You don't see very much Indian culture in the pre-Islamic Middle East.

The Indo-Europeans (informally known as Aryans) arrived out of Africa into the infertile desert of Central Asia and divide into two groups, one of which went East to India, while the other went West to Persia and as far as Germany (which is how Hitler usurped the term into White supremacy, while the Aryans were much more likely to look like him, rather than blond-hair blue-eyed).

To say that Aryans were Iranian and what not is false. There existed no such label then. It was strictly Indo-European.

The Vedic Gods of Indra, Agni, Varuna (and many others) are not worshiped today having been replaced by Vishnu and Shiva. Vishnu is mentioned in the Vedas, but relegated to a spot below Indra in the heirarchy. Shiva existed as well, and as Sunstone pointed out, existed in some form in the Indus Valley civilization.

There is no way to know what the popular religion was like during the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. It may have been the case that Vishnu and Shiva were popular deities before the arrival of Aryans and eventually (as today) surpassed the "foreign" deities of Indra and Agni, though Agni does play a large role in Hindu belief today.

I think the elemntal gods might have been brought bu the aryans.

penguino said:

I think the elemntal gods might have been brought bu the aryans.

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Yes - that is the most probable conclusion with what evidence is available to us right now.

Friend Don Penguinoini ,

Aryans - Im a little confused.
Look, im confused, its never made straight. Was hinduism or sanatan dharma a religion brought by aryans (who were european right?) Or was hinduism already in India? Please tell me!

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When the Don does not know, obviously no one knows either?
That is SUCHNESS - It is the way it is!
What is known is that we are all beings and of human kind and there was a culture in the region [known as India, now] which was there way of life and since life itself is without begining or end so are its ways and so it was labeled as SANATANA DHARMA.
It was those Vedic times that researchers of the mind or meditators who wrote down whatever the understood through meditation about different aspects of life and various ways / paths of realising the same truth BUT they never put their personal names as its discoverer or never patented it because what they got was from existence iotself and giving back to existence itself. Like other beings e.g. a tree - it takes water, sunlight and gives back flowers, fruits, leaves, bark, wood etc.never keeps anything for itself and in this process it grows. Similarly humans beings keep taking and giving and in the process Grows.
Hinduism was coined only since Alexader inmvaded India mis pronoucing Sindhu as hindu in greek.
Sanatana Dharma covers various ways which were later taken up seperately by the Jains and Buddha besides the Sikhs etc. Sanatana encompasses all beings and their way of life.
Whatever be its roots it cannot be chained with just some words like Hindism or a religion etc.
Have a good day.
Love & rgds

Don Penguinoini said:

Look, im confused, its never made straight. Was hinduism or sanatan dharma a religion brought by aryans (who were european right?) Or was hinduism already in India? Please tell me!

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I'm not sure but something just came to mind. I heard about twelve Shiva Lingams which Lord Shiva manifested himself and they are all in India, if I remember correctly. Considering this, perhaps certain aspects of Hinduism were already present in India.

I know, i have a murti at home, with them. Baar Jyorti Ling.

Actually the aryan invasion theory is just that... a theory. Its a widely debated topic in India. It was first put forward by some prominent British anthropolgists after observing peoples in various parts of India. They found that North had more lighter traits while as you went further down South, the traits in people got darker. There is no clear cut evidence that the whole Aryan invasion ever happened. Genetic testing has shown very little difference between the peoples of India, there certainly is no Aryan race and a indegenious Dravidian race..according to genetic testing.

We don't even have all the Vedas today, much of them have been lost, so we can't use it as evidence to prove what form of God was worshipped at what period etc. The actual word Aryan is derived from the Sanskrit word Arya, meaning a noble person, has nothing to do with race.

Don, why should you be confused? Vedas mention many Gods, Varuna, Indra, Surya, Agni, Maruts, Vasus, Ashwins. How come we are worshiping Rama, Krishna, Durga, and Shiva, Ganesha, Kartikeya. Surely, these belong to different groups of people who later merged into one, the Aryans and the Dravidians. The aboriginal Gods were accepted as Ganas of Shiva, and the aboriginals Goddesses were merged into Durga.

Of course, there are various theories, Aryan Invasion, Aryan Migration, or Aryans being indegenous. None of the theories have been conclusively proved. Pariah, it is premature to say that the ascetic in Indus Valley civilization is Shiva because the script has not been deciphered. Shiva did not exist in the Vedas. The Vedic Rudra (the howler was a storm God, he was fair, no serpents around his neck, no ash, he held a bow and not trishula, etc.) is a completely different God and father of Maruts. The pre-Aryan hinduism was much like present day hinduism. The Vedic Gods and practices (yajnas) were relegated to the background and bhakti reigns supreme. Agni is just a carrier of our libations to the Gods, do you have any temple dedicated to Agni in India?

Zenzero, it is not only what the Vedic scholars wrote. The local legends form the basis of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Ramesh, no trace in genetic composition may also mean that Aryans came very early not just in 1,500 BC. That is why Indians do not show much differentiation. But I would not claim anything, it is all a matter of further research.

