Introduction
The term "Aryan" finds its roots in the Vedic concept of "Arya," which signifies nobility, honor, and the fulfillment of one's duties. In the Sanskrit language, "Arya Lok" refers to the Aryan people. The essence of being Aryan was grounded in the recognition of virtues and the passage of specific rites. An Aryan was understood as an individual who dutifully and unwaveringly followed their "Dharm," or divine duty. This concept of Arya spread westward as Aryan peoples migrated out of India, and even influenced the name of the country Iran. In Europe, vestiges of the term can be observed in words such as "Aristocrat" and "Aristocracy," which literally mean "Aryan ruler" and "Rule of the Aryans," respectively. The Greek terms "Aristo," meaning "Aryan," and "Kratos," meaning "rule" or "power," carry a similar connotation. Furthermore, the German word for honor, "Ehre," can be traced back to the Sanskrit "Arya," as seen in its evolution from Middle High German to Old High German and Proto-West Germanic.
The understanding of "Aryan" as signifying the best also became ingrained in the collective consciousness, with the precise cultural qualifications of "bestness" rooted in theological teachings that later became dominated by Christianity. As the Christian faith spread among rulers, nobles, and political leaders across various domains, a theological convergence between "Aryanness" and what it meant to be "Christ-like" began to emerge. It is crucial to comprehend this term in an ontological, cosmological, and mythological sense. According to this perspective, God created humankind in the divine image, and individuals become Aryan by adhering to and imitating the divine. The consequences of embracing an "Aryan way of being" are then manifested through a flourishing high culture, harmonious civilization, transcendental and self-sacrificing social sentiments, and an overarching sense of fulfillment and devotion to a higher ideal.
Who Were The “Aryan” Peoples?
In a more modern scientific sense, there exists not a singular “Aryan people” but a plurality of “Aryan peoples”, all anthropologically diverse in their manifestations of a common perennial universal spirit. A harmonious symbiosis of temporal diversity through transcendental unity. National Socialist German Indologist Prof. Dr. Walther Wüst stated the following:
“What do we mean by Aryans in the scientific sense at all? The Aryans include the Nordic peoples who reside in Europe and speak an Indo-European language, the Indo-Aryans who reside in India and the Iranians sitting to the west of it.
These Aryans (Indian and Iranian) have a great decisive advantage for us. They possess, and this is a basic truth that cannot be denied, the oldest Indo-European literature. They already had it at a time when people didn't even know about German literature, runes and similar things. At the end of the first, and in the second, and already in the third millennium BC, these Indo-Aryans and Iranians called what we now call literature their own. Works that deal with reality. We immediately see how important it is that we still have this literature. There are the Vedas and other wisdom and the promises of Zaratustra, an Iranian worldly sage.
Finally, the oldest documents of Indo-European rulers from the 6th and subsequent centuries have also been preserved. While the Iranian monuments clearly show a Semitic influence, this does not apply to the oldest literature."
— Prof. Dr. Walther Wüst of the Ahnenerbe in June 1936 in the Auditorium Maximum of the University of Munich
Nazi Studies on The “Aryan” Peoples
In the late nineteenth century, Germany became a hotbed of industrial and intellectual activity. Her rapid innovations in the areas of culture, industry, technology, and business rapidly made her a dangerous competitor to the great empires of Britain and France. The young upstart nation quickly came under the eye of the greater empires that eventually sought to wipe Germany out as a competitor... This is the primary reason the First World War was fought, with the expectation that Germany would stay beaten and never rise again. While the treaty of Versailles did cripple Germany both economically and socially, certain intellectual interests continued to progress even in the Weimar Republic.
Once the NSDAP came to power and established the Third Reich, these interests began to prosper like never before. One such area of scientific interest was in cultural and linguistic anthropology and archaeology. Since the foundation of the Kaiser Reich in 1871, German intellectuals have had a great interest in studying the origins of the Germanic tribes that have inhabited Europe.
Of all the so-called “barbarians” the Romans did battle over the centuries, none have made a more lasting impact on the history of Europe as the Germanic peoples have. They engaged in conflict against the empire for centuries before finally conquering its western half in 476 AD, arguably ending the era of antiquity and ushering in the Middle Ages. The question of “where did we come from?” quickly became the central foundation of German cultural and linguistic anthropology and archaeology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the prevailing theory among German intellectuals at the time was radically different from the contemporary theory that permeates 21st century academia today. But before one asks the question of where the ancient Germanic peoples originally came from, one must first know who they are.
The Germanic peoples were a collection of Iron Age tribes that lived in the rugged forests west and north of the Rhine and Danube rivers during the mid to late antiquity. They were best known for their long and complicated relationship with the Roman Empire, with whom they traded, integrated with, and most importantly made war against. Broadly speaking, they are ancestrally related to many peoples in Europe today, including the Dutch, Swiss, Austrian, Flemish, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and of course, the modern Germans, all of whom are speakers of modern languages that evolved out of ancient Germanic tribal dialects. In 98 AD, the historian Tacitus completed a book titled “De Origine et situ Germanorum”, more commonly known as “Germania”. This was a Roman survey of the history and culture of their Germanic foes. This arguably provides the most valuable window into Germanic culture. Tacitus states:
“Undivided Germany is separated from the Gauls, Rhaetians, and Pannonians by the River Rhine and Danube, from the Sarmatians and Dacians by mutual fear of mountains, and the rest of it is surrounded by ocean. As for the Germans themselves, I suppose they are native to the area... Who would have left Asia or Africa or Italy to look for Germany? With its wild scenery and harsh climate, it is pleasant neither to live in nor look upon unless it is one's home.”
