Indo-Iranian languages

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Indo-Iranian
Indo-Iranic (Aryan)
Geographic
distribution
South, Central, West Asia and the Caucasus
Linguistic classification Indo-European
  • Indo-Iranian
Proto-language Proto-Indo-Iranian
Subdivisions
ISO 639-5 iir
Glottolog indo1320
Lenguas indoiranias.PNG
Distribution of the Indo-Iranian languages
Chart classifying Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family Indo-Iranian languages.png
Chart classifying Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family

The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages [2] [3] or collectively the Aryan languages [4] ) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.5 billion speakers, predominantly in South Asia, West Asia and parts of Central Asia.

Contents

The areas with Indo-Iranian languages stretch from Europe (Romani) and the Caucasus (Ossetian, Tat and Talysh), down to Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia (Kurdish languages, Gorani, Kurmanji Dialect continuum, [5] Zaza [6] [7] ), the Levant (Domari) [8] and Iran (Persian), eastward to Xinjiang (Sarikoli) and Assam (Assamese), and south to Sri Lanka (Sinhala) and the Maldives (Maldivian), with branches stretching as far out as Oceania and the Caribbean for Fiji Hindi and Caribbean Hindustani respectively. Furthermore, there are large diaspora communities of Indo-Iranian speakers in northwestern Europe (the United Kingdom), North America (United States, Canada), Australia, South Africa, and the Persian Gulf Region (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia). The number of distinct languages listed in Ethnologue are 312, [9] while those recognised in Glottolog are 320. [10] The Indo-Iranian language with the largest number of native speakers is the Hindustani language (Hindi-Urdu). [11]

Etymology

The term Indo-Iranian languages refers to the spectrum of Indo-European languages spoken in the Southern Asian region of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent (where the Indic branch is spoken, also called Indo-Aryan) up to the Iranian Plateau (where the Iranic branch is spoken).

This branch is also known as Aryan languages, referring to the languages spoken by Aryan peoples, where the term Aryan is the ethnocultural self-designation of ancient Indo-Iranians. But in modern-day, Western scholars avoid the term Aryan since World War II, owing to the perceived negative connotation associated with Aryanism.

Origin

Historically, the Indo-Iranian speakers, both Iranians and Indo-Aryans, originally referred to themselves as the Aryans . [12] [13] The Proto-Indo-Iranian-speakers are generally associated with the Sintashta culture, [14] [15] [16] which is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture, [17] [18] [19] [20] which, in turn, is believed to represent the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the Pontic–Caspian steppe zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures. [21] [22] However, the exact genetic relationship between the Yamnaya culture, Corded Ware culture and Sinthasta culture remains unclear. [23] [24]

The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare. [25] [26] [27] [28] There is almost a general consensus among scholars that the Andronovo culture, the successor of Sintasha culture, was an Indo-Iranian culture. [29] [14] Currently, only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture: Alakul and Fëdorovo cultures. [30] The Andronovo culture is considered as an "Indo-Iranic dialect continuum", with a later split between Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages. [31] However, according to Hiebert, an expansion of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) into Iran and the margin of the Indus Valley is "the best candidate for an archaeological correlate of the introduction of Indo-Iranian speakers to Iran and South Asia", [32] despite the absence of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe in the Near East, [33] or south of the region between Kopet Dag and Pamir-Karakorum. [34] [lower-alpha 2] J. P. Mallory acknowledges the difficulties of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern India, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans". He has developed the Kulturkugel (lit.'the culture bullet') model that has the Indo-Iranians taking over cultural traits of BMAC, but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India. [36] [32]

Notes

  1. A fourth independent branch, Dardic, was previously posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan ranch [1]
  2. Sarianidi states that "direct archaeological data from Bactria and Margiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases". [35]

Related Research Articles

The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corded Ware culture</span> European Bronze Age culture

The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between c. 3000 BC – 2350 BC, thus from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age. Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the contact zone between the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture in south Central Europe, to the Rhine in the west and the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Autosomal genetic studies suggest that the Corded Ware culture originated from the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the steppe-forest zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures, evolving in parallel with the Yamnaya, with no evidence of direct male-line descent between them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yamnaya culture</span> Archaeological culture from the Pontic steppe

The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture, also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers, dating to 3300–2600 BCE. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits ', as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found that Mikhaylovka, in lower Dnieper river, Ukraine, formed the Core Yamnaya culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andronovo culture</span> Group of Bronze Age cultures, 2000–900 BC

