As I pointed out yesterday, most of the Open Borders logos that have survived the mass deportations look like underdone or surreptitious swastikas, with their Rotating Juggernaut of Doom common denominator. Some combination of the Cross and the Swastika seems to be a common motif in Open Borders logo, which is, well, interesting, to say the least: perhaps the Open Borders ideology is something of a cross between Christian universalism and Nazi let's-blow-up-the-world radicalism? Or maybe swastika-like imagery just looks awesome to the kind of adolescent male intellects who make up the truest true believers in Open Borders?
As a commenter points out, the above image is a modernized version of the Arrow Cross of the Hungarian party of national socialism, which ruled that unfortunate land in 1944-45.
It's worth noting that this rotating swastika-like look has appealed to the Indo-European mind for thousands of years. So the Open Borders boys are just part of a long skein, vastly predating Hitler, of guys who thought it looks cool.
Before 1871, this image was known in Europe by its Greek name gammadion. But, with the advance in scholarship into the roots of the Indo-European family of languages that had been kicked off by the great philologist Sir William Jones in a 1786 address in Calcutta, the ancient Sanskrit word svastika became more popular in the West.
By the way, Jones was the first to propose an ancient Aryan invasion of India, an idea that remains controversial. Yet, Jones' notion of prehistoric Proto-Indo-European-speaking steppe warriors conquering India and Europe elegantly accounts for much about the linguistic and cultural history of the western two-thirds of Eurasia. (In 2010, Cochran and Harpending updated Jones' concept by suggesting that a genetic mutation offering lactose tolerance may have given the Proto-Indo-European people their competitive edge in warfare. And here's Razib Khan's post explaining the very latest genetic study of the Aryan invasion of India. The invaders of India seem to have the most in common ancestrally with "Georgians and other Caucasians," such as, say, Chechens.)
This Aryan Invasion theory was particularly admired in the first half of the 20th Century, leading Persia to change its name to Iran, and helping inspire Hitler's dreams of conquering much of the world: thus, his choice of the svastika as the symbol of his ambitions. (By the way, is the ancient svastika a reference to the rotating spokes of the wheels of the horse-drawn carts that gave the Aryan invaders such a huge military advantage in mobility? Sounds plausible, but most obvious-sounding etymologies turn out to be completely wrong.)
As we all know, however, Hitlerism was caused by Sir Francis Galton and other Darwinists / eugenicists / evolutionary theorists / statisticians. (Of course, St. Charles of Darwin was wholly untainted by his cousin's ideas).
But, why isn't linguistics and archaeology also tarred by Nazism? Clearly, Hitler's artistic side was immensely influenced by the study of languages that led to Jones' theory of Aryan conquest. So why aren't linguists today constantly denounced for their role in causing the Holocaust in the same way that, say, IQ researchers are denounced?
Granted, Jones was a giant of British empiricism, but then so was Galton. Today's molders of the conventional wisdom about who was responsible for Hitler seem to find Galton's central place in the British tradition to be more of a feature than a bug.
So, Jones' time on the pyre may come, too. A future Stephen Jay Gould may be even now working on his prose style, with the goal of demonizing the study of languages. After all, Sir William Jones recognized patterns, and what's more evil than pattern recognition?
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63 comments:
Can anybody explain why the Aryan invasion of India (and Europe) is controversial? How else did it come to pass that Gaelic and Bengali are clearly cousin languages? Do the skeptics have an explanation for that?
https://blessedaware.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/yin_yang.gif
yin-yang symbol beats all of them.
http://www.wallpaperdev.com/stock/computer-backgrounds-seeds-dandelion-wallpapers.jpg
How about a symbol playing on dandelion seeds blowing?
http://rlv.zcache.com/earth_day_hot_air_balloon_print-r63cc9ecb3c9f46139e7a494a873b3347_wad_8byvr_512.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ElzomyKbw04/TkCbc51_LyI/AAAAAAAABWk/nYHhUcLwFo4/s400/king_kong_vs_godzilla_29.jpg
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120523013757/godzilla/images/1/1d/King_Ghidorah_91.jpg
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120523013757/godzilla/images/1/1d/King_Ghidorah_91.jpg
Cheap tomato perfect logo.
http://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_images_n300/taco_logo.jpg
Dear Baloo:
Here's Razib's latest post on the subject of Indo-Aryan invasions:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2013/08/indo-aryans-dravidians-and-waves-of-admixture-migration/#.Ugq7nWRgaeA
Before the Neue Berliner Mauer went up over at the "Open Borders" (!) contest, I wanted to submit a Reg Smythe "Andy Capp" dustball fight as a proposed logo (yes, satirically). Would you classify the "dustball fight" as a variant swastika?