— Tacitus, Germania
As condescending as this account is, Tacitus was not entirely incorrect. By this time, the various Germanic tribes had been living in their traditional territories for at least a millennia or two, however, their true origins are a little more complex than their chronicler suggests and the key to it lies in linguistics. The Germanic languages are part of the Indo-Germanic family and therefore share a common ancestor with almost all the other languages of Europe, western Asia, and northern India.
The Kurgan hypothesis is the leading theory in the 21st century. It presupposes the existence of a so-called “Proto-Indo-European” language that was spoken by a nomadic Europic people who inhabited the Pontic steppe. These so-called “Kurgan” people are also called “Yamnaya”.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, German intellectuals rejected this notion for the most part, choosing instead to stick to orthodox theories that are in line with various cultural, mythological, and religious texts of the past. It was believed that there was no hypothetical “Proto-Indo-European” language, but that all Indo-Germanic languages originated out of Sanskrit. The origins of the Germanic tribes were thus traced back to the Indo-Scythian nomads who traveled out of northwest India and Iran as described in Vedic period texts like the Mahabharata and Ramayana.
The Sanskrit family tree of Indo-Germanic languages thus gave birth to the rise of early versions of Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. Proto-Germanic languages and cultures were said to have emerged as a distinct branch of Indo-Germanic during the Bronze Age. It was contained mainly to the northern coast of modern-day Germany, the Jutland peninsula, and the southern tip of Sweden. In the late Iron Age, the Germanic tribes expanded from the Rhine to the Vistula rivers, bordering the Celtic people to the west and the Sarmatian horse lords to the east.
Early Germanic society was predominantly rural unlike their Indo-Scythian ancestors from the east. They mostly lived sedentary lives in small to midsize villages, and the economy of these villages revolved mainly around the rearing of goats, sheep, and cattle and the cultivation of grain. Ample lush wilderness meant that hunting and foraging played a significant role in their lifestyle as well. They were never a single nation but instead a collection of many independent tribes with similar but differing cultures and languages. Among these were larger confederations such as the Suebi, Marcomanni, and Alemanni.
The political map of ancient Germania was ever-shifting as independent factions splintered out of larger tribes, larger tribes swallowed up smaller tribes, and lonely, organized alliances came together and fell apart. As one can imagine, these factions were all highly martial in nature. Tacitus claimed that while kingship in Germania was determined by bloodline, it was the subordinate war leaders who were the real powers in their respective tribes. In turn, the war leaders only remained in power as long as they continued to deliver victories for their people and were promptly ousted if they showed cowardice or incompetence.
During the period of the Third Reich, German anthropology and archaeology was arguably at its peak. Germans sought to rediscover their glorious history and heritage partially in order to strengthen their unity as a people and partially to help eradicate the subversive thoughts and ideas of liberalism that had promoted de-culturalization against the national ideal of the Volksgemeinschaft (Folk-Community). German archaeologists ventured out trying to trace the historical prominence of the hooked cross. Through this process they discovered evidence of a multi-millennia Germanic high culture that could be traced spanning from its origins in South Asia to its centuries-old established home on the European continent. It is important to note that this idea was not something the Germans engineered during the Third Reich, but that these theories can be traced back to as early as the 19th and even 18th centuries. The book titled “The Indo-German Identification Reconciling South Asian Origins and European Destinies” aptly describes what the dominant thought was among German thinkers of the past.
In the early 19th century, German intellectuals such as Novalis, Schelling, and Schlegel were convinced that Germany’s cultural origins lay in ancient India, attempting to reconcile these origins with their desire to cure Europe of the plague of liberalism, which had set the continent on to a path of deculturalization. The philosophers Hegel, Schopenhauer, and later Nietzsche provided Indo-centric views of the role of India in world history that would be promptly eradicated within academic thought after the allied victory in WW2 in the 20th century. Reconstructing Hellenistic and humanist views of the ancient Brahmins and Goths, French enlightenment debates over the post-diluvian origins of the arts and sciences, and the endophilia and proto-nationalism of Herder, one can map out the development of an Indo-German ideal, an ideal far less focused on intellectual imperialism than many modern studies of the so-called “Aryan myth” and orientalism would have us believe. Intellectuals in the Third Reich understood that the Indo-German story was an important foundation in establishing a continuous identity, that would involve a reconciliation of origins and destinies of self and other, of individual and collective.
Though the hooked cross was used throughout Europe as both a Christian and a cultural symbol, it was in the early 1920s through Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP that the symbol was first adopted to represent a political movement seeking election. Beyond Europe, the symbol has existed in an even older form in what is commonly known as the Swastika. The symbol can be found in many ancient cultures on almost every continent in the world and the Germans believed that this was a sign that the Germanic peoples were co-heirs to a common heritage with many other cultures and peoples that descended from this ancient and ancestral origin.
