Indo-Aryan peoples

Indo-European ethnolinguistic groups primarily concentrated in South Asia

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India

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Total population~1.5 billion[citation needed]Regions with significant populations Indiaover 911 million[1] Pakistanover 233 million[2] Bangladeshover 160 million[3]   Nepalover 26 million Sri Lankaover 14 million Myanmarover 1 million Mauritiusover 725,400 Maldivesover 300,000[4] Bhutanover 240,000LanguagesIndo-Aryan languagesReligionIndian 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 Indo-European peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent. 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 Indo-Aryan peoples were known to be closely related and belonging to the same Indo-Iranian group that have resided north of the Indus River; an evident connection in cultural, linguistic, and historical ties. Today, the Indo-Aryan language speakers are found south of the Indus, across the modern-day regions of Bangladesh, Nepal, eastern-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and northern-India.[10]

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.

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.

While the Indo-Aryan linguistic group occupies mainly northern parts of India, genetically, all South Asians across the Indian subcontinent are descendants of a mix of South Asian hunter-gatherers, Iranian hunter-gatherers, and Central Asian steppe pastoralists in varying proportion.[21][22] Additionally, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burmese speaking people contributed to the genetic make-up of South Asia.[23]

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.[24][25][26][27][28]

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. ^ a b c 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. ^ Basu et al. 2016.
  24. ^ Witzel 2001, p. 95.
  25. ^ Jamison 2006.
  26. ^ Guha 2007, p. 341.
  27. ^ Fosse 2005, p. 438.
  28. ^ Olson 2016, p. 136.

Sources

  • Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse The Wheel And Language. How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World. Princeton University Press.
  • Basu A, Sarkar-Roy N, Majumder PP (February 2016). "Genomic reconstruction of the history of extant populations of India reveals five distinct ancestral components and a complex structure". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 113 (6): 1594–9. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113.1594B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1513197113. PMC 4760789. PMID 26811443.
  • Beckwith, Christopher I. (16 March 2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400829941. Retrieved 30 December 2014.
  • Bryant, Edwin (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513777-9.
  • Erdosy, George, ed. (2012), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, Walter de Gruyter
  • Fosse, Lars Martin (2005), "ARYAN PAST AND POST-COLONIAL PRESENT. The polemics and politics of indigenous Aryanism", in Bryant, Edwin; Patton, Laurie L. (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and inference in Indian history, Routledge
  • Guha, Sudeshna (2007), "Review. Reviewed Work: The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History by Edwin F. Bryant, Laurie Patton", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 17 (3): 340–343, doi:10.1017/S135618630700733X, S2CID 163092658
  • Jamison, Stephanie W. (2006). "The Indo-Aryan controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history (Book review)" (PDF). Journal of Indo-European Studies. 34: 255–261.
  • Kuz'mina, Elena Efimovna (2007), J. P. Mallory (ed.), The Origin of the Indo-Iranians, Brill, ISBN 978-9004160545
  • Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L. (1999). The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC. Cambridge University Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN 0-5214-7030-7. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
  • Mallory, JP. 1998. "A European Perspective on Indo-Europeans in Asia". In The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern and Central Asia. Ed. Mair. Washington DC: Institute for the Study of Man.
  • Narasimhan, Vagheesh M.; Patterson, N.J.; Moorjani, Priya; Rohland, Nadin; et al. (2019), "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia", Science, 365 (6457): 7487, doi:10.1126/science.aat7487, PMC 6822619, PMID 31488661
  • Olson, Carl (2016). Religious Ways of Experiencing Life: A Global and Narrative Approach. Routledge.
  • Reich, David; Thangaraj, Kumarasamy; Patterson, Nick; Price, Alkes L.; Singh, Lalji (2009), "Reconstructing Indian population history", Nature, 461 (7263): 489–494, Bibcode:2009Natur.461..489R, doi:10.1038/nature08365, ISSN 0028-0836, PMC 2842210, PMID 19779445
  • Trubachov, Oleg N., 1999: Indoarica, Nauka, Moscow.
  • Witzel, Michael (2001), "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts" (PDF), Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, 7 (3): 1–115
  • Witzel, Michael (2005), "Indocentrism", in Bryant, Edwin; Patton, Laurie L. (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and inference in Indian history, Routledge

External links

  • Horseplay at Harappa – People Fas Harvard – Harvard University (PDF)
  • A tale of two horses – Frontline
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