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uvnk9dcqVbA/0.jpg
star wars light speed. open galaxy.
I've been trying to think up some clever combination typing together the financial bankruptcy of Borders bookstore with the Open Borders fad. The problem is that the cause was Amazon, which is awesome despite it's having benefited for years from an unjustifiable sales-tax advantage.
Of course, now that they want to have cheap one-day-shipping everywhere, they're not going to be able to get out of the tax, so, suddenly, they're in favor of congress imposing it nationally on all their online competitors. But where are they going to get all that plausible-deniability influence in the capital?
Oh, look, Bezos just bought the Post.
http://powertripberkeley.com/wp-content/uploads/redsea/moses-red-sea-movie.jpg
Moses supposes.
"Open Borders ideology is something of a cross between Christian universalism and Nazi let's-blow-up-the-world radicalism?"
Digging through old copies of The Everlasting Man and G.K. Chesterton's letters, he seems to have associated circular, self-referential iconography with Manichean contempt for the material world (i.e., the intellectual tradition encompassing Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and various Gnostic sects like the Albigensians which keep popping up in the West), which he termed "The Mind of Asia". At length:
"It will appear only a jest to say that all religious history has really been a pattern of noughts and crosses. But I do not by noughts mean nothings, but only things that are negative compared with the positive shape or pattern of the other. And though the symbol is of course only a coincidence, it is a coincidence that really does coincide. The mind of Asia can really be represented by a round 0; if not in the sense of a cypher, at least of a circle. The great Asiatic symbol of a serpent with its tail in its mouth is really a very perfect image of a certain idea of unity and recurrence that does indeed belong to the Eastern philosophies and religions. It really is a curve that in one sense includes everything, and in another sense comes to nothing. In that sense it does confess, or rather boast, that all argument is an argument in a circle. And though the figure is but a symbol, we can see how sound is the symbolic sense that produces it, the parallel symbol of the Wheel of Buddha generally called the Swastika. The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve. That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel.
Perhaps, then, the Swastika and other Swastika-like symbols are adopted in the west by people in the process of moving from orthodox Christianity to some superficially related Gnostic mania? Open borders certainly fits the bill, as well as an Aryan Thousand-Year Reich.
"But, with the advance in scholarship into the roots of the Indo-European family of languages that had been kicked off by the great philologist Sir William Jones in a 1786 address in Calcutta..."
It was always very easy for Europeans, especially ones trained in Latin or Greek, to notice that most Indian languages are related to European ones. I remember reading about a 16th century Italian traveler in India who had noticed that. Jones was not the first in this.
...an ancient Aryan invasion of India, an idea that remains controversial.
I think it's mostly controversial among Indians. As if denying that one invasion could make India seem less invasion-prone in general (Persians, Greeks, Moghuls, Arabs, Brits). Numerous pieces of evidence support the Aryan invasion theory. Indian IE speakers share haplotypes with Eastern Europeans (the steppes). The Rigvedas talk about light-skinned invaders lording over dark-skinned natives. the Indus Valley Civ., which seems to have been Dravidian, was destroyed by the newcomers and its territory is today IE-speaking. There is a small Dravidian survivor language in the middle of northern India - another hint that the Dravidian family was once more widespread than it is now.
"a genetic mutation offering lactose tolerance...
A more popular theory states that proto-Indo-Europeans were the first people on Earth who domesticated the horse (ekwos to them). They conquered on horseback.