During the Third Reich, it is estimated that up to 80% of Germany’s professional archaeologists and anthropologists were active members of the NSDAP. We can assume that the general consensus among the majority of Germany’s professional archaeologists and anthropologists were likely in line with Adolf Hitler’s thoughts and ideas. In Mein Kampf, Hitler states the following:
“The whole of civilization with its achievements in art, science, and technology is almost exclusively the work of the Aryans...”
— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
The Indo-German ideal was thus tied to a claim that Germanic heritage was rooted in Vedic thought, Vedic culture, and Vedic civilization. The Germans, therefore, did not look toward the Pontic steppe region for a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European origin but rather firmly believed in a Vedic Indo-Aryan origin out of the Indus Valley. Heinrich Himmler, SS Reichsführer and Reich’s Commissar for the strengthening of the German folk, was one of the closest top men to Adolf Hitler. In 1935, he established “Die Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe”, or in English, “The German Ancestral Heritage Research Association”. Hitler allowed Himmler great autonomy in conducting this important research as Hitler himself was too busy with the duties of active statesmanship and politics to contribute. This provided Himmler the ability to direct active archaeological and anthropological research missions without the need for Hitler’s approval. One of the projects of the Ahnenerbe was to trace the origins of the Germanic runes throughout ancient history. The hypothesis was that the Germanic rune script had descended from earlier Indo-Germanic languages. The project was led early on by a man called Herman Wirth, but in 1937, Heinrich Himmler restructured the Ahnenerbe association, relegating Wirth to honorary president and replacing him with Walther Wüst. Himmler was deeply fascinated by Indology and actively read the works of Schelling and Schopenhauer. It can also be confirmed that Himmler studied Sanskrit and is rumored to have mastered the language although there is no evidence for the latter. Himmler even went as far as to green-light three separate expeditions by German archeologists to Tibet where studies and measurements were conducted of the local customs, culture, people, and objects of interest.
A National Socialist anthropologist supposedly even claimed that Germans were the descendants of the same people that prince Siddhartha Gautama – better known to the world as the Buddha – in India ruled over. It was also claimed that the Vedic description of a group of people who left Aryavarta – homeland of the Aryans – right after the Mahabharata war and traveled north-westwards, had in fact eventually settled on the European continent. It was also claimed that the Germanic tribes were the descendants of those who migrated out of the Indus Valley after the great Mahabharata War over 5000 years ago. It is important to realize that this idea of an origin out of India is not unique to Germans alone. The claim of Vedic heritage out of India is also shared by Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe, Native American tribes in North and South America, as well as Polynesian peoples in Oceania.
It is important to understand what the Ahnenerbe association and her various projects were and what they were not. After the conclusion of WW2, many ridiculous claims of occultism, paganism, magic, and mysticism were levied against Heinrich Himmler and his interests. However, it must be made clear that the Ahnenerbe association and her various projects were purely for academic purposes for the explicit goal of strengthening the German people’s national identity and fostering a spirit of honor and reverence for their own heritage and history. The Ahnenerbe’s research and projects would have ushered in a renaissance of high culture and geopolitical strengthening of bonds that would have aided in the struggle against liberalism and philosophic nihilism. The following comes from an interview that was conducted with Gudrun Himmler Burwitz, daughter of Heinrich Himmler, in Munich in 1992:
“Interviewer’s question: What did you know about the Ahnenerbe?
Gudrun’s response: The Ahnenerbe was nothing but an archaeological research institute run by the SS. They went all over the world looking into the history of Europe’s ancestral tribes and looked for evidence of the paths that the tribes took coming into Europe… The Ahnenerbe studied all aspects and theories of creation, migration, and development. It studied the origin of races and traced the paths of the early Aryans who went on to form the 12 main root tribes of ancient Germania. They had compatriots all over the world in every nation; I met some from Scotland and America who were very interested in the work Dr. Jordan headed. There is nothing sinister about looking into the past to better prepare for the future.”
— Gudrun Himmler Burwitz, daughter of Heinrich Himmler, interview in Munich, Germany, 1992
The conclusion of the second world war completely changed the direction that anthropology and archaeology may have gone had the Germans won the war. Academia and all the sciences today are controlled by a specific variety of ideologues who promote certain ideas while suppressing others. The findings of the Ahnenerbe projects are nonetheless invaluable and should be revisited by the modern academic. It is rather unfortunate that the majority of voices today regarding the Indic origins of Germanic history can only be found in the east. Even the term Indo-Germanic is no longer used but has instead been replaced by the term Indo-European.
Since the end of the second world war, modern archeology, genetics and anthropology in the 21st century has put forward various alternative hypotheses which are meant to bury away the notion of an Aryan origin out of India. In short, it has come down to a matter of “Out of India” vs “Out of anywhere but India”. The “Out of anywhere but India” camp is mainly located in the west and to this day propagates what is called the “Aryan Migration Theory” (AMT) which is also sometimes called the “Aryan Migration Theory” (AIT). In the West, the Out of India Theory (OIT) is largely mocked, belittled and ignored to the point where some are not even aware of its existence as an alternative to the Aryan Migration Theory. Meanwhile in India, both views find representation and the controversy rages mainly with largely political connotations. Supporters of the Out of India Theory usually attempt to show a unified civilizational continuity among all modern Indians while the Aryan Invasion Theory is usually promoted by caste and class conflict oriented sectarians who seek to divide themselves against self-perceived political outgroups. Of course, the subject of history can not be divorced from politics and so it is understandable that these discussions must inevitably take on such a heated and emotional character. Nevertheless, an investigation into these theories reveal some rather interesting things that are worth further exploration.
