R. S. Sharma - Looking for the Aryans

Cameos in History and Culture - 1

Looking for the Aryans

R.S. Sharma

Pariksit Memorial Lecture
Sri Rama Varma Government Sanskrit College
Tripunithura, Kerala

For our entire range of books please use search strings "Orient BlackSwan", "Universities Press India" and "Permanent Black" in store.

Orient Blackswan Private Limited

Registered Office
3-6-752 Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029 (A.P.), INDIA
e-mail:

Other Offices
Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai,
Ernakulam, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata,
Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi, Noida, Patna

Orient Blackswan Private Limited 1995
First Published 1995
Reprinted 1996

eISBN 978 81 250 5313 2

e-edition:First Published 2014

ePUB Conversion: .

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests write to the publisher.

Preface

The archaeological approach to the Aryan problem, which was stressed by Gordon Childe in his book, The Aryans, in 1926, has received considerable attention in recent years. Archaeology and other disciplines have been used to formulate more than a dozen theories regarding the original home of the Indo-Europeans and to suggest several views regarding the routes taken by them. This book, however, is mainly concerned with the cultural dimension of the problem. It identifies and analyses the important markers of the Aryan culture and discusses the 'when' and 'where' of these markers. It deals with the use of the horse and the spoked wheel, cremation, the fire and soma cults, animal sacrifice, especially horse sacrifice/the mode of subsistence, and male dominance. It provides specimens of the Aryan language found in Indo-European inscriptions from West Asia and Greece. It would make me happy if this study helps sustain the renewed interest that has appeared in the Aryan question.

This little book is an expanded version of the Pariksit Memorial Lecture I gave in December 1993 at the Raja Sri Rama Varma Government Sanskrit College, Tripunithura, in Kerala. I thank Professor K.G. Paulose, the Principal of the college, who invited me to deliver the lecture. I also thank Mr Mrityunjaya Kumar of Delhi University and Dr P.N. Sahay of the Indian Council of Historical Research Library. Both of them sent me photocopied material which I used to prepare this book.

R.S. Sharma

Patna
7 November 1994

Contents

SPOKED WHEEL SITES IN NORTH EURASIA

DOMESTICATED HORSE SITES IN NORTH EURASIA

1 Introduction

The Concept of rya

Towards the end of the eighteenth century when William Jones discovered that Sanskrit was similar to Greek, Latin and other European languages, it was postulated that the Aryans lived in an area either in Central Asia or eastern Europe. They were supposed to have descended from the same racial stock. This concept prevailed in the nineteenth century and was used as a powerful political weapon in Nazi Germany during the anti-Jewish campaign launched by Hitler. After 1933 it was declared that the German people constituted a pure Aryan race. In the Nazi view, they occupied the highest place among the Aryans and hence were entitled to hegemony over the world. But scholars who have studied the Aryan problem deeply have come to the conclusion that those speaking the same language need not necessarily belong to the same racial or ethnic stock. Most scholars now think in terms of a Proto-Indo-European language rather than one single race.

In the discussion of the Indo-European problem, several terms are used. The Indo-Europeans are called Aryans although the term 'rya' is found mainly in the eastern Indo-European languages. This term may indicate the culture shared by the Avesta and the g Veda. The two terms 'Indo-Iranian' and 'Indo-Aryan' are frequently employed. The term 'Indo-Iranian' is used to signify the undifferentiated language which was spoken by the Aryans comprising the Indians and Iranians before their separation. Moreover, 'Indo-Iranian' is taken to mean the joint community of the Indian and Iranian Aryans. Additionally, 'Indo-Iranian' is considered a language only of Iran, to which its speakers belong. However, we use this term in a wider sense which also includes the Indie speech and people. The term 'Indo-Aryan' means the speech and its speakers who appear in India; sometimes, the term 'Proto-Indian' is used to denote the same. There is some confusion about the use of the words 'Iranian' and 'Indie'. The first indicates the Aryans who came to Iran, and die second, Sanskrit and its speakers who came to India. Additionally, the term 'Proto-Indo-Aryan' is used to signify the Indo-European language that appears in Kassite and Mitanni inscriptions. Another term, 'Proto-Indo-Iranian', is also used to indicate the language that was spoken by both the Indians and the Europeans when they are thought to have lived together. The term 'Proto-Indo-European' indicates the language reconstructed on the basis of cognate words found in the Indo-European languages.

The term rya appears in several Indo-European languages but not in most of them. O. Szemerenyi has studied all the arguments relating to the term rya and has come to the conclusion that this term is not Indo-European but a Near Eastern, probably Ugaritic, loan word meaning 'kinsman', or 'companion'. The term rya also occurs in the Hittite language in which it signifies 'kinsmen' or 'friend'. Some scholars also link the name of Ireland with the term rya. A word cognate to rya occurs in German as well, but not in any other west Indo-European language.

In Indo-European society, those who possessed horses and chariots enjoyed social hegemony, but it would be incorrect to infer that in all situations, die term rya means 'master' or 'person of aristocratic class'. In the Finnish language, the term 'orja' means slave, and it is derived from the word rya. It appears that when the people of Finland subjugated their neighbours comprising the Indo-Europeans or the Aryans, they used the term orja in their own language to denote a slave.

In the g Veda, the worshippers of Indra were called rya. When this text speaks of the struggle between the Aryans on the one hand and the dsas and the dasyus on the other, it does not consider the former to be indigenous and the latter to be foreigners. The struggle takes place between two cultures, one observing the vrata and the other violating it. At that stage there is no perception of India as a country or a nation, and therefore the labels of Indigenous' and foreigner do not arise. Indications of struggles between cultures and patterns of life appear in both the Indian subcontinent and in Iran. The