"leading Persia to change its name to Iran"
Both names have been in use since deep antiquity, though their popularity levels relative to each other have fluctuated. Some think that Ireland's native name (Eire) is related. If this is true (and I don't know if it is), then the original proto-Indo-Europeans, not just their Indo-Persian offshoot, might called themselves something like Arya.
http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/slideshowdisplay.php?slide=9
Bead necklace logo
How white man sold their entire nation for cheap tomato bead necklace.
http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/92208/92208,1242146592,324/stock-photo-fashion-model-with-a-tomato-necklace-30150073.jpg
"and helping inspire Hitler's dreams of conquering much of the world: thus, his choice of the svastika as the symbol of his ambitions.
The Germans have called this symbol hakenkreuz (hooked cross) both during the Nazi period and afterwards. It's only called swastika in English because of the British connection to India.
"So why aren't linguists today constantly denounced for their role in causing the Holocaust.."
Linguists denounce their great predecessors all the time. The great evil that they're atoning for is called prescriptivism. It's the idea that some forms of speech could possibly be better than others. I think John McWhorter has recently stated that Rachel Jeantel's English is exactly as good as his or something like that. That's the party line.
http://www.themusicvoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/buffet5.jpg
"So why aren't linguists today constantly denounced for their role in causing the Holocaust in the same way that, say, IQ researchers are denounced?"
Focusing on language allows purveyors of the conventional wisdom to ignore inconvenient historical migrations. Language is the "good pattern" to race's "bad pattern". It works something like this:
"Oh, England isn't really racially Germanic- only very few Germanic invaders came. It's just their language that spread- like the way that black Haitians speak a language derived from French".
This is perfectly true, and applicable in many cases. Of course, there are also instances like English-speakers in North America, where the native population was more-or-less wiped out. Actually figuring out which historical event is which (most are somewhere in between) is hard work requiring a combination of source research, linguistics, and genetic studies, but most mainstream pundits aren't interested in that hard work.
Can anybody explain why the Aryan invasion of India (and Europe) is controversial?
A horse riding people with no word for elephant, cleanliness religious laws that are clearly to deal with a land where they are not acclimated to, describing the dravidians in racial terms (flat and broad noses)
Ballo, it's controversial because indians don't like the idea anymore than whoop whoop indians here like the idea that europeans were here in great numbers before 1492
http://www.pastposters.com/cw3/assets/product_expanded/(JamieF-DE)__Swarm(1).jpg
Global Swarming.
http://www.pastposters.com/cw3/assets/product_expanded/(JamieF-DE)__Swarm(1).jpg
So could Hitler's OCD obsession with Stalingrad been not only motivated by the Baku oil fields but also historically Aryan lands in Central Asia?
"Linguists denounce their great predecessors all the time. The great evil that they're atoning for is called prescriptivism. It's the idea that some forms of speech could possibly be better than others. I think John McWhorter has recently stated that Rachel Jeantel's English is exactly as good as his or something like that. That's the party line."
-Liberals are just trying to publicly compete against each other for who can appear to have more of some misguided form of noblesse oblige (without having to actually DO anything). Keep that in mind whenever you hear these blatantly stupid statements. No body actually believes them, other than some naive high school and college kids, and minorities who benefit from it.
Its like North Korean women competing for who could cry the most hysterically when Kim Jong Il's funeral procession rolled by. Its all bullsh*t.
>Swastika-like symbols are adopted in the west by people in the process of moving from orthodox Christianity to some superficially related Gnostic mania<
Berman's Coming to Our Senses discusses the gnostic heresy roots of Nazism in an admirably non-hysterical way (Berman is Jewish-left). I don't think he'd agree that orthodox Christianity is only superficially related. Anyone interested in this subject area should pencil this one into the reading list.
I was under the impression that the Aryan invasion theory drives certain types nutty because it hammers shut the coffin on the 'out of Africa' that instead of coming from one magical Afro mother and all people are one race, the races developed independently.
Basically more evil racist if you believe this nonsense.
Since we're talking about linguistics:
There is a guy named Gordon Whittaker who says he found an Indo-European substrate in Sumerian.
