Indo-Aryan peoples

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Indo-Aryan peoples
Indo-Aryan language map.svg
1978 map showing geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages. (Urdu is included under Hindi. Romani, Domari, and Lomavren are outside the scope of the map.) Dotted/striped areas indicate where multilingualism is common.
   Central
   Dardic
   Eastern
   Northern
   Northwestern
   Western
   Southern
Total population
~1.5 billion[ citation needed ]
Regions with significant populations
Flag of India.svg  India Over 911 million [1]
Flag of Pakistan.svg  Pakistan Over 190 million [2]
Flag of Bangladesh.svg  Bangladesh Over 160 million [3]
Flag of Nepal.svg    Nepal Over 26 million
Flag of Sri Lanka.svg  Sri Lanka Over 14 million
Flag of the Taliban.svg  Afghanistan Over 2 million
Flag of Mauritius.svg  Mauritius Over 725,400
Flag of Maldives.svg  Maldives Over 300,000 [4]
Flag of Bhutan.svg  Bhutan Over 240,000
Languages
Indo-Aryan languages
Religion
Indian religions (Mostly Hindu; with Buddhist, Sikh and Jain minorities) and Islam, Christians and some non-religious atheist/agnostic

Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of peoples predominantly found in South Asia, who (traditionally) speak Indo-Aryan languages. Historically, Aryans were the Indo-Iranian speaking pastoralists who migrated from Central Asia into South Asia and introduced the Proto-Indo-Aryan language. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] The early Indo-Aryan peoples were known to be closely related to the Indo-Iranian group that have resided north of the Indus River; an evident connection in cultural, linguistic, and historical ties. Today, Indo-Aryan speakers are found south of the Indus, across the modern-day regions of Bangladesh, Nepal, eastern-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and northern-India. [10]

Contents

History

Proto-Indo-Iranians

Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC). The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The GGC, Cemetery H, Copper Hoard, OCP, and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan migrations. Indo-Iranian origins.png
Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC). The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The GGC, Cemetery H, Copper Hoard, OCP, and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan migrations.

The introduction of the Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent was the result of a migration of Indo-Aryan people from Central Asia into the northern Indian subcontinent (modern-day Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka). These migrations started approximately 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia.[ citation needed ] Another group of Indo-Aryans migrated further westward and founded the Mitanni kingdom in northern Syria [11] (c. 1500–1300 BC); the other group was the Vedic people. [12] Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun, an Indo-European Caucasoid people of Inner Asia in antiquity, were also of Indo-Aryan origin. [13]

The Proto-Indo-Iranians, from which the Indo-Aryans developed, are identified with the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BCE), [14] [15] and the Andronovo culture,[ citation needed ] which flourished ca. 1800–1400 BCE in the steppes around the Aral Sea, present-day Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The Proto-Indo-Aryan split off around 1800–1600 BCE from the Iranians, [16] moved south through the Bactria-Margiana Culture, south of the Andronovo culture, borrowing some of their distinctive religious beliefs and practices from the BMAC, and then migrated further south into the Levant and north-western India. [17] [5] The migration of the Indo-Aryans was part of the larger diffusion of Indo-European languages from the Proto-Indo-European homeland at the Pontic–Caspian steppe which started in the 4th millennium BCE. [5] [18] [19] The GGC, Cemetery H, Copper Hoard, OCP, and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryans.

The Indo-Aryans were united by shared cultural norms and language, referred to as aryā 'noble'. Over the last four millennia, the Indo-Aryan culture has evolved particularly inside India itself, but its origins are in the conflation of values and heritage of the Indo-Aryan and indigenous people groups of India. [20] Diffusion of this culture and language took place by patron-client systems, which allowed for the absorption and acculturation of other groups into this culture, and explains the strong influence on other cultures with which it interacted.

Genetically, most Indo-Aryan-speaking populations are descendants of a mix of Central Asian steppe pastoralists, Iranian hunter-gatherers, and, to a lesser extent, South Asian hunter-gatherers—commonly known as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI). Dravidians are descendants of a mix of South Asian hunter-gatherers and Iranian hunter-gatherers, and to a lesser extent, Central Asian steppe pastoralists. South Indian Tribal Dravidians descend majorly from South Asian hunter-gatherers, and to a lesser extent Iranian hunter-gatherers. [21] [22] [23] Additionally, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burmese speaking people contributed to the genetic make-up of South Asia. [24]

Indigenous Aryanism propagates the idea that the Indo-Aryans were indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages spread from there to central Asia and Europe. Contemporary support for this idea is ideologically driven, and has no basis in objective data and mainstream scholarship. [25] [26] [27] [28] [29]

List of historical Indo-Aryan peoples



Contemporary Indo-Aryan people

See also

References

  1. ↑ "India". The World Factbook. 16 November 2021.
  2. ↑ "Pakistan". The World Factbook. 4 February 2022.
  3. ↑ "Bangladesh". The World Factbook. 4 February 2022.
  4. ↑ "Population of Lhotshampas in Bhutan". UNHCR. 2004. Archived from the original on 16 October 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 Anthony 2007.
  6. ↑ Erdosy 2012.
  7. ↑ "How ancient DNA may rewrite prehistory in India". bbc. 23 December 2018. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  8. ↑ "New reports clearly confirm 'Arya' migration into India". thehindu. 13 September 2019. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  9. ↑ "Aryans or Harappans—Who drove the creation of caste system? DNA holds a clue". theprint. 29 June 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2022.
  10. ↑ Danesh Jain, George Cardona (2007). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 2.
  11. ↑ Anthony 2007, p. 454.
  12. ↑ Beckwith 2009, p. 33 note 20.
  13. ↑ Beckwith 2009, p. 376-7.
  14. ↑ Anthony 2007, p. 390 (fig. 15.9), 405–411.
  15. ↑ Kuz'mina 2007, p. 222.
  16. ↑ Anthony 2007, p. 408.
  17. ↑ George Erdosy (1995). "The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity", p. 279
  18. ↑ Johannes Krause mit Thomas Trappe: Die Reise unserer Gene. Eine Geschichte über uns und unsere Vorfahren. Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 2019, p. 148 ff.
  19. ↑ "All Indo-European Languages May Have Originated From This One Place". IFLScience. 24 May 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
  20. ↑ Avari, Burjor (11 June 2007). India: The Ancient Past: A History of the Indian Sub-Continent from c. 7000 BC to AD 1200. Routledge. pp. xvii. ISBN   978-1-134-25161-2.
  21. ↑ Reich et al. 2009.
  22. ↑ Narasimhan et al. 2019.
  23. ↑ Yelmen, Burak; Mondal, Mayukh; Marnetto, Davide; Pathak, Ajai K; Montinaro, Francesco; Gallego Romero, Irene; Kivisild, Toomas; Metspalu, Mait; Pagani, Luca (5 April 2019). "Ancestry-Specific Analyses Reveal Differential Demographic Histories and Opposite Selective Pressures in Modern South Asian Populations". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 36 (8): 1628–1642. doi:10.1093/molbev/msz037. ISSN   0737-4038. PMC   6657728 . PMID   30952160.
  24. ↑ Basu et al. 2016.
  25. ↑ Witzel 2001, p. 95.
  26. ↑ Jamison 2006.
  27. ↑ Guha 2007, p. 341.
  28. ↑ Fosse 2005, p. 438.
  29. ↑ Olson 2016, p. 136.

Sources

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