Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT)- Discredited

Gaurang Vaishnav

Namaste. In the 2020 Fall semester, I took an online course- Reconstructing Hindu History- The Commissions with the Hindu University of America. I had to write two papers. I want to share with you my midterm paper on Aryan Invasion Theory. We all know and talk about the hoax of the Aryan Invasion but many times we do not have time or occasion to study it. The course, taught by Dr. Raj Vedam was exceedingly interesting and complex. This paper just scratches the surface but it should be useful in creating more interest in the subject. I owe a debt of gratitude to Prof. vedam for opening doors to a vast field of knowledge with his painstaking research, lucid style of presentation and immense patience answering all our questions, well past the scheduled end of every class.

Dhnayavaad.

Gaurang G. Vaishnav

Part 1 of 4

• Abstract: Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) or Migration Theory (MT) has been around for a few centuries. Motivated people with their own agenda have a stranglehold on this false narrative and they do not allow alternative proofs and theories to be considered seriously. Here we briefly examine the alternative theories that turn AIT on its head.

• Keywords: Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), Dravidian, Christian Missionaries

• Introduction – We will see the reasons for the propagation of Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT). We will also see what unbiased researchers have to say about the problems with AIT.

I have depended on the works of Michel Danino, David Frawley, Koenraad Elst, Bansi Pandit, Stephen Knapp and the Hindu Wisdom portal. I have read prior works of all these authors except that of Stephen Knapp. My impression is that while they have a deep love for Hinduism and Bharat, they are not biased toward them in their presentations. They look at the AIT from a researcher’s eyes, one who is seeking truth. They are also fighting a well-entrenched group of researchers who have formed a closed group determined to continue to propagate AIT.

• I intend to present; How Aryan Invasion Theory came about; What the proponents of AIT say; Literature survey; Bias and unwillingness to change opinion in face of new discoveries; Political implications.

Main section – Western archeologists, anthropologists, philologists and historians have postulated the Theory of Aryan Invasion (AIT) and nurtured it with circular arguments. Perhaps, Max Muller is the main culprit. Many of these scholars were Christian Missionaries and their reasoning was influenced by the Christian concept of the beginning of life on earth. Since it was generally believed that the world was created around 4000 BCE, they outright rejected anything that was supposed to have a beginning before 4000 BCE. Max Muller arbitrarily assumed the time interval of development of each Veda at 200 years. Knowing that Buddha lived around 500 BCE and that the Vedas were composed prior to Buddha, Max Muller calculated the date of the arrival of Aryans in India as 500 BCE + 200 years (per time interval) x 5 (time intervals) = 1500 BCE Thus, Vedic astrology that pointed to thousands of years before 4000 BCE was discarded as myth.

The Vedas speak of wars between forces of light and forces of the dark. We know that to be allegorical, pointing to the war between the virtues and evil but these “scholars” took its literal meaning and came up with the theory of Aryans from outside attacking and banishing the Dravidians to the south. However, Current archaeological data have revealed that the Indus Valley culture was not destroyed by any outside invasion, but by natural causes, such as seismic events and floods.¹

PART 2 of 4

AIT also talks about Aryan hoards coming on horse and chariots. Since Rig Veda mentions horse and chariot, and AIT assumes that there were no horses in India at that time, AIT tells us that the Aryans brought Veda from outside or wrote Vedas after they settled in Bharat.

David Frawley says that Early investigators based the non-Vedic claim for the Indus Valley culture on the absence of horses and chariots at the sites, such as are prominently mentioned in the Vedas. However, horses have been found, as well as wheeled toys that suggest the use of carts And chariots much as in the Vedas… There is nothing in the Vedas making the horse or the chariot a special possession of the Vedic people. They are rather part of the general culture of the region. We should also note that the chariots are not the vehicles of the nomadic people, nor do they function well in mountain or desert terrain from which the so-called Aryan invasion occurred.²

Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, in his book, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization categorically states that the decline of this ancient civilization was due to natural causes and not because of destruction by invading nomads. He makes a clear rejection of the Aryan invasion theory, which the distinguished British anthropologist, Edmund Leach,(1910-1981) has termed a theory born out of European racism.³