Why is this important? The earliest extant currently-readable documents are in Sumerian. Written history begins with the Sumerians about 4,500 years ago. The Sumerian language has not been shown to be related to any other known languages, ancient or modern. Whittaker says that most non-Sumerian-sounding words in Sumerian are Indo-European. He thinks that Indo-Europeans created the ancestor of the cuneiform script and were then assimilated by Sumerians. Think of post-Alexander Greeks being assimilated over centuries in Egypt, Syria, etc.
As I said, Sumerian writing is the earliest extant readable writing in the world. The Vinca symbols are older but they have not been read and may not even be writing. This is getting close to the question of who invented writing.
I've read a couple of Whittaker's papers. I haven't seen any signs of kookiness in them, though admittedly as an amateur I'm far from being the best judge of this.
Re: Aryan invasion and caucasians
Razib's summary of the recently published article says that the closest living relatives of the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) component of the Indian population are the Georgians and affiliated Caucasian peoples. This has to do with an invasion prior to the Aryan one, which led to the creation of the dravidian civilization of the Indus valley. The (White) ANI met with and mixed the Ancestral South Indians (ASI) out of existence.
The ASI seem to have been some seriously primitive hunter gatheres maybe like the Negrito or the Andamanese.
I wonder if the ASI are closely related to those people known to classical physical anthropology as the Veddoids.
No, not open borders - open border, singular, because what the neo-feudalists are fighting for is unilateral disarmament. They are free to come here, but we are not free to go there.
Even if open borders did work both ways, it's almost irrelevant: I have the right to be a permanent guest in your 10,000 square foot Palm Beach mansion, and you're free to stay in my cockroach-infested single-wide in Detroit.
There's an old saying that no one washes a rental car. Well, no one washes a rental country, either. If the USA doesn't belong to anyone, then why take care of it, why improve it, and why defend it?
In J.P Mallory's "In Search of the Indo-Europeans", the epilogue "The Aryan Myth" does denounce 19th century linguists and other intellectuals for appropriating the word "Aryan" from the Indians and Iranians and using this to justify racism and imperialism.
And J.P Mallory is an "invasionist". He believes the Aryan invasion of India is practically an historical fact. He similarly believes the "Indo-Europeans" invaded Europe and eventually founded the Greek, Roman and later Indo-European civilizations. He just uses "Aryan" for the Indians and Iranians, not for the European Indo-Europeans.
Also, the term "Aryan invasion" may be a little misleading. It may be better to think of the phenomenon as "Aryan invasions", since ancient northern India appears to have been subject to wave after wave of fair Aryan invaders speaking closely related languages.
It is also harder to deny this if you speak of it in the plural, since these waves of Aryan invaders would continue with peoples related to the ancient Persians and Afghans(like the White Huns, Scythians and other Aryan groups), and we start passing into undeniable history. Why deny the somewhat more ancient invasions but not the invasions that took place a little later?
The Persians themselves would later invade and conquer, and the core of the Mughal army(a lot later) was Afghan. It just so bothers some Indian nationalists that their British conquerors were Indo-Europeans(it seems without exception, ALL of India's empire-builders and unifiers were Indo-European people, often foreign or of recent foreign ancestry - The British Raj was by far the largest and perhaps the most stable political unit to have ever existed in India, with the entire Subcontinent and even beyond controlled by one government for the first time).
As an aside, the "Jat" ethnic sub-group among the Punjabis and some related groups are sometimes said to be descended from the ancient Scythians(Sakas) who invaded northern India in the 2nd century BCE, and were cousins of the Persians. Sikhism, which is only around 400 years old seems to have originated mostly among Jat Hindu soldiers.
The Aryan invasions are supported by linguistic, archaeological, historical, and above all, genetic evidence. The genetic links with eastern Europeans are still clearly visible in some parts of northern India where some natives have blue eyes and fair skin.
ogunsiron,
I believe the "Veddoids" are now called "Adivasi" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adivasi
These are the original people of India, analogous to the Native Americans of the Americas.
You're also correct about even the pre-Aryan population of northern India having a strong caucasian component, possibly related to the Elamites of pre-Aryan Iran. They were probably the ancestors of the modern day Dravidian speakers of southern India, though it is difficult to know for sure.