Friend Aupmanyav,
The proof that you are looking for has so far been inconclusive and in our journey to be enlightened that part of hiostory is immaterial.
Reagrds to the mention of Vedic scholars I meant where those researchers who looked inwards for all solutions and never copyrighted whatever the found and left it for humanity to benefit. If they had copyrighted then Bill Gates would be puny in comparision. However, keeping to the point; The Vedas are a compliation of various scholars [meditators] who contributed under different subjects.
Even the Ramayan, Mahabharata the generation of scholars remains; and now too we are their inheritors.
Regards your enquiry on the different *gods* - please understand that since everything is god and to be alawys in meditation the researchers found it best to name everything as different gods, so that we humans do not get carried away easily by our minds and are reminded of existence as god in everything we see around us and keep praying/ meditating / be aleart / watch the mind.
They were symbolic. Not to be taken literally and get confused.
Please remember that HUMANS on earth have evolved and so makes no difference whether we are Aryans / Dravidians / etc. Mind divides and that mind has to be constantly watched / monitored.
ALl creation is ONE including ourselves.
Love & rgds

Zenzero, much obliged for your observations. However, that brings us to another interesting question. Is there really a creation? Or what we take as creation is only a the product of our faulty senses? The truth is the omnipresence of Brahman. We see it as a game played before our eyes. Regards.

This is a highly controversial subject, in fact those not familiar with the subject, will have no idea of the enormity of how controversial this is. It caused a huge stir when it was originally put forward by Max Muller and other European scholars, and modern Indologists have debunked the Aryan Invasion theory and in Indian nationalist politics the subject has become highly volatile and emotionalised.

I just wanted to preface my post with this.

Today, many indologists and especially Indian indologists dismiss Aryan Invasion theory(AIT) as racist and political propoganda by European scholars and Christian missionaries. That is because the theory has no evidence to support it(there are no records of any migrations) and its entire conception is based on invalid reasoning. Moreover, the recent evidence seems to suggest that there was no Aryan race and the the Rig Veda is indigenous to India based on archeological evidence, textual evidence and astronomical dating of the Vedas.

The word Arya itself is a Sanskrit word which means noble and there is no usage of this word in Vedic literature that refers to a race. The concept of an Aryan and Dravidian race was propounded by Max Muller based on physiological features of North Indians and South Indians. He noted that that the people in the south had darker skin and the people in the north had lighter skin and could only explain this by positing a racial dichotomy. This is fallacious by modern scientific standards and certainly modern genetic evidence does not show significant racial differences between North and South Indians. The difference in skin tone could be explained by taking into account others factors such as differences in climate.

The second evidence provided for AIT was a discovery by Sir Monier William Jones that Sanskrit belonged to the family of Indo-European languages, because the similarities were so remarkable, it would be impossible for it to be a coincidence. It was thus posited that all Indo-European languages belonged to Proto-Indo European(PIE) which was a lost language and has been reconstructed using linguistic science.
Thus strong evidence emerged that migrations had taken place between Indo-Europe, otherwise it is impossible to explain how Indo-Europe could have a common language family.

Then based on linguistics science to find the linguistic cente of gravity, they determined that the Aryans must have originated in Central Asia, in the mountains around Russia. They were a nomadic race that migrated around Indo-Europe and eventually arrived in India. This coupled with Max Mullers findings lead to the theory that a white-skinned Aryan race that spoke Vedic Sanskrit had invaded the dark-skinned Dravidian race and pushed them down South India. This also explained the sudden demise of the Indus Valley Civilisation(supposedly Dravidian)

Then Max Muller tried to produce evidence for his theory by trying to look for the mention of Aryan invasions in the Rig Veda. However, the translations rendered by Indian Pundits showed no such mentions. Their translations based on Sanskrit grammar and etymology, suggested a highly sophisticated people discussing metaphysics, monotheism and ethics which was also consistent with the Indian schools of Philosophy and Vedanta. This did not at all support Mullers theory of a nomadic and primitive people which spread through Indo-Europe through war using iron weapons and worshipped natural gods. So Muller and other European scholars accused the Indian Sanskrit Grammarians and Pundits of fabrication. They alleged that their grammatical and linguistic sciences were useless, and that they had more advanced methods of using comparative linguistics to translate the Vedas. Thus, declaring this, they rendered their own translations of the Vedas using their supposedly superior methods, with the aid of a commentary by a 10th century Indian commentator Sayana.

Muller did not remain loyal to Sayana's commentary either, and where he disagreed with a translation of a word, he would use his own. A problem was that Sayana provided an appendix of up to 30 different meanings for some words, so how could you know what a word actually meant? Some words were archaic, and Indian Pundits used the 'Nirukta' which was a supplemantary Indian text explaining the etymology of archaic words used in the Vedas, but Muller rejected it.

Somehow, using a hodge-podge of methods, Muller rendered a translation of the Rig Veda. It bared absolutely no resemblance to the translations the Indian Pundits had based on their Sanskrit Grammar and linguistic sciences. Mullers translation was more consistent with his theory of a nomadic and primitive people that worshiped nature gods and spread through war. On the other hand, the Indian translation suggested a highly philosophical people with scientific temper, that pondered over matters like the nature of reality, had elaborate cosmological and theological theories on monotheism and monoism and discussed a highly refined ethics.