J. F. Jarrige and R. H. Meadow in the August, 1980 issue of Scientific American called “The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley” mention that recent excavations at Mehrgarh (Pakistan) show that the antecedents of the Indus Valley culture go back earlier than 6,000 B. C. in India. An outside influence did not affect its development. Astronomical references established in the Vedas do indeed concur with the date of Mehrgarh. Therefore, sites such as Mehrgarh reflect the earlier Vedic age of India. Thus, we have a theory of an Aryan invasion which is not remembered by the people of the area that was supposed to have been conquered by the Aryans.⁴

The AIT was turned into a political tool in order to question the Indian identity of the Indians, and thereby weaken the claims of Indians to own their own country. This political use of the AIT continues till today, especially at the hands of what Hindu nationalists call “the anti-nationalist forces.” Christian “liberation theologians,’ Islamic missionaries, assorted separatists and like minded anti-Hindu or anti-India activists are still highlighting the AIT in order to:
(1) Mobilize the lower caste people against the upper caste people
(2) Mobilize Dravidian-speakers against speakers of Indo European (IE) languages, esp. through the Dravidian Separatist movement started by the Britishers in 1916.
(3) Mobilize the tribals who have been given the new name “aboriginals” (ādivāsi) as part of this strategy against the non-tribals, who are to be treated on a par with the European invaders of America and Australia.
(4) Mobilize Indian politicians towards delegitimizing Sanskrit that “foreign language brought by the Aryan invaders” as India’s culture language and as a school subject in order to further dehinduize India and weaken her cultural unity.
(5) Mobilize the world opinion against the “racist Aryans”, meaning the Hindus, since they are the “Aryan invaders wo imposed the caste system as a kind of Apartheid to preserve the racial purity and dominance”, never mind the fact that the association of “Aryan” with “race” is a strictly European invention unknown to Hindu tradition.⁵

Professor, Dr. Raj Vedam

PART 3 of 4

“It is important to examine the social and political implications of the Aryan invasion idea:

First, it served to divide India into a northern Aryan and southern Dravidian culture which were made hostile to each other. This kept the Hindus divided and is still a source of social tension. Second, it gave the British an excuse in their conquest of India. They could claim to be doing only what the Aryan ancestors of the Hindus had previously done millennia ago. Third, it served to make Vedic culture later than and possibly derived from Middle Eastern cultures. With the proximity and relationship of the latter with the Bible and Christianity, this kept the Hindu religion as a sidelight to the development of religion and civilization to the West.

Fourth, it allowed the sciences of India to be given a Greek basis, as any Vedic basis was largely disqualified by the primitive nature of the Vedic culture.

This discredited not only the ‘Vedas’ but the genealogies of the ‘Puranas’ and their long list of the kings before the Buddha or Krishna were left without any historical basis.

The ‘Mahabharata’, instead of a civil war in which all the main kings of India participated as it is described, became a local skirmish among petty princes that was later exaggerated by poets. In short, it discredited the most of the Hindu tradition and almost all its ancient literature. It turned its scriptures and sages into fantasies and exaggerations.

This served a social, political and economical purpose of domination, proving the superiority of Western culture and religion. It made the Hindus feel that their culture was not the great thing that their sages and ancestors had said it was. It made Hindus feel ashamed of their culture – that its basis was neither historical nor scientific. It made them feel that the main line of civilization was developed first in the Middle East and then in Europe and that the culture of India was peripheral and secondary to the real development of world culture.

Such a view is not good scholarship or archeology but merely cultural imperialism. The Western Vedic scholars did in the intellectual sphere what the British army did in the political realm – discredit, divide and conquer the Hindus. In short, the compelling reasons for the Aryan invasion theory were neither literary nor archeological but political and religious – that is to say, not scholarship but prejudice.”⁶

Michel Danino has written extensively highlighting how AIT is prejudiced and not tenable in view of all available evidence.