They were invaders too, though less is known about them and their invasion or invasions since there much fewer of them and much fewer people in India in general at the time, compared to the Aryan invasions.
The ancient Dravidians invaded lands with vast forests and wilderness, and few people, whereas the later Aryans invaded areas which already had some level of civilization and cities(largely abandoned). It is still controversial if the Aryans put an end to the Indus Valley civilization, or if it was due to natural disaster.
Can anybody explain why the Aryan invasion of India (and Europe) is controversial
It's not controversial. Steve wants it to be controversial.
Well, comparative linguistics is frequently denounced as racist.
One of those Open Borders symbols is precisely an Arrow Cross, the symbol of Hungary's Nazi-allied regime.
Hey Steve,
Since most people living in the region from Northwest Europe through the Middle East all share a common ancestral lineage going back to the Proto-Indo-European culture, they have a fairly similar genetic background. Yet you see a range of mean IQ scores.
Doesn't that mean that environmental factors are far, far more important than genetic factors in explaining the gap in IQ scores between, say, Sweden and Afganistan?
This just seems obvious. The convergence in IQ scores between the U.K. and Republic of Ireland over the past few decades illustrate this point even more clearly.
By the way, William Jones is admirable for being one of the few lawyers to make a major contribution to scholarship outside of his professional field. Maybe the greatest besides Judge Richard Posner. Doctors and clergy have us soundly beat there.
"A future Stephen Jay Gould may be even now working on his prose style, with the goal of demonizing the study of languages."
The first one never did. His prose style was awful.
I thought I read somewhere long ago that the original widespread use of the (whatever it was called way back when) was to indicate cooperation, a la crossed hands. Cross your hands at the wrist. Then raise your hands so one arm is straight up. So the symbol is kind of a rendition of a team putting their hands together before a game. Was this some speculation or is this a known fact?
I wonder if there were old, simple pantomime trade languages along what became the silk road, or similar natural trade routes, that might have spread sign languages? Did Amerindian sign languages have a common symbol for cooperation?
The conversation has been interesting. Now can you all leave the planet so I can be alone?
Neil Templeton
From Wikipedia on William Jones:
"Jones was the first to propose a racial division of India involving an Aryan invasion but at that time there was insufficient evidence to support it. It was an idea later taken up by British administrators such as Herbert Hope Risley but remains disputed today.[6]"
I just put in "controversial" because I saw here "remains disputed today" and didn't have time to develop a better informed opinion on the controversy. So, if you dispute Jones' Aryan Invasion theory, well, I acknowledged it's controversial.
One of those 'open borders' symbols looks just like the symbol the 'chaos magicians' use for themselves.
Basically chaos magicians use all sorts of 'unorthodox' techniques to achieve their goals - hence the use of the term 'chaos' in their title.
Just about says it all really.
Recently, some geneticists claim to have found the signature of the Aryan invasion of India with the distribution of the r1a1a y DNA haplogroup. Basically, its frequency peaks in two centers, north India and east Europe. The idea is that European type mt DNA is hardly ever found in India, indicating that the Aryans were strongly patrilinear and spread their genes with local women. This is also hypothesised as the beginning of the caste system.
But, why isn't linguistics and archaeology also tarred by Nazism? Clearly, Hitler's artistic side was immensely influenced by the study of languages that led to Jones' theory of Aryan conquest. So why aren't linguists today constantly denounced for their role in causing the Holocaust in the same way that, say, IQ researchers are denounced?
One productive line of attack for latter-day Goulds would be to point out that The Journal of Indo-European Studies, which is apparently the leading academic journal of IE linguistics, was founded by Roger Pearson, an academic and a far-right activist. It's interesting that that journal appears to have been spared the pariah-like treatment that another of Pearson's journals, Mankind Quarterly, frequently gets. But perhaps that will change, too. Indian nationalists (at least the Dravidian sorts) hate the Aryan invasion theory, which is supported by mainstream linguistics. The increasing de-Westernization of humanities means that historical theories and facts that hurt the feelings of non-Westerners will be pushed aside as racist.
See 'The horse, the wheel and language' by David W Anthony.