What Are The Aryan Migration Theory and Out of India Theory?
For anyone unacquainted with this controversy, scholars for the past 200 years have been trying to discover the origins of Proto-Indo-European (or PIE), which is the reconstructed proto-language that all modern Indo-European (or IE) languages are descended from. These include the Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages. There were also two other branches, namely Hittite and Tocharian, that became extinct. These are languages that are spoken in all the continents of the world by about 3.2 billion people, which is around 42% of the world’s population. Over time, two main theories about the location of the PIE homeland have gained prominence: the Kurgan Hypothesis and the Out of India Theory, or OIT.
The Kurgan Hypothesis states that a race of fair-skinned nomadic pastoralists spoke a PIE language from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to the west of the Urals in the 4th millennium BCE. Towards the end of the 4th millennium BCE, these steppe pastoralists domesticated the horse and invented wheeled chariots before migrating in separate waves to the rest of the Eurasian continent in the following order: 1. From the steppes to Anatolia, or modern-day Turkey, 2. From the steppes to southeastern Siberia (Afanasievo Culture), 3. From the steppes to the Caucasus and Balkans (Yamnaya Culture), 4. From the steppes to northern Europe (Corded Ware Culture), 5. From northern Europe to the British Isles (Bell Beaker Culture), 6. From the steppes to modern-day Russia and western Siberia (Fatyanova, Abashevo, and Sintashta Cultures), 7. From western Siberia to Central Asia (Andronovo Culture), 8. From Central Asia to eastern Anatolia (Mitanni Culture), 9. From Central Asia to northwestern India (Vedic Culture), 10. From the steppes to Greece, 11. And finally, from western Siberia to modern-day Iran (Iranian Culture), with these last three migrations taking place at around 1500 BCE. The 9th migration is the Aryan migration that the Aryan Migration Theory, or AMT, refers to. To put it briefly, it claims that in 1500 BCE, the Indo-Aryan languages, Vedic literature, and Hindu religion were brought into India by foreign steppe migrants. In other words, it claims that the entirety of Indian history, civilization, and culture was kickstarted by fair-skinned Europeans, which is simply absurd. Here’s a diagram to help visualize these migrations:
The OIT, on the other hand, states that the PIE language was spoken by the Vedic/Harappan people (they are interchangeable, i.e the Vedic civilization and Harappan civilization, which was the ancient civilization of India that existed from 3300 BCE to 1900 BCE, were the same) in northern India in the late 4th millennium BCE and earlier. During the 3rd millennium BCE, due to tribal conflicts, certain tribes of Vedic Aryans speaking different dialects of PIE migrated westwards into Anatolia, Central Asia, Siberia, Russia, Europe, and the British Isles, where the different dialects of the PIE language would eventually develop into the distinct IE languages (one dialect remained in India and eventually developed into the Indo-Aryan languages). Therefore, this hypothesis rejects any kind of Aryan migration into India and claims that the Indo-Aryan languages, Vedic literature, and Indic religions and philosophies are completely native to India and that all other Indo-European cultures and civilizations were created by Indians who migrated out of India. Here’s a diagram to help visualize these migrations:
The Aryan Migration Debate: Why Aryan Migration Is Wrong and Why Out of India Is Correct
In the Aryan Migration Debate, there are three fundamental scientific fields that can prove either the AMT or OIT. These are linguistics, ancient texts, and archaeology.* We will examine all the evidence in these three fields and prove that the OIT is correct.
An up-and-coming field, genetics, is being hyped up in Indian mainstream media as the “key to unlocking the answer to the Aryan migration debate,” but this could not be further from the truth. Genetics has absolutely nothing to do with this purely linguistic debate and can only be used to confirm prior discoveries and conclusions in the other three scientific fields. Genetics cannot be used to trace the spread of languages. There is no “Aryan” gene in the same way that there is no Hindi gene, Mandarin gene, or Arabic gene. A language can be spoken by anyone regardless of their genetic background. Although, it should be noted regarding “genetic evidence” that it’s far too early to be able to tell what actually happened and in what direction the migrations occurred. The only reason why genetics seems to prove the AMT right now is because western geneticists presume that the AMT is correct and then forcibly fit their evidence into the AMT paradigm, which leads to ridiculous conclusions in their papers along the lines of “this genetic evidence elegantly explains the migration of the Indo-Aryan languages into India in 1500 BCE”. This is of course retrograde logic based on the acceptance of an unjustified presupposition that is meant to be taken for granted.
An Important Point
Before we begin, an important preliminary point in regards to the AMT needs to be made. The dates for the supposed Aryan migration into India and the composition of the Vedas, which are the oldest Hindu religious texts, were completely arbitrary dates plucked out of thin air by a 19th century Indologist called Friedrich Max Müller. After countless objections to such reckless scholarship from contemporaries such as Goldstucker, Whitney, and Wilson, he was forced to concede in 1890 that “it is quite clear that we cannot hope to fix a terminum a qua. Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.” Despite his own admission that the AMT was based upon complete conjecture, this 1500 BCE date has somehow survived all the way to the present day, with linguists simply constructing their own arguments and hypotheses around these dates to come up with a linguistic case for the AMT. It is because of this blatantly shoddy scholarship motivated by anti-Indian political and ideological biases that we oppose the AMT.
