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THE ARYAN STORY

Jothi Pragasam

History of civilizations poses serious problems for a casual entrant into the field. While the magnitude of historical evidences collected and compiled world over is astounding, the conclusions arrived at by various historians are amazingly different, and even incompatible with each other.

The conflicting stories of the Aryan civilization present an interesting theme in this regard.

Some historians have concluded that the Aryans were a conquering race. The vast areas they had conquered lay between India on the east and Europe on the west. They are therefore known as Indo-Europeans too!

It is natural indeed that a people known as Aryans by their race came to be known as Indo-Europeans by their conquests. It is therefore the Aryans who brought civilization to the areas they had conquered, by swarming into them in hordes as B. S. Upadhyaya would like to describe it.

But then there are other historians who scoff at this conclusion and assert that there was no race called the Aryan race, thereby removing them from history itself. The great Max Muller himself had to abandon his earlier position conclude that the identity of the Aryans was only a linguistic identity and not a racial identity.

This however helped him to sharpen his etymological weapons in which he established himself as a master. Linguistic evidence thus became an unshakable evidence in history – more than the archeological ones.

Of course, the end justifies the means as it always does and has ever been doing in human history.

Who were the Aryans, any way?

They were a nomadic people; and barbarians too!

In that case –

What kind of a civilization could they have carried with them when they moved to the east and the west?

What could have been the level of development of their language?

These are some of the questions students of history encounter in their attempt to understand real history.

The Aryans were conquerors!

This means that there were other groups of people for them to conquer. It is therefore clear that the Aryans were not the only group of people inhabiting the earth.

And, what kind of a people the conquered were?

The conquered were a peaceful people with their cities and fortresses, at least in the Indian subcontinent if not everywhere!

Nevertheless, they did not have a culture; nor did they posses any language worth its name. And, they must have been ashamed of their backwardness too! It was therefore a historical a boon for the people of the Indian subcontinent that Aryans entered their land out of the blue.

Thus speak some of the historians! And, these historians seem to consider barbarians to have been a brave kind of people although braveness is not synonymous with barbarianism.

Aryans who are supposed to have conquered the northern river valleys of the Indian subcontinent were not an army of mercenaries in the service of any empire. Nor were they robbers by their profession!

They were just nomads, wandering around the earth in search of food like Cain of the Old Testament.

They did not have a settled life in villages or in towns. Perhaps the far end always looked greener to them or, they did not find a place worth living until they entered the Indian subcontinent.

Even if they had to put up in some place for a longer time, it was only for the purpose of making preparations to continue their journey towards the infinite, as Max Muller would like to present it. There is therefore no possibility that they could ever have engaged themselves in agriculture or other crafts like settled peoples.

However, they could have known the use of fire. They could also have been in possession of the deadly weapon of those days, namely, the bow and the arrow. Morgan chooses to call them deadly because they can be used to shoot the victim even from a distance.

And, who were the people whom the Aryans massacred, conquered and subjugated?

They were a civilized people leading a settled life. They engaged themselves in agriculture in villages and had commercial centers in the cities.

This means that they had rulers among themselves and administrators for collecting taxes. They had fortresses and armies too to protect themselves. They were indeed peaceful people and were certainly aware that peace could not just be bought with peace.

They had therefore a regular army specialized in the art of warfare. And yet, the Aryans conquered them; enslaved them!

What however was the secret of the Aryan conquests?

It was no secret to the Aryans as it could have been to others. How could horses and weapons made of iron be a secret to those who possessed them? The secret therefore does not lie in their possessions but in the way they obtained them for, they could have got them from but their gods.

History is therefore the history of God, as Hegel would like us to understand it in order for us to live in peace and harmony. And, it is natural too that anything that begins with gods has to end with gods.

Let us however return to human history.

In humanly human history, as Karl Marx would criticize his opponents, it is neither possible nor probable that a nomadic people could have domesticated the horse. Domestication of horses presupposes the skills developed in the domestication of various other animals. And, a horse is not a dog either!

Similarly, a people who had not developed considerable skills in the making of the Neolithic tools of stone and wood could never have attained the level of skill required to manufacture iron weapons. This is the irony of the history of iron, the metal! And horses too could not have refused to be domesticated by people other than the Aryans!

However, no skill is necessary for the children of God, or Harijans, as the great Gandhi would choose to translate them, to attain the heights of culture or literature!

The Aryans had therefore been blessed with a great language called Sanskrit by birth. That of course is the boon granted by God to His special children and, as embodiment of reason, He could not have granted them anything less either! And, a gift has to match the status of the grantor too!

That is why Sanskrit had to remain the language of the gods forever, never spoken by the humans who could only pollute It by speaking It. Even the Aryans could only compose songs in It without reducing them to writing. Not that they were ignorant of writing! This is like the Indian Constitution granting fundamental rights to the people of the Indian Union as a gift, as Ambedkar chose to describe it in the Constituent Assembly.

Max Muller would certainly have chosen to disagree with Ambedkar if he had been alive by that time. For, he thought that Sanskrit was a language spoken by the Aryans.

How could Sanskrit have evolved into a great language if not spoken by the Sanskritans, just like the fundamental rights could not have been gifted away by any constitution without the people struggling for it?

Max Muller therefore decided to prove the superiority of Sanskrit in a mundane manner and relied on the Italian goddess of ancient times called Fors Fortuna!

But, unfortunately for Max Muller, She turned out to be the goddess of the Tamils who had settled themselves in Greece and Italy in ancient times, not in hordes but as merchants, as Jawaharlal Nehru had understood them.

Well, Greece and Italy were the first colonies of the Asians in Europe. Starting with the Tamils from the Far South of India, people from Egypt, Middle East and the Far East had all settled in Greece and Italy. The people of Greece and Italy were mostly Asian in those days.

And, mysteriously enough, there have never been a people called Sanskritans in history! And, credibly enough, there could never have been a human language called Sanskrit too!

Max Muller transports Fors Fortuna from Northern France, where She meant misfortune, to Italy where She was the goddess of good fortune. She was the first-born of the gods and She had been conceived of not only as the mother of Jupiter but also His daughter.

According to the language of the Aryan mythology, the first-born of the bright gods is Agriya, that is, the Dawn who brings the precious gifts of light and life to the earth.

Fors Fortuna was therefore the Sun-goddess and Max Muller could easily prove the greatness of Sanskrit if he could derive her name from a Sanskrit root. And, he was fortunate enough to stumble upon the Sanskrit root har meaning to glow. Just like sindhu became hindu in Persia, the Sanskrit har became fors in Italy.

And, Max Muller also called upon those who did not agree with his explanation to establish that fors was the derivation of a root bhar. Fortunately for him, his opponents were not aware of the existence of a language called Tamil and that paruthi (par-u-thi) in Tamil meant the sun, worshipped as Lord Muruhan from ancient times.

However, one thing is very much clear now.

It is in fact a blessing in disguise to be a nomadic people in history. For, no archaeological evidence would be required to prove their heroic and civilized existence on earth, like the Thiravidian (Tamil), Sumerian (Iraq), Egyptian, Persian (Iran) and other civilizations having archaeological evidences in abundance.

The Aryan story is a mystery indeed!

20-01-2007.