The consensus is that the Aryan's were originally from what is now, roughly, modern day Ukraine.
He's a Yank by the way.
The Aryan Invasion theory remains controversial in (many circles in) India because it was used as a post hoc justification for imperialism, and the colonization of India, by the British. Essentially they were saying that the British were not doing anything bad because it was the destiny of Indians to be perpetually invaded and ruled by light-skinned invaders. The British were following in the footsteps of the glorious Aryans!
This likely served a dual purpose: it mollified the liberals back home who were starting to get ambivalent about the imperial project, and it was a body blow to the psyche of the Indian masses, who were (and probably still are) historically illiterate. In retrospect, this was, and remains, a silly argument. As if past invasions can be the only justifications for present and future ones! Every country and culture has been invaded, destroyed, and reshaped since time immemorial. The Indian borderlands have offered some of the fiercest resistance ever offered to invaders (ref: Alexander in Punjab), and core aspects of the old Indo-European culture survive to this day in South Asia, when it has been all but wiped out in the rest of the world. But then, making nuanced arguments is hard in modern India, especially in the public domain, and people get touch about the Aryan invasion theory (even though it's likely a fact) because they buy into the 19th century British argument and then go into denial.
"Razib's summary of the recently published article says that the closest living relatives of the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) component of the Indian population are the Georgians and affiliated Caucasian peoples."
But how does this account for the fact that Georgian and the rest of the Caucasian language family are completely separate from the Indo-European language family?
But, why isn't linguistics and archaeology also tarred by Nazism?
Indiana ... Jones?
The arrow cross is also the alchemical and Warhammer 40K symbol for chaos.
These logos do not look like swastikas. What now for the psuedo-intellectual blather about the appeal of swastikaesque logos to "the western mind"?
I dont' see any "Aryans" in Razib's post. What we have are Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians, both of whom lived on the subcontinent long before any posited invasion by mainstream scholars. In any case, if Indians are all mixed up, as he suggests, then the politics that informs the invasion (whitey over-lording brown skinned folk) is pretty much defenestrated. Indians are an ancient mixture of racial groups - in the way Brazilians are a modern mixture of racial groups.
The book Black Athena by Martin Bernal is a politically motivated attempt to minimise the achievements of the ancient Greeks on the basis of some atrociously bad historical linguistics. See, for instance, this assessment of it by the distinguished linguist (and race realist) Geoffrey Sampson.
http://www.grsampson.net/CBernal.html
/* This likely served a dual purpose: it mollified the liberals back home who were starting to get ambivalent about the imperial project, and it was a body blow to the psyche of the Indian masses, who were (and probably still are) historically illiterate. */
If "historically illiterate" means "masses didn't have proper education", the author is misinformed.
Read " The Beautiful Tree" by Dharampal. He had written this account based on British archives to demolish the lie that Hindus/Indians were illiterate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharampal#Historical_research_into_18th_and_early_19th_century_Indian_society
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/beautifultree.pdf
By the actions of the British the true education of the Punjab was crippled, checked and is nearly destroyed; opportunities for its healthy revival and development were either neglected or perverted.
- Dr Leitner, an English college principal at Lahore
One of those is an infringement (I guess) of the old Lucent logo
I think it's mostly controversial among Indians. As if denying that one invasion could make India seem less invasion-prone in general (Persians, Greeks, Moghuls, Arabs, Brits)."
You are making a false assumption that Indians are disputing the Aryan invasion to prove that they were not invaded.Indeed it is not just false but stupid.But that is to be expected from someone who singles out India for being invaded and lists a bunch of invaders spanning from classical,medieval and modern eras to further his stupid point
Numerous pieces of evidence support the Aryan invasion theory. Indian IE speakers share haplotypes with Eastern Europeans (the steppes). "
That can also mean a reverse migration OUT of India.It is pretty nonsensical to assume that the end of the Ice Age.Central Asia would be a booming population while verdant lands like India would be relatively uninhabited and undeveloped.
The Rigvedas talk about light-skinned invaders lording over dark-skinned natives."