Linguistics
The linguistic case for the AMT is widely seen by the academic mainstream as having been definitively proven, leading many to assume that any new evidence that supports the AMT is confirmed by this linguistic evidence without questioning whether it’s even reliable or supports their case. Upon closer examination, however, all their linguistic arguments for a Steppe Homeland are revealed to be extremely weak and could just as easily be used to support an Indian Homeland hypothesis. An OIT scholar called Shrikant Talageri has refuted every single AMT linguistic argument in his article The Complete Linguistic Case for the Out-of-India Theory. Here we will be providing summaries of his counter-arguments:
“There are non-IE languages in India. If the IE languages originated in India, the "Aryans" would have first "aryanized" India before spreading out.”
This is not what usually happens when a language migrates. Examples include the Spanish hispanicizing almost the entirety of Central and South America but leaving the non-IE Basque language untouched in the Iberian peninsula, and the English linguistically anglicizing North America and Australia while leaving the Welsh language untouched in Wales. This argument is based on the strange assumption that the PIE language speakers migrated everywhere for the sole purpose of spreading their language and culture to everyone, and not for an actually realistic reason like a natural disaster or tribal conflict where “Aryanizing everyone” is the least of their concerns.
“There are more IE branches in Europe than in India.”
The Steppes have only one branch: Slavic. Europe has seven branches, yet the Steppes are postulated as the PIE homeland, not Europe. Thus, the logic is self-refuting.
“The PIE homeland should be a geographically central area.”
A symmetrical migration is not realistic because the reasons for migrating are not symmetrical. One area may have more animals to hunt, land for building homes, or fertile soil for farming than another area. Examples of linguistic migrations from one area to another include Russian from Kiev eastwards, Arabic from Arabia northwestwards, and Bantu from West Africa southeastwards. This argument is again based on that strange assumption that the PIE language speakers wanted to spread their language and culture everywhere for no apparent reason.
“If the other IE branches emigrated from India, they would have taken with them some purely Indian features, which they have not, such as (a) names for purely Indian animals and plants, and (b) the distinction between dental and retroflex consonants.”
Firstly, European languages actually have preserved names for Indian animals not found in Europe. Examples include ape (Sanskrit kapi, Greek kepos), leopard (Sanskrit pṛdāku, Greek pardos, Persian fars, Hittite paršana), and elephant/ivory (Sanskrit ibha, Greek erepa/elephas, Latin ebur, Hittite laḫpa, and, with a shift in meaning, Gothic ulbandus). This last word in particular is absolutely vital to the OIT case because India is the only IE language speaking area which has elephants (for more on this argument, see Talageri’s two other articles The Elephant and the Proto-Indo-European Homeland and Indian Fauna: Elephants, Foxes and the AIT-OIT Debate). Secondly, the Romani (Gypsy) languages that everyone accepts migrated from India to Europe some 1000 years ago have not kept the names for Indian animals and plants (not even ape, leopard, or elephant/ivory) and have also not kept the distinction between dental and retroflex consonants, so to claim that a migration out of India obliges all the other IE languages to keep certain Indian sounds and words is absurd and illogical.
“Linguistic paleontology, which is where linguists use reconstructed words for flora and fauna to find the Original Homeland of a group of languages, has proven that the PIE homeland must have had a temperate climate. Examples include the PIE words for the beech tree, bear, wolf, and snow.”
Linguistic paleontology is itself already quite a controversial issue in linguistics but let’s refute this argument anyway. Firstly, the PIE word for the beech tree is found only in the European branches and none of the Asian branches. We have two scenarios here: either the IE languages migrated from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes and lost the word for the beech tree in Asia because there are no beech trees there, or the IE languages migrated from India and the ones that settled in Europe came to develop a word for the beech tree. This argument doesn’t conclusively prove a temperate homeland. Secondly, Europe has only one species of bear, ursus arctos (the old world brown bear), while India has four species of bears: ursus arctos (the old world brown bear), ursus thibetanus (the Himalayan black bear), helarctos malayanus (the Malayan sun bear), and melursus ursinus (the Indian sloth bear). Thirdly, India has its own species of wolf, canis lupus pallipes (the Indian wolf), while canis lupus chanco (the Himalayan wolf) is found directly north in Nepal and Tibet. And fourthly, snow is found in India as much as in the western areas. As per the Encyclopaedia Britannica, India has "the largest area outside of the Polar regions under permanent ice and snow": the Himalayas. Additionally, the word hima in 10 verses in the Rigveda, which is the oldest Hindu religious text and which AMT scholars claim was composed by the Aryans after migrating to India, (I.34.1; 64.14; 116.8; 119.6; II.33.2; V.54.15; VI.48.8; VIII.73.3; X.37.10; 68.10), means "winter" (this is not a "linguistic memory"; it is one of the six seasons of the Hindu calendar along with spring, summer, monsoon, autumn, and pre-winter). In four of the references, the verses talk about the Indian winter offering relief from the burning heat of the Indian summer. Furthermore, in X.121.4 (a reference to the snow-covered mountains of the Himalayas in the north), hima means snow, and in another reference, in VIII.32.26, it could possibly refer to a weapon made of ice.
