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This article is about the term "Aryan". For "Arian", a follower of the ancient Christian sect, See Arianism.
Aryan is an English word derived from the Sanskrit, Avestan and Vedic term arya, meaning
noble.
One of the meanings of this term in modern English refers to a hypothetical single
group of people who spoke the parent language of the Indo-European
languages. It has at times been believed that these people formed an ethnic
group; in particular, a school of German and Soviet scholarship at one time believed that this ethnic group originated in the Russian steppes. German philologists believed that their Saxon group originated from the steppes north of Uzbekistan, and this Saxon group followed the Aryan group into Iran before
splitting from Arya. It then migrated north to the Black Sea, where they again
moved north to the Baltic lake. Thus, German philologists concluded, the German people have a direct ancestry with the people of
the Arya region in Iran. But it was the Nazi Party which added other features into their
Aryan concept to create a sense of superiority among their adherents. The languages of the Germans, Indians, Poles, and Persians
all stem from the same Indo-European language root.
Another meaning refers to the Aryan race, a presumedly more or less directly
descendant ethnic group of this original Aryan group. This meaning was, and still is common in theories of European racial
superiority, some of which have spread to North American and to India. In Nazi ideology,
the Germanic race is believed to be the purest representative of the Aryan race with its diametrical opposite being the Semitic race, represented by the Jews. Nazism portrays
the Aryan race as the only race capable of creating culture and civilizations, while other races are merely able of some
preservation, or destruction of, culture.
It has been argued that the term *arya was originally used to denote kinfolk or clansmen, and later used as a general
term of respect, signifying nobility (as in ari-stocracy). It has also been argued that the supposition that the term
referred to an ethnic group arose as the result of speculative translation.
Since the mid 19th century it has been claimed that Aryans migrated into
India, around 1800-1500 BC, possibly waging war against the declining Harappan civilization. The Rig-Veda
certainly describes warfare and struggle for control of territory, but whether this resulted from a migration or not is unclear.
However the archaeological and historical record can be interpreted to indicate a gradual migration around the end of the 2nd
millennium BC of Indo-Aryan speakers to the east from the vicinity of Kurdestan. Nevertheless, the evidence is weak.
It is also possible to argue that the Indo-Aryan speaking cultures had much older roots in the area. At any rate, modern India is
divided into two language families, one Indo-European, and the other Dravidian,
thought to be the linguistic descendents of the Harappans.
Persian Aryans
Ancient Persians (in present-day Iran) used
the term Aryan to describe their lineage and their language. Darius the Great, King of Persia (521 - 486 BC), in an inscription in Naqsh-e-Rostam (near Shiraz in
present-day Iran), proclaims: "I am Darius the great King... A Persian, son of a
Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage...". The name Iran is a modern cognate of Aryan. The term has become a term of art in
the Zoroastrian, Buddhist, and Jain, and Hindu
religions.
The Aryan tribes in the Indian subcontinent called their land Aaryaa varta or
Aryan expanse / Aryan land. When the ancient Persians lived in the Inner Asian
Steppes and moved south into today's Iran, they named the place Airyanem
Vaejah, or The Iranian Expanse, and today the word survives as Iran. Many present day Iranian boy and girl
names reflect this ancient relation: names like Aryana, Iran-dokht (Aryan Daughter), Arayn,
Aryan-Pur, Aryaramne, ...
It has traditionally been claimed that the root word *ar- or *arya- is one of the most widely distributed
names of people and places in the Indo-European world. It gave a name not
only to the Aryans of India, but also to the aristocrats, the aristoi, the "most noble," of Greece, and the Irish of Éire. Another
grade of the root appears in Latin ordo, meaning "order." However, these
etymologies are speculative. The original meaning of the word possibly suggested a union, league, or confederacy.
In its original sense, "aryan" may or may not have had any racial meaning, certainly not in the sense that we define race today. Rather the term more likely grew from a tribalist self-identity, until more recent
racialist distortions, attempting to justify eugenics policies, such as colonialism and genocide. (See also Aryan race and
Dravidian race).
See also: Aryan invasion; Aryan race; Arya Samaj
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