The Aryans by Prof. S. Srikanta Sastri

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Since the beginning of Indic studies, the Aryan problem has engaged the attention of numerous scholars and though there was more or less unanimity among European philologists as to the nature of the language, its affinities with the major European language, the original home of the “Aryans” in Europe and “Aryan” culture and its date, a further study of the problem in all its aspects merely brought out the inherent absurdities and self-contradictions in this theory. Since the Vedas are acknowledgedly the oldest literature in the world, it is easy to understand the anxiety of European scholars to claim some sort of affinity with the Vedic Aryans mainly on linguistic considerations and subsequently extending the argument to the anthropological and archaeological evidence. It was claimed that all these considerations led to certain definite conclusions, i. e. (1) The Aryan is a white man (leucoderm), long-headed (dolicocephalic), leptorrhinian, tall and blond; (2) The language was Ur – Aryan (Indo – Aryan, Indo – Germanic or Indo – European), Sanskrit being one of its drivatives; (3) The original home as indicated by the words for the birch, fir, larch and other flora and fauna in the so-called Ur-Aryan tongue must be located somewhere in North, Central or Southern Europe (4) The “migrations” commenced not earlier than 2000 B. C. and a branch of the Aryans occupied Anatolia and Asia Minor in about 1500 B. C. and at about the same time they occupied the Indus Valley. (5) The “Aryan” culture was a “warrior culture” and of a pastoral people, worshipping male deities and natural forces (henotheism), and opposed to the city-building, trading, goddess – worshipping and the pacifist cultures of Asia. Thus philological, anthropological and archaeological researches are supposed to indicate that the long-skulled blonds of Europe represent the primitive Aryan race and the primeval home of the Indo-Germanic languages must have been in northern Europe.

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