“The shared isoglosses of the IE languages can only make sense if the Original Homeland was in the Pontic-Caspian Steppes.”
An isogloss is a linguistic feature, such as vocabulary, grammar, or phonology, that developed in a particular geographic area. The isoglosses shared by the IE branches can show us the order in which they each migrated from the Original Homeland. The twelve known branches of the IE language family are Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Armenian, Greek, Hittite, Iranian, Tocharian, and Indo-Aryan. Hittite doesn’t have any of the common isoglosses shared among the other eleven branches, so it must have been the first one to exit the homeland by itself. Then the other eleven branches developed shared isoglosses before exiting one after the other. Five branches (Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Armenian, Greek, and Albanian) share certain late features missing in the other seven branches, which shows that these five branches had remained in the homeland and developed these features after the migration of the other seven branches. Shared isoglosses between two branches, or among several branches, indicates proximity in the Original Homeland, i.e. branches sharing isoglosses must have been adjacent or geographically contiguous to each other in the Original Homeland.
A western AMT-supporting linguist called H. H. Hock claims that if the twelve branches are arranged in the Original Homeland in a pattern similar to their historically earliest-recorded geographical pattern, all the isoglosses fit in perfectly so that the most likely solution is a central location for the Original Homeland (here’s a diagram he made to demonstrate this).
He also claims that this isn’t possible with an Indian Homeland hypothesis due to the bottleneck nature of a migration out of India. However, Hock’s argument suffers from one fatal flaw: he hasn’t addressed the Tocharian branch. Tocharian shares certain important isoglosses with Hittite and Italic. Tocharian is found at the northeastern corner of the Indo-European world and Italic at the opposite southwestern corner. Hittite is at the south central edge, but separated from Italic (even if we treat the landscape as a flat piece of paper) by Greek and Albanian (not taken in Hock's diagram above).
In no way can Hittite, Tocharian, and Italic be shown to be sharing these important isoglosses with each other in contiguous areas in the Original Homeland and then "maintaining their relative positions to each other as they fanned out from the [centrally located] homeland" to their respective earliest attested areas. So Hock simply ignores the concerned isoglosses, excludes Tocharian from his arrangement on the plea that "it is difficult to find dialectal affiliation" for it, and crosses his fingers in the hope that no one notices. In his original article, Talageri presents a more honest and logical examination of the isoglosses that proves the Indian Homeland hypothesis.
“The Rigveda contains substrate words from non-IE languages which occupied the Vedic areas before the arrival of the Aryan immigrants/invaders.”
This argument was formulated and popularized by an AMT linguist called Michael Witzel, who is currently spearheading the AMT linguistic case. A substrate word is a word that has entered a language from another language that has lower power or prestige in the society they are spoken in. A good example would be Germanic words entering the Vulgar Latin that was spoken in France and eventually developed into the modern French language. Witzel has claimed in numerous papers that a “Para-Munda” language was spoken in the Harappan areas right up to Afghanistan and that substrate words from this language entered the Indo-Aryan languages when they were brought to India by the Aryan invaders (even when he has to go against the conclusions of all the Munda experts who insist that Munda [Austric] languages were always spoken only in eastern and central India and never in northern and northwestern India), which then gives Witzel the opportunity to go crazy and sweep the entire Rigveda to find these so-called “Para-Munda” words and prove the AMT. Witzel strives hard to establish, for example, that (among various other things) all Vedic words beginning with ki-, ku-, etc. are of "Para-Munda" origin. If this is so, then Kikkuli, the Indo-European Mitanni writer of the treatise on horse-racing in West Asia, also has a name with "Para-Munda" elements in it. This shows that the Mitanni departed (which AMT scholars believe was well before at least 2000 BCE) from a part of India which was already, long before their departure, inundated with "Para-Munda" elements (from eastern India) which were already an integral part of Vedic culture. So Witzel’s own “Para-Munda” theory only confirms that the Original Homeland, where the twelve IE branches shared a contiguous space around 3000 BCE or so, was located in India. Nevertheless, two main arguments are made to try to show that substrate words prove the AMT or disprove the OIT. The first argument is that if PIE were in India, the migrating IE branches would also have had Indian features like retroflex consonants and Dravidian/Munda words. But, as already pointed out, the Romani (Gypsy) languages do not have retroflex consonants and Dravidian/Munda words. The second argument is that the Indo-Aryan languages have borrowed non-Indo-Aryan names for Indian animals and plants because they came from the Pontic-Caspian Steppes and were unacquainted with Indian flora and fauna. As we saw, the Vedic rivers have purely Indo-Aryan names. Here is a small list of the Indo-Aryan animal and plant names in the Vedic Samhitas alone, demonstrating the untenability of the argument:
“Rigveda: ibha-/vāraṇa/hastin (elephant), gaura (Indian bison), mayūra (peacock ), mahiṣa/anūpa (buffalo), pṛṣatī (chital), siṁha (lion), śiṁśumāra (Gangetic or river dolphin), sālāvṛka (hyaena), kusumbhaka (scorpion), cakravāka (brahminy duck), ulūka (owl), kapota (pigeon), cāṣa (wagtail), śyena/suparṇa (eagle), gṛdhra (vulture), śiṁśapa (shisham tree), kiṁṣuka/parṇa (flame-of-the forest tree) khadira (heartwood tree), śalmalī/śimbala (silk-cotton tree), vibhīdaka (belleric myrobalan or behra), araṭva (arjuna tree), aśvattha/pippala (the sacred fig tree), urvāruka (cucumber), vetasa (rattan/cane), darbha, muñja, śarya, sairya, kuśara and vairiṇa (6 sacred Indian grasses).