“The discovery of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa set off a virtual comedy of errors. At first, archeologists and historians who had accepted the invasion theory concluded that this civilization was “pre-Aryan” and therefore pre-Vedic, since it was clearly more ancient than the supposed arrival of the Aryans in India about 1500 BCE. To make it fit in with the invasion paradigm, they also assumed that its creators must have been Dravidians; then they declared that a few skeletons found at Mohenjo-Daro provided evidence of slaughters committed by the advancing Aryans- “Indra stands accused”, declared the British archeologist Mortimer Wheeler, Indra being , of course, the chief of the “Aryan” gods.

Thus, was born one more myth, that of a blood-socked end to the Dravido-Harappan civilization at the hands of the fierce Aryans! But it was shabby archeology: the U.S. archeologist G. F. Dales proved in 1964 that the owners of the said skeletons had lived at different periods; moreover, neither weapons nor any signs of war were found at the supposed sites of the “mythical massacre”, as he called it: “Despite the extensive excavations at the largest Harappan sites there is not a single bit of evidence that can be brought forth as unconditional proof of an armed conquest and the destruction on the supposed scale of the Aryan invasion.”⁷

PART 4 of 4

Conclusions:
• As one reads more and more research work of scholars who have questioned the AIT, it becomes clear that the purveyors of AIT are scholars who have an ulterior motive which has religious, political and cultural overtones as well.

A strong lobby of homegrown researchers has to be created to take on the vested interests. Exposing the mischief makers, especially of the Leftist variety is important. Government of the day has to be pressurized to evaluate sitting members of ICHR and weed out the biased “researchers.”

Here is an example of the extent of the reach of the AIT proponents. When I looked up Wikipedia for Michel Danino, this is what I found:

Peter Heehs noted one of his another works:- Sri Aurobindo and Indian Civilization, to lack in linguistic knowledge which was made up by attacks on colonial orientalists and half-informed invocations of nationalist orientalists.[6] Heehs also criticized Danino’s other works for appropriating Sri Aurobindo in his campaign against the Indo-Aryan migrations and for distorting Aurobindo’s speculative views as assertions.[6] Danino selectively cherry-picked quotes from his draft-manuscripts and ignored his published works, which were far nuanced.[6] Others have accused Danino of pursuing a sectarian Hindutva oriented scholarship based on historical negationism.[7][8][9]

More work needs to be done to educate people of Bharat, especially students to the ugly reality of AIT. The government should be pressurized to correct the textbooks by giving equal space to theories that question AIT. More research should be encouraged to establish Outward immigration theory and also counter every false narrative wherever it occurs. This will need a number of astute volunteers with deep sense and study of history. They would act as the front for the researchers who cannot or should not indulge in “street fight” for the fear of being labeled Hindutva propagandist.

There are other aspects that discredit AIT such as Genetics and Astronomy which I have not touched upon here due to space limitation of the term paper.

My final term paper was on How can Hindus succeed in correcting Aryan Invasion Theory and other misrepresented aspects of Hindu History? I will post it here soon.

References:

1. The Hindu Mind: Fundamentals of Hindu Religion and Philosophy for All Ages – By Bansi Pandit B & V Enterprises 1996. page 312-315).

2. God, Sages and Kings Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization by David Frawley 1991p. 252

3. Hindu Wisdom.info/aryan_invasion_theory

4. Proof of Vedic Culture’s Global Existence – By Stephen Knapp p. 42

5. Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate by Koenraad Elst Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 1999 p.19-22

6. http://www.hinduwisdom.info/aryan_invasion_theory9.htm Hollow Earth Theory and ther Aryan Invasion by Dean De Lucia/Dharmapada Dasa

7. The Invasion That Never Was- By Michel Danino, Vivekananda Kendra Prakasan Trust, Chennai, Second Edition 2011 p. 80

The Hindu University of America has many interesting courses. I urge you to check them out at <https://www.hua.edu/academics/programs/> and take advantage of this opportunity to equip yourself with better tools to protect, preserve and propagate Hindu Dharma.