The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC, spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The slightly older Sintashta culture, formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately to Early Andronovo cultures. Andronovo culture's first stage could have begun at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, with cattle grazing, as natural fodder was by no means difficult to find in the pastures close to dwellings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indo-Iranians</span> Historical group of Indo-European peoples

The Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Ā́rya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European speaking peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages to major parts of Eurasia in waves from the first part of the 2nd millennium BC onwards. They eventually branched out into the Iranian peoples and Indo-Aryan peoples.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Srubnaya culture</span> Archaeological culture in Eastern Europe

The Srubnaya culture, also known as Timber-grave culture, was a Late Bronze Age 1900–1200 BC culture in the eastern part of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. It is a successor of the Yamna culture, the Catacomb culture and the Poltavka culture. It is co-ordinate and probably closely related to the Andronovo culture, its eastern neighbor. Whether the Srubnaya culture originated in the east, west, or was a local development, is disputed among archaeologists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catacomb culture</span> Bronze age steppe culture, 2500–1950 BC

The Catacomb culture was a Bronze Age culture which flourished on the Pontic steppe in 2,500–1,950 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Potapovka culture</span> Bronze Age culture in Russia

Potapovka culture was a Bronze Age culture which flourished on the middle Volga in 2100—1800 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poltavka culture</span> Early to middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the middle Volga

Poltavka culture was an early to middle Bronze Age archaeological culture which flourished on the Volga-Ural steppe and the forest steppe in 2800—2100 BCE.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abashevo culture</span> Bronze Age culture of the Urals

The Abashevo culture is a late Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture, ca. 2200–1850 BC, found in the valleys of the middle Volga and Kama River north of the Samara bend and into the southern Ural Mountains. It receives its name from the village of Abashevo in Chuvashia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture</span> Archaeological culture in modern-day Russia

The Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture was a Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age culture within the wider Corded Ware complex which flourished in the forests of Russia from c. 2900 to 2050 BC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle Axe culture</span> Chalcolithic European archaeological culture

The Battle Axe culture, also called Boat Axe culture, is a Chalcolithic culture that flourished in the coastal areas of the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula and southwest Finland, from c. 2800 BC – c. 2300 BC. It was an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture, and replaced the Funnelbeaker culture in southern Scandinavia, probably through a process of mass migration and population replacement. It is thought to have been responsible for spreading Indo-European languages and other elements of Indo-European culture to the region. It co-existed for a time with the hunter-gatherer Pitted Ware culture, which it eventually absorbed, developing into the Nordic Bronze Age. The Nordic Bronze Age has, in turn, been considered ancestral to the Germanic peoples.

The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Eastern Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Indo-European homeland</span> Prehistoric "Urheimat" of the Indo-European languages

The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region, its speakers migrated east and west, and went on to form the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.

<i>The Horse, the Wheel, and Language</i> 2007 book by David W. Anthony

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World is a 2007 book by the anthropologist David W. Anthony, in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages from the Pontic–Caspian steppe throughout Western Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. He shows how the domesticated horse and the invention of the wheel mobilized the steppe herding societies in the Eurasian Steppe, and combined with the introduction of bronze technology and new social structures of patron-client relationships gave an advantage to the Indo-European societies. The book won the Society for American Archaeology's 2010 Book Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sintashta culture</span> Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals

The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals, dated to the period c. 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex, c. 2200–1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, and spreads through Orenburg Oblast, Bashkortostan, and Northern Kazakhstan. Widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages, whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Aryans, the Sintashta culture is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indo-European migrations</span> Migrations out of the Proto-Indo-European homeland

The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) speakers, and subsequent migrations of people speaking derived Indo-European languages, which took place approx. 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe, in a process of cultural diffusion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tazabagyab culture</span> Archaeological culture

The Tazabagyab culture is from the late Bronze Age, ca. 1850 BC to 1500 BC, and flourished in the lower Zeravshan valley, as well as along the lower Amu Darya towards the south shore of the Aral Sea; this last region is known as Khwarazm or Khorezm. Earlier it was thought to be from ca. 1500 BC to 1100 BC and regarded a southern offshoot of the Andronovo culture, composed of Indo-Iranians, but Stanislav Grigoriev, in a recent study asserts that Tazabagyab is not part of the Andronovo cultural horizon.

The Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) was an ancient exchange route ranging from the Altai Mountains in Siberia to the Hindu Kush, which took shape in the 3rd millennium BCE. The expansion of the Indo-European Andronovo culture towards the Bactria-Margiana Culture in the second millennium BCE took place along the IAMC, giving way to the Indo-Aryan migration into South Asia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Steppe Herders</span> Archaeogenetic name for an ancestral genetic component

In archaeogenetics, the term Western Steppe Herders (WSH), or Western Steppe Pastoralists, is the name given to a distinct ancestral component first identified in individuals from the Chalcolithic steppe around the turn of the 5th millennium BC, subsequently detected in several genetically similar or directly related ancient populations including the Khvalynsk, Repin, Sredny Stog, and Yamnaya cultures, and found in substantial levels in contemporary European, Central Asian, South Asian and West Asian populations. This ancestry is often referred to as Yamnaya ancestry, Yamnaya-related ancestry, Steppe ancestry or Steppe-related ancestry.

References

  1. Bashir, Elena (2007). "Dardic". In Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (eds.). The Indo-Aryan languages. Routledge. p. 905. ISBN   978-0-415-77294-5. 'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which [...] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
  2. Mahulkar, D. D. (1990). Pre-Pāṇinian Linguistic Studies. Northern Book Centre. ISBN   978-81-85119-88-5.
  3. Puglielli, Annarita; Frascarelli, Mara (2011). Linguistic Analysis: From Data to Theory. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN   978-3-11-022250-0.
  4. Gvozdanović, Jadranka (1999). Numeral Types and Changes Worldwide. Walter de Gruyter. p. 221. ISBN   978-3-11-016113-7. The usage of 'Aryan languages' is not to be equated with Indo-Aryan languages, rather Indo-Iranic languages of which Indo-Aryan is a subgrouping.
  5. Chatoev, Vladimir; Kʻosyan, Aram (1999). Nationalities of Armenia. YEGEA Publishing House. p. 61. ISBN   978-99930-808-0-0.
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  10. "Glottolog 4.7 – Indo-Iranian". Glottolog . Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  11. "Hindi" L1: 322 million (2011 Indian census), including perhaps 150 million speakers of other languages that reported their language as "Hindi" on the census. L2: 274 million (2016, source unknown). Urdu L1: 67 million (2011 & 2017 censuses), L2: 102 million (1999 Pakistan, source unknown, and 2001 Indian census): Ethnologue 21. Hindi at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018) Closed Access logo transparent.svg . Urdu at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018) Closed Access logo transparent.svg .
  12. Schmitt 1987 : "The name Aryan is the self designation of the peoples of Ancient India and Ancient Iran who spoke Aryan languages, in contrast to the 'non-Aryan' peoples of those 'Aryan' countries."
  13. Anthony 2007, p. 408.
  14. 1 2 Mallory & Mair 2008, p. 261.
  15. Anthony 2007 , pp. 408–411
  16. Lubotsky 2023, p. 259, "There is growing consensus among both archaeologists and linguists that the Sintashta–Petrovka culture (2100–1900 BCE) in the Southern Trans-Urals was inhabited by the speakers of Proto-Indo-Iranian".
  17. Allentoft et al. 2015, "The close affinity we observe between peoples of Corded Ware and Sintashta cultures suggests similar genetic sources of the two. [...] Although we cannot formally test whether the Sintashta derives directly from an eastward migration of Corded Ware peoples or if they share common ancestry with an earlier steppe population, the presence of European Neolithic farmer ancestry in both the Corded Ware and the Sintashta, combined with the absence of Neolithic farmer ancestry in the earlier Yamnaya, would suggest the former being more probable. [...] The enigmatic Sintashta culture near the Urals bears genetic resemblance to Corded Ware and was therefore likely to be an eastward migration into Asia. As this culture spread towards Altai it evolved into the Andronovo culture".
  18. Mathieson 2015, Supplementary material: "Sintashta and Andronovo populations had an affinity to more western populations from central and northern Europe like the Corded Ware and associated cultures. [...] the Srubnaya/Sintashta/Andronovo group resembled Late Neolithic/Bronze Age populations from mainland Europe.".