Yajurveda and Atharvaveda:
kaśyapa/ kūrma (tortoise), kapi (monkey), vyāghra (tiger), pṛdāku (leopard), śārdūla (tiger), khaḍga (rhinoceros), ajagara (python), nākra (crocodile), kṛkalāsa (chameleon), nakula (mongoose), jahakā (hedgehog), śalyaka (porcupine), jatū (bat), anyavāpa (cuckoo), kṛkavāku (cock), kapiñjala/tittiri (partridge); kalaviṅka (sparrow), kaṅka/krauñca (crane), śuka (parrot), ikṣu (sugarcane), bilva (bael plant), nyagrodha (banyan tree), śamī (shami tree), plakṣa (white fig tree), and pippalī (long pepper), and in the Atharvaveda, countless other Indian medicinal plants.”
At the same time, it may be noted that the Dravidian languages have borrowed Indo-Aryan words for northwestern animals (siṁha lion, uṣṭra camel, khaḍga rhinoceros) and not vice versa. This would not have been the case if Indo-Aryans had intruded into a Dravidian northwest. These are all of the AMT linguistic arguments that Talageri has refuted, but he also presents his own OIT linguistic arguments to add even more weight to his case, such as number systems, loanwords, comparative mythology, and the antiquity of Sanskrit.
Ancient Texts
Over 200 years of textual analysis has failed to uncover any kind of Aryan migration of India recorded in ancient texts. Not a single shred of evidence can be found in the Rigveda that suggests any kind of unfamiliarity with the Indian subcontinent, memories of a more temperate homeland, a migration southwards into India, or an encounter or battle between fair-skinned “Aryans” and dark-skinned “Dravidians” (although western scholars have tried to unsuccessfully make this latter claim in the past).
Western scholars throughout the years have attempted to “discover” evidence in ancient texts by either superimposing shoddy interpretations onto the texts, grossly mistranslating certain words to make it look as though something completely different is being stated, juxtaposing certain completely unrelated verses or sentences next to each other to make it look like something completely different is being said, or simply making up evidence that doesn’t actually exist (see Fabricating Evidence in Support of the Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory by Michel Danino).
Eventually, even stubborn and dogmatic scholars such as Witzel have been forced to admit that no evidence of their beloved Aryan migration has been found in ancient texts, while George Erdosy has even resorted to claiming that the Vedic Aryans simply lost all memories they would’ve had of the steppes and their migration into India! An absolutely absurd claim in light of the long established and well recognized nature of Vedic oral tradition!.
The previously mentioned Shrikant Talageri has also done extensive research into the Rigveda and the Avesta and has discovered that they both describe an east to west migration from India. This evidence is the subject of his two books, The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis and The Rigveda and the Avesta: The Final Evidence. Here is a short summary of his findings:
The three main ancient texts that pertain to the Aryan migration debate are the Mitanni texts (which have been scientifically dated to 1300 BCE and which no one dares to challenge, but whose composers, the Indo-European Mitanni people, are known to have been present in West Asia since well before 1750 BCE), the Rigveda (the oldest Hindu religious text that western scholars dubiously date to some time between 1200-1000 BCE to line up just perfectly with their AMT narrative), and the Avesta (the main religious text of the Zoroastrian religion that western scholars have also dubiously dated to some time between 1200-1000 BCE).
Talageri’s extensive studies of these three ancient texts has uncovered the following evidence: firstly, common data in the three texts is found in 425 of the 686 New Hymns and 3692 of the 7311 verses in the New Books of the Rigveda (5, 1, 8, 9, and 10) as well as in all later (post-Rigvedic) texts, but is not found in a single one of the 280 Old Hymns and 2351 verses in the Old Books of the Rigveda (6, 3, 7, 4, and 2). This shows that the Indo-European Mitanni people in West Asia, the Avestans in Iran, and the Vedic Indo-Aryans in India separated from each other during the period of composition of the New Books of the Rigveda and after the period of composition of the Old Books.
Secondly, the geographical area of the New Books of the Rigveda extends from Afghanistan in the west to westernmost Uttar Pradesh and Haryana in the east. This, therefore, is the area from which the Mitanni people migrated to West Asia: the fact that they entered West Asia from outside and from the east is not disputed by anyone.
Thirdly, the fact that the linguistic ancestors of the Mitanni people are already found in West Asia by 1750 BCE shows that they must have left the geographical area of the New Books of the Rigveda at the very least, and by a very conservative estimate, by 2000 BCE.
Fourthly, the development of this common culture of the New Books of the Rigveda, which the Mitanni people took with them to West Asia around 2000 BCE, must therefore be much older, at least by a few hundred years: i.e. this culture must be at least datable to 2400 BCE.
Fifthly, the totally distinct culture of the Old Books of the Rigveda must precede 2400 BCE by another few hundred years at least, i.e. it must go well into the early parts of the first half of the third millennium BCE.