No they do not. They speak of forces of light defeating forces of darkness.Only to idiot supremacist Europeans can this be racial
the Indus Valley Civ., which seems to have been Dravidian, was destroyed by the newcomers and its territory is today IE-speaking."
THere is zero evidence to show that IVC was either Dravidian or Aryan as racial type has not been determined and neither has the script been deciphered.
Most likely it was a mix of Sumerian/Elamite and North Indian civilizations judging from the style of architechture and religious symbols
There is a small Dravidian survivor language in the middle of northern India - another hint that the Dravidian family was once more widespread than it is now. "
Yes but this can also that the Dravidians were the invaders not the Aryans.
.....
Can anybody explain why the Aryan invasion of India (and Europe) is controversial?
A horse riding people with no word for elephant, cleanliness religious laws that are clearly to deal with a land where they are not acclimated to, describing the dravidians in racial terms (flat and broad noses)"
Indra the pre eminent Vedic god rides a white elephant.How do you assume the cleanliness laws were there to deal with a sudden change in climate.That is just nonsense.
As for flat/broad noses, another silly mistranslation. The word is anasa or noseless.
It has been applied to Dasas/Dahyus ,a precursor to Iranian people who the last time I checked are not Negroid.
In Indian culture, cutting off ones nose was a symbol of humiliation.Even today , a family whose daughter who gets pregnant out of wedlock or a son who gets caught stealing will claim that their nose been cut off in plain view of society
Ballo, it's controversial because indians don't like the idea anymore than whoop whoop indians here like the idea that europeans were here in great numbers before 1492"
I love how Eurocentric commentators have a problem with Indian nativism but also believe that Native Americans were preceeded by Caucasian types.
Whats common to both these cherished beliefs? Whitey deserves to be wherever he wants(Aryan invasion was used to justify the British conquest and the Kennewick man gave whites a chance to whine about dispossesion!)
How else did it come to pass that Gaelic and Bengali are clearly cousin languages?"
Clearly? I wasnt aware that this particular relation was that obvious unless you are being sarcastic! I know you are the comedy guy and all but please note its hard to get sarcasm online.
Isn't it possible ,there was not so much a movement of peoples (North Indians may be Caucasoid but clearly not Nordic as the European peoples) but a transference of culture- language ,religion,rituals etc. What is Greek religion but watered down Vedic pantheon?
What are Celtic rites with tree worship but the common practices of revering ancestral groves seen in India even today?
Hindu's 2nd day of Diwali where the god of Death Yama visits earth roughly corresponds to Samhain.The only reason the dates differ(sometimes overlap sometime lag by a fortnight) is due to India using a lunar and Western world using a solar calendar to observe Halloween.
Swastika symbol is really not that complicated, it was used by Chinese ,Mongolians,Tibetans,Native Americans,Neolithic Europeans and what have you.
It is not really indicative or any race,blonde,black or yellow.
Solar symbols are not unique as worship of elements and astronomical was always present in any religion
Similarly the star of David is found even in Islamic motifs as well as Hindu tantra. A hexagram isnt indicative of Jewish presence the same way swastikas do not hint at a blonde blue eyed people as historical illiterates like Hitler and his ilk liked to believe
It is also harder to deny this if you speak of it in the plural, since these waves of Aryan invaders would continue with peoples related to the ancient Persians and Afghans(like the White Huns, Scythians and other Aryan groups), and we start passing into undeniable history. Why deny the somewhat more ancient invasions but not the invasions that took place a little later?"
Scythians may have been Persian speakers but they werent considered Aryan by the Persians.And who is denying the later invasions?
The Persians themselves would later invade and conquer, and the core of the Mughal army(a lot later) was Afghan."
Which Persians-the Sassanids. They did invade the most "Aryan" northwestern India but were continually thwarted by the darker Indians of Central India!
Later your beloved Persians would get their ass kicked by shoeless Bedouins from the Arabian peninsula.Furthermore Mughals werent Aryan but Turk.And Pathans were Turkicized in culture (though not in physignomy) hence the choice of last name Khan which is not IE.
It is one thing to conquer on your own but another to be a hired mercernary of another people. Using your logic I should deduce that Indians conquered Europe in WWI and WWII since they made up a good chunk of the British army!