  19. Chintalapati, Patterson & Moorjani 2022, p. 13: "[T]he CWC expanded to the east to form the archaeological complexes of Sintashta, Srubnaya, Andronovo, and the BA cultures of Kazakhstan.".
  20. Kristiansen, Kristian; Allentoft, Morten E.; Frei, Karin M.; Iversen, Rune; Johannsen, Niels N.; Kroonen, Guus; Pospieszny, Łukasz; Price, T. Douglas; Rasmussen, Simon; Sjögren, Karl-Göran; Sikora, Martin (2017). "Re-theorising mobility and the formation of culture and language among the Corded Ware Culture in Europe". Antiquity. 91 (356): 334–347. doi: 10.15184/aqy.2017.17 . hdl: 1887/70150 . ISSN   0003-598X. S2CID   15536709.
  21. Malmström, Helena; Günther, Torsten; Svensson, Emma M.; Juras, Anna; Fraser, Magdalena; Munters, Arielle R.; Pospieszny, Łukasz; Tõrv, Mari; Lindström, Jonathan; Götherström, Anders; Storå, Jan (9 October 2019). "The genomic ancestry of the Scandinavian Battle Axe Culture people and their relation to the broader Corded Ware horizon". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 286 (1912): 20191528. doi:10.1098/rspb.2019.1528. PMC   6790770 . PMID   31594508.
  22. Pamjav H, Feher T, Nemeth E, Padar Z (2012). "Brief communication: new Y-chromosome binary markers improve phylogenetic resolution within haplogroup R1a1". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 149 (4): 611–615. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22167. PMID 23115110. "However, with the discovery of the Z280 and Z93 substitutions within Phase 1 1000 Genomes Project data and subsequent genotyping of these SNPs in ∼200 samples, a schism between European and Asian R1a chromosomes has emerged"
  23. Kristiansen, Kristian; Kroonen, Guus; Willerslev, Eske (11 May 2023). The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 70–71. ISBN   978-1-009-26174-6. "How exactly the emergence and expansion of the Corded Ware are linked to the emergence and expansion of the Yamnaya horizon remains unclear. However, the Y chromosome record of both groups indicates that Corded Ware cannot be derived directly from the Yamnaya or late eastern farming groups sampled thus far, and is therefore likely to constitute a parallel development in the forest steppe and temperate forest zones of Eastern Europe. Even in Central Europe, the formation of the earliest regional Corded Ware identities was the result of local and regional social practices that resulted in the typical Corded Ware rite of passage."
  24. Chechushkov, I.V.; Epimakhov, A.V. (2018). "Eurasian Steppe Chariots and Social Complexity During the Bronze Age". Journal of World Prehistory . 31 (4): 435–483. doi:10.1007/s10963-018-9124-0. S2CID   254743380.
  25. Raulwing, Peter (2000). Horses, Chariots and Indo-Europeans – Foundations and Methods of Chariotry Research from the Viewpoint of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. Archaeolingua Alapítvány, Budapest. ISBN   9789638046260.
  26. Anthony 2007, p. 402, "Eight radiocarbon dates have been obtained from five Sintashta culture graves containing the impressions of spoked wheels, including three at Sintashta (SM cemetery, gr. 5, 19, 28), one at Krivoe Ozero (k. 9, gr. 1), and one at Kammeny Ambar 5 (k. 2, gr. 8). Three of these (3760 ± 120 BP, 3740 ± 50 BP, and 3700 ± 60 BP), with probability distributions that fall predominantly before 2000 BCE, suggest that the earliest chariots probably appeared in the steppes before 2000 BCE (table 15.1 [p. 376]).".
  27. Holm, Hans J. J. G. (2019): The Earliest Wheel Finds, their Archeology and Indo-European Terminology in Time and Space, and Early Migrations around the Caucasus. Series Minor 43. Budapest: ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY. ISBN   978-615-5766-30-5
  28. Mallory 1997 , pp. 20–21
  29. Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age", in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p.3: "...By Andronovo cultures we may understand only Fyodorovka and Alakul cultures..."
  30. Bjørn, Rasmus G. (January 2022). "Indo-European loanwords and exchange in Bronze Age Central and East Asia: Six new perspectives on prehistoric exchange in the Eastern Steppe Zone". Evolutionary Human Sciences. 4: e23. doi:10.1017/ehs.2022.16. ISSN   2513-843X. PMC   10432883 . PMID   37599704.
  31. 1 2 Parpola 2015, p. 76.
  32. Bryant 2001, p. 206.
  33. Francfort, in ( Fussman et al. 2005 , p. 268); Fussman, in ( Fussman et al. 2005 , p. 220); Francfort (1989), Fouilles de Shortugai.
  34. Bryant 2001.
  35. Bryant 2001, p. 216.

Sources

Further reading