Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 82

18
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MARCH, 1913.
believed in the re-population of the world by the three sons of Noah, and of those who speak what are supposed to be dialects of the "Aryan" speech. Being myself a Dravidian I propose to submit the theory of the invasion of India by the Aryan race, and of the extraordinary expansion of that race on Indian soil, to the test of reason inspired by sympathy for the Draviuian.
The comparative study of languages was born when it was discovered that the languages of North India, Persia, Armenia, and practically the whole of modern Europe, all belonged to one linguistic group. The wide spread of these languages, now generally called the Indo-Germanic, was explained by the supposition that a race of people that spoke the parent form of these languages inhabited the regions beyond the Hindu Kush, and in prehistoric times sent streams of colonists to Persia, to India, to Armenia, and on to Europe. The flush of enthusiasm caused by such a brilliant recovery of ancient history by the study of languages was heightened by the emotional satisfaction due to the notion that the Germanic races that dominate the world to-day were of the same stock as the haughty Brahman of India, who has, like Saturn, gloomed by himself in the horizon of India for several millenniums, has guided its destinies in fields intellectual and political, and been responsible for the grandeur of its philosophy, and for the political ineptitude of its people. The name Arya, which originally belonged to certain Indian tribes that followed the fire cult in the valley of the Punjab, and spoke an ancient form of the language whose later literary form was called the Sanskrit, the polished speech, was extended to this imaginary race, partly because Vedic Sanskrit-the language of the Aryaswas believed to be the most primitive form of the Indo-Germanic tongues, and also because the word Arya, whatever its derivative meaning, meant "noble," and was, therefore, a fit designation for the great race that was believed to have civilised Southern and Western Asia and the whole of the European continent, and to lead the van of the world's progress to-day. Anthropologists soon pricked this Aryan bubble, and the great Aryan stock that peopled such a large slice of the world's surface soon became a small tribe that Aryanised Eurasia-i.e., transmitted its language and culture to other races. The original habitat of this much shrunk tribe was shifted in 1878 from the regions round the Hidu Kush to the shores of the Baltic by Pösche, and in 1889 to Russia by Taylor. In 1901, Sergi maintained that the Aryans were "of Asiatic origin," and "were savages when they invaded Europe; they destroyed in part the superior civilisation of the Neolithic populations and could not have created the Græco-Latin civilisation." In 1911, Dr. Haddon, the greatest living authority on ethnology, carefully avoid-. ed the mention of the word Aryan' in his admirable account of "the wanderings of people" in Europe. The "Aryan race" has been given the quietas so far as Europe is concerned.
The theory of the invasion of India by the "Noble Aryan," and of the extinction in some places and the subjugation in others of the "savage Dasyu," was promulgated by Max Müller, Mair and other Sanskrit scholars in the middle of the nineteenth century, and has since been an article of creed with writers of the history of India. In 1891 and 1892 Risley attempted to supply this theory with an anthropometric foundation. Dr. Haddon summarises the results of Risley's researches in these words: "The Aryan type, as we find it in India at the present day, is marked by a relatively long (dolichocephalic) head, a straight, finely cut (leptorhine) nose, a long, symmetrically narrow face, a well-developed forehead, regular features, and a high facial angle. The stature is fairly high. . . . and the general build of the figure is well proportioned and slender rather than massive." These investigations were based chiefly on "the distinction between the fine and coarse type of nose," and on the theory that in India the nasal index "ranks higher as a distinctive character than the stature, or even than the cephalic index itself." This "Aryan type" is found in the purest form in the Punjab valley and, in other parts of India, is mixed with another type, called by Risley the "Dravidian type." To account for the existence of a "pure Aryan type" of non-Indian origin in the Punjab valley, Risley assumes that the "Aryans" must have moved into India with wives and children, "by tribes and families without any disturbance of their social order," at a time when north-western Haddon, The Study of Man, pp. 103-4.
Sergi, the Mediterranean Race, p. vi.