Aryan
From Encyclopædia
{air'-ee-uhn} Aryan is a term formerly used to denote both a linguistic and an assumed racial category related to the
language family now known as INDO-EUROPEAN. Early scholars, struck by similarities among ancient Indian
languages such as Sanskrit and ancient European
languages such as Latin and Greek, hypothesized the existence not only of a proto-Indo-European
language but also of a proto-Indo-European racial group, the Aryans. This group, it was argued, had spread into South
Asia and
Europe from a
Central Asian homeland in a series of migrations during the 2d millennium BC. Thus it was argued that, in contrast to the darker-skinned DRAVIDIANS of southern India, the northern Indians were, racially speaking, Aryans, sharing a common descent with the peoples of Western
Europe.Today, such arguments about racial origins are usually seen as little more than speculation. The term Aryan is now used to designate a family of
languages that includes such modern South Asian examples as Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, and
Sinhalese. It was among the Aryan-speaking peoples of northern India during the 2d and 1st millennia BC that the religion of Hinduism and the institutions of
caste first developed, later spreading to other parts of India.Hilary Standing and R. L. StirratBibliography: Basham, Arthur L., The Wonder That Was India, 3d ed., (1967); Childe, V. Gordon, The Aryans (1926; repr. 1988); Deshpande, M. M., and Hook, P. E., eds., Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, (1979); Tyler, S. A., India: An Anthropological
perspective (1986).
