Aryan Invasion is Myth says Scientists

By: Dinesh C. Sharma (http://indiatoday.intoday.in)
NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 10, 2011 | UPDATED 10:22 IST

Widely believed theory of Indo-Aryan invasion, often used to explain early settlements in the Indian subcontinent is a myth, a new study by Indian geneticists says.

The origin of genetic diversity found in South Asia is much older than 3,500 years when the Indo-Aryans were supposed to have migrated to India, a new study led by scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, says. The study appeared in American Journal of Human Genetics on Friday.

Prof. Nicholas Kazanas, Director, IMILOS Meleton Cultural Institute, Greece, delivering a lecture on 'The Collapse of Aryan Invasion Theory and the prevalence of Indigenism' at IIT-Madras on 26th February 2011.

Please refer to mu previous posting on September 2nd, 2010, titled "The Myth of the Aryan Invasion Theory".

The theory of Indo-Aryan migration was proposed in mid-19th century by German linguist and Sanskrit scholar Max Muller. He had suggested that 3,500 years ago, a dramatic migration of Indo-European speakers from Central Asia played a key role in shaping contemporary South Asian populations and this was responsible for introduction of the Indo-European language family and the caste system in India.

"Our study clearly shows that there was no genetic influx 3,500 years ago," said Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj of CCMB, who led the research team, which included scientists from the University of Tartu, Estonia, Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chennai and Banaras Hindu University.

"It is high time we re-write India's prehistory based on scientific evidence," said Dr Lalji Singh, former director of CCMB. "There is no genetic evidence that Indo-Aryans invaded or migrated to India or even something such as Aryans existed". Singh, vice-chancellor of BHU, is a co-author.

Researchers analysed some six lakh bits of genetic information in the form of SNPs drawn from DNA of over 1,300 individuals from 112 populations including 30 ethnic groups in India.

The comparison of this data with genetic data of other populations showed that South Asia harbours two major ancestry components. One is spread in populations of South and West Asia, Middle East, Near East and the Caucasus. The second component is more restricted to South Asia and accounts for more than 50 per cent of the ancestry in Indian populations.

"Both the ancestry components that dominate genetic variation in South Asia demonstrate much greater diversity than those that predominate West Eurasia. This is indicative of a more ancient demographic history and a higher long-term effective population size underlying South Asian genome variation compared to that of West Eurasia," researchers said.

"The genetic component which spread beyond India is significantly higher in India than in any other part of world. This implies that this genetic component originated in India and then spread to West Asia and Caucasus," said Gyaneshwar Chaube of University of Tartu, Estonia.

If any migration from Central Asia to South Asia took place, the study says, it should have introduced apparent signals of East Asian ancestry into India. "Because this ancestry component is absent from the region, we have to conclude that if such an event indeed took place, it occurred before the East Asian ancestry component reached central Asia," it said.

Response by the readers: Santi Vardana

The word Aryan comes from Sanskrit and it means "one who knows the purpose and value of human life". However, the British wanting to divide and rule India, employed Max Muller, a morally bankrupt German, to cook up and mis-translate the Vedas and Puranas. This is to demoralize the Indians so that they would lose faith in their scriptures and their religion. The purpose is to convert all Hindus to Christianity and to rule India.

The British presented themselves as ‘new and improved Aryans’ that were in India only to complete the work left undone by their ancestors in the hoary past. This is how the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin put it in the House of Commons in 1929:

Now, after ages, the two branches of the great Aryan ancestry have again been brought together by Providence. By establishing British rule in India, God said to the British, “I have brought you and the Indians together after a long separation; it is your duty to raise them to their own level as quickly as possible brothers as you are.”

Baldwin was only borrowing a page from the Jesuit missionary Robert de Nobili (1577 - 1656) who presented Christianity as a purer form of the Vedic religion to attract Hindu converts. Now, 300 years later, Baldwin and the British were telling Indians: “We are both Aryans but you have fallen from your high state, and we, the British are here to lift you from your fallen condition.” It is surprising that few historians seem to have noticed the obvious similarity.

In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that many of the ‘scholars’ of Indology should have had missionary links.