Then after finishing his translation, Max Muller started to draw interpetations from them. Where it would read "Indra destroy the darkness and let light triumpth" Muller would interpret that the Aryans were racist who hated black skin(Dravidians) Similarily, where the Vedas would read "The Maruts are golden and shining and they aid Indra in dispelling the darkness" he would interpret that the Maruts are fair-skinned and were actual troops of a war-lord called Indra that ransacked the Dravidian cities.

In his time he was not the only one that came up with these interpretations. In fact many European scholars had a go at interpreting - some came up with themes of incest in the Vedas, some came up with homosexuality, and some with human sacrifice(the famous Purush Sukta in the Vedas describing how the supreme being fashioned the universe out of himself)

Today by modern scientific and academic standards the kind of scholarship Max Muller and other European scholars did would be clearly considered invalid. It is based on circular reasoning at best, and at worst, it is highly racist.

The nail in the coffin of Muller's scholarship was to date the 'Aryan invasion' around 1500 BCE using a biblical chronology where the world is created in 4004 BCE and the great flood happens sometime later.

In summary: AIT is a dead theory. There is no evidence of an Aryan race, Aryan invasions or Aryan migrations.

This is a cut and paste job from the BBC. I think it shows the problems of the AIT.


The case against the Aryan invasion theory

The Aryan invasion theory was based on archaeological, linguistic and ethnological evidence.
Later research, it is argued, has either discredited this evidence, or provided new evidence that combined with the earlier evidence makes other explanations more likely.
Some historians of the area no longer believe that such invasions had such great influence on Indian history. It's now generally accepted that Indian history shows a continuity of progress from the earliest times to today.
The changes brought to India by other cultures are not denied by modern historians, but they are no longer thought to be a major ingredient in the development of Hinduism.
Dangers of the theory

Opponents of the Aryan invasion theory claim that it denies the Indian origin of India's predominant culture, and gives the credit for Indian culture to invaders from elsewhere.
They say that it even teaches that some of the most revered books of Hindu scripture are not actually Indian, and it devalues India's culture by portraying it as less ancient than it actually is.
The theory was not just wrong, some say, but included unacceptably racist ideas:

• it suggested that Indian culture was not a culture in its own right, but a synthesis of elements from other cultures
• it implied that Hinduism was not an authentically Indian religion but the result of cultural imperialism
• it suggested that Indian culture was static, and only changed under outside influences
• it suggested that the dark-skinned Dravidian people of the South of India had got their faith from light-skinned Aryan invaders
• it implied that indigenous people were incapable of creatively developing their faith
• it suggested that indigenous peoples could only acquire new religious and cultural ideas from other races, by invasion or other processes
• it accepted that race was a biologically based concept (rather than, at least in part, a social construct) that provided a sensible way of ranking people in a hierarchy, which provided a partial basis for the caste system
• it provided a basis for racism in the Imperial context by suggesting that the peoples of Northern India were descended from invaders from Europe and so racially closer to the British Raj
• it gave a historical precedent to justify the role and status of the British Raj, who could argue that they were transforming India for the better in the same way that the Aryans had done thousands of years earlier
• it downgraded the intellectual status of India and its people by giving a falsely late date to elements of Indian science and culture

Friend Aupamanyav,
You state:
Zenzero, much obliged for your observations. However, that brings us to another interesting question. Is there really a creation? Or what we take as creation is only a the product of our faulty senses? The truth is the omnipresence of Brahman. We see it as a game played before our eyes. Regards.

You are absolutely right.
It is just a game played which is repeated in various ways, in layers, inside out, outside in and whatever ways one ever knows of it is simply limitless in its ways and similarly are the ways of understanding and merging back to that.
Its like trying to open a knot. One has to do so by reversing the process used in tying it.
If it has taken 10 steps to tie it from 1 to 10 we have to reverse the process from 10 to 1 to open the knot.
Love & rgds

Arya is Sanskrit and Sanskrit is not Indian. The language from which arose is Proto-Indo European. PIE extends from Europe to Central Asia. That is what lingusitics, archeology, history says. If someone refuses to accept it, it does not change anything. Such persons are called chauvinistic.

Zenzero, there is no creation, Brahman does not need to create anything. 'Samsara' is an out right illusion. It is 'vyavaharika satya', it is not a 'paramarthika satya'. Something which our mind has made up on what exists, and what exists is completely different from what it seems to be. You, me, Seyorni, this swami, that swami, these are all egos. ' Eko Brahma, Dwiteeyo Nasti'. See the same Brahman in yourself, me, Seyorni, this swami, that swami. Only the ignorant say otherwise.

Arya is Sanskrit and Sanskrit is not Indian. The language from which arose is Proto-Indo European. PIE extends from Europe to Central Asia. That is what lingusitics, archeology, history says. If someone refuses to accept it, it does not change anything. Such persons are called chauvinistic.

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There are linguistics, archaeologists and historians saying the opposite I think the evidence favours that Sanskrit is an Indian language and the 'Arya' simply refers to a respected class of people in India.