Sixthly, during this period, i.e. during the early parts of the first half of the third millennium BCE, the geography of the Old Books of the Rigveda is originally restricted to the eastern parts of the geography of the Rigveda as a whole: to Haryana and westernmost Uttar Pradesh. These Old Books show that the Vedic Indo-Aryans were residents of Haryana and westernmost Uttar Pradesh and were not familiar with the areas, rivers, mountains, lakes and animals further west, most of which appear only in the New Books. They also give in great detail the concrete historical events which led to the expansion of the Vedic Indo-Aryans westwards from Haryana across the rivers of the Punjab to Afghanistan. (AMT proponents will agree with all the points so far except this one. This is the one fact that destroys the entire AMT case on the basis of textual evidence.)
Furthermore, during this period, i.e. even as early as during the early parts of the first half of the third millennium BCE, as the Vedic Indo-Aryans expanded from east to west across the Punjab, the whole area is a purely Indo-European area, with not a single reference to any linguistically non-Indo-European person, tribe, or entity, with even the local rivers having purely Indo-European names. This last point is to be contrasted with Europe, where the river names, even after over 3000 years of exclusive Indo-European presence, still bear evidence of their non-Indo-European and pre-Indo-European origins.
In short, as per the linguistic consensus, the Indo-Europeans in 3000 BCE were still in and around their Original Homeland, and as per the textual analysis of the Rigveda, the Vedic Indo-Aryans around 3000 BCE were long-established residents of a purely Indo-European area in northern India. In other words, the Original Homeland was in northern India.
Archaeology
Just like with the textual evidence, there is also zero evidence of cultural change from a Harappan culture to a Vedic culture in India’s archaeological record (indicating that there is cultural continuity between the two and that they are both the same culture). Witzel explains it elegantly when he states that:
“None of the archaeologically identified post-Harappan cultures so far found, from Cemetery H, Sarai Kala III, the early Gandhara and Gomal Grave Cultures, does make a good fit for the culture of the speakers of Vedic […] At the present moment, we can only state that linguistic and textual studies confirm the presence of an outside, Indo-Aryan speaking element, whose language and spiritual culture has definitely been introduced, along with the horse and the spoked wheel chariot, via the BMAC area into northwestern South Asia. However, much of present-day archaeology denies that. To put it in the words of Shaffer (1999:245) ‘A diffusion or migration of a culturally complex ‘Indo-Aryan’ people into South Asia is not described by the archaeological record’ […] [But] the importation of their spiritual and material culture must be explained. So far, clear archaeological evidence has just not been found.”
(Notice how they’re coping with the fact that the archaeological evidence doesn’t align with their preconceived AMT paradigm by acting as though the problem is with the lack of evidence instead of the actual hypothesis itself! This is how mentally deficient and integrally bankrupt these AMT scholars truly are!)
In addition, world-renowned Indian archaeologist B. B. Lal has carried out extensive surveys of the Harappan sites that were uncovered in the early 20th centuries and has discovered that there is clear cultural continuity from the Harappan civilization all the way to the present-day modern Indian civilization! Just some examples of Indian cultural practices that have their origins in the Harappan civilization include: yoga, the Shiva-linga-cum-yoni, the use of vermillion (sindura) in married women’s hair partition, the use of spiraled bangles among women in Haryana and Rajasthan, the folktale of the thirsty crow, the Namaste greeting, and Lord Shiva’s trident (this evidence is documented in his book The Rigvedic People: ‘Invaders’/‘Immigrants’ or Indigenous?).
What we can conclude from this evidence is the following:
Harappan culture has continued to the present day.
The Harappan civilization never met any Vedic steppe migrants (even if they trickled in peacefully in waves like some scholars are proposing nowadays, they’d at least contribute something to the archaeological record, but no evidence of any change has been found to this very day).
The Vedic civilization is a continuation of the Harappan civilization.
There was no Aryan migration into India. The Aryan Migration Theory is refuted completely.
A supplementary video on Out of India Theory.
Conclusions
Will Durant once stated the following:
“India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages. India was the mother of our philosophy, of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in Christianity, of self-government and democracy. In many ways, Mother India is the mother of us all.”
Mark Twain seconded this by saying:
“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.”
Not only did the Aryans originate in India, but so did the so-called Jews, Flabius Josephus states:
“These Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers. They are named by the Indians, Kalani.”
Magasthenes, who was sent to India by Seleucus Nicotor about 300 years before Christ, and whose accounts from New Enquiries are every day acquiring additional credit, says that the Jews “Were an Indian tribe or sect called Kalani.”
These quotes reveal how interconnected the world is to the mythical past of ancient India, the homeland of all humanity and history. It further drives home the immanent reality that all Aryan theories, no matter how diverse and contradictory they may be, all have to relate to the great subcontinent of India in some manner. As far as the conclusion of this article is concerned, the “Aryan Migration Theory” or “Aryan Invasion Theory” have already been thoroughly refuted. The overwhelming majority of all evidence stands in favor of the “Indigenous Aryan Theory” or more commonly called the “Out of India Theory”. With our Regenesis out of Mahabharat Theory we have attempted to expand the Out of India Theory to encompass all of humanity itself. Indeed, all of humanity is ancestrally indigenous to India, Aryan or not.
North indians have R1a genes while southern dont cause they didnt got conquered
bandhu 😄