The Myth of the Aryan Invasion Theory

LORD MACAULAY'S ADDRESS TO THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT, 2 FEBRUARY, 1835

The Myth of the Aryan Invasion Theory

By. Shyam Narayan Shukla, Ph.D.

Before mid-nineteenth century no one had heard of Aryans coming to India from out side. One had also not heard that foreign people of “Aryan race” invaded India, conquered the indigenous people of “Dravidian race” and pushed them to southern part of India. However, now all this is part of the Indian history written by the British rulers of India.

Europeans were exposed to Sanskrit and the Hindu scriptures sometime in the seventeenth century. They discovered that Sanskrit and the European languages had many common words. Thus the western scholars arrived at a conclusion that the “Indo-European” languages must have had a common origin. Their hypothesis was that from Central Asia a section of Sanskrit speaking Aryans came to India and another section of the same people migrated to Europe.

It was Professor Frederich Max Muller of Oxford University who was responsible for advancing this imaginary “Aryan Invasion Theory”. He called “Arya” (or Aryan) a race even though the Vedas mention nowhere that “Arya” is a race. It actually means one who is well educated and well cultured.

The Rigveda says: “Krinvanto vishvamaryam” (Let us make the entire world “Arya”). It does not mean that people of Mongolian and African races be converted to Aryan race. Only many years later Muller realized his mistake and tried to emphasize that “Arya” does not denote a race but people who speak “Indo-European” languages. But the damage had already been done and his hypothesis of Aryan Invasion Theory had become a historical “fact”.

In the 1830s Lord Thomas Macaulay was appointed Governor General of the Indian provinces won by the East India Company. Macaulay was the son of a Presbyterian minister and his great ambition was to convert India to a Christian country. However, he realized that the Vedas were considered very sacred by all Hindus. Also the Brahmans, who preserved the Vedas, commanded a great respect. Yet he pioneered the English system of education in India with a hope that the effect of his new education system would be “prodigious” (his term).

He wrote to his father, “It is my firm belief that, if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence.”

In 1854, nearly fifteen years after he returned back to England, he used his influence to get some fund from the East India Company for research on the Vedas. He then contacted Horace Wilson, a Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University. Wilson told him that he was retiring the following year and so a younger colleague of his, of German nationality, F. Max Muller would be a better candidate to conduct the research. Muller himself was a staunch Christian.

In 1868 he wrote to Duke of Argyle, Under Secretary of State for India, “The ancient religion of India is doomed – and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”

Macaulay wanted Muller to write about the Vedas in such a way that they would be considered nothing more than collections of some crude rhymes written by illiterate nomadic Aryan invaders, who came from Central Asia to India on horse backs. Macaulay thought that the attestation of an academician would look more authentic and unquestionable. Max Muller, being a devout Christian, while assigning date of the oldest Veda, the Rigveda, could not give an earlier date than the origin of the world, which according to the Bible is 4004 years before Christ. Later the scientists estimated that the earth is about 6 billion years old. Muller arbitrarily wrote that Aryans came to India in 1500 B.C. and the Rigveda was written in 1200 B.C.

According to Hindu traditions,Kaliyuga started on the day Shri Krishna breathed his last on this earth. When this happened there was a conjunction of seven planets - Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, sun and moon. It is astronomically estimated that this occurred on Februay 18, 3102 B.C. The Vedas definitely existed much before this period (the Mahabharata period).

In around 1914, when the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro in the Indus Valley were excavated, the archeologists found by carbon-dating that they were at least 5,000 years old. They were beautifully planned cities with wide streets, magnificent buildings and good drainage system. The British historians were at a loss because that was going to crumble their Aryan Invasion Theory.

By that time the Aryan invasion and the Aryan-Dravidian conflict had already become part of Indian history and which had happened in 1500 B.C. Then the British archeologist John Marshal and Mortimer Wheeler ‘interpreted’ that the ancient cities excavated were the ruins of Dravidian culture destroyed by the Aryan invaders.

Eventhough Government of India has acknoledged the Aryan Myth as fake an a concoction of British Colonisation, it fails to remove the topic from the education system of the country. The Aryan Theory is still taught in everyday classes throughout India as history and fact despite the overwhelming proves against it. It also a well known fact that Max Muller had confessed of his doing during his later days.