It just so bothers some Indian nationalists that their British conquerors were Indo-Europeans"
Where do you get this nugget of wisdom? Indians dont see British as fellow Indo Europeans but as white foreigners. Most Indians are blissfully unaware of any (vague) commonality between English and their languages.Stop projecting your ignorance on Indians please.
(it seems without exception, ALL of India's empire-builders and unifiers were Indo-European people, often foreign or of recent foreign ancestry - The British Raj was by far the largest and perhaps the most stable political unit to have ever existed in India, with the entire Subcontinent and even beyond controlled by one government for the first time). "
Absolute nonsense. British empire was a net destructive force which ravaged its economy,man power and self confidence.
Mauryas,Guptas and Pala rule also roughly corresponded to British dominion.Not to mention the Mughals and Marathas which the British simply coopted.
And Mauryas lasted a lot longer than the British.
And unlike the British ,it was well liked by the Indians.
As an aside, the "Jat" ethnic sub-group among the Punjabis and some related groups are sometimes said to be descended from the ancient Scythians(Sakas) who invaded northern India in the 2nd century BCE, and were cousins of the Persians.
Persians loathed the Scythians and actually grouped them with Turks and Huns despite being Persian speakers.
Jats traditionally claim Chandravanshi heritage(descent from Lord Krishna) and others directly from Shiva when he slit her locks(jata) to create Virabhadra and Kali.
THis Scythian ancestry business is a new trend which was conceieved and encouraged by the British.What a coincidence!
Sikhism, which is only around 400 years old seems to have originated mostly among Jat Hindu soldiers."
Who the heck are you and creating such misinformation?
Jat was founded by Khatris, a Kshatriya group disarmed by Mughals. And the earlier Gurus initially sought converts with that and associated groups.
Jats were a peasant ,downtrodden people and didnt turn to Sikhism until Guru Gobind Singh militarized this pacific sect and in turn the Jats
I believe the "Veddoids" are now called "Adivasi" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adivasi
These are the original people of India, analogous to the Native Americans of the Americas.
You're also correct about even the pre-Aryan population of northern India having a strong caucasian component, possibly related to the Elamites of pre-Aryan Iran. They were probably the ancestors of the modern day Dravidian speakers of southern India, though it is difficult to know for sure.
They were invaders too, though less is known about them and their invasion or invasions since there much fewer of them and much fewer people in India in general at the time, compared to the Aryan invasions.
The ancient Dravidians invaded lands with vast forests and wilderness, and few people, whereas the later Aryans invaded areas which already had some level of civilization and cities(largely abandoned). It is still controversial if the Aryans put an end to the Indus Valley civilization, or if it was due to natural disaster. "
At last , a somewhat sensible and informed post!
There is little evidence to denote who was responsible for IVC. As I mentioned, it was mostly likely a fusion of Elamite/Sumerian and "Aryans".
It is quite possible, Aryans were there first and Dravidians were the invaders from Iran.
Indeed for all the ranting for Tamil supremacist gasbags, there is little evidence for a civilization in the deep south before 1000BC. And these were megalith type civilizations.
Ancient descriptions of Tamils are not dissimilar to Assyrian kings in their cruelty,violence,aggression,cult of heroism and notion of king as the ultimate god in contrast to North Indian cultures.
Dravidian invasion would explain the presence of Brahui in Baluchistan.
But then again ,they could just be a remnant of the Gypsy exodus of India (gypsy are related ethnically more to South Indian and Central Indian than Northwestern populations)
The "Aryan Invasion" theory of India is a strange thing. All sorts of places have been invaded by all sorts of people - so there is nothing unique about the invasion of India by steppe tribesmen.
Historically, the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian Steppes were always the most fierce of all the barbarian tribes anywhere in the world. Some would balk at this idea and point to the Zulus but there have been very few tribes that have matched the destruction wrought by the Huns and the Mongols.
The vastness of the Eurasian steppe, the total absence of any natural obstacles (thereby not providing a nomadic people with any protection from attacks), the reliance on horses to launch attacks over vast distances, the use of the reflex bow, the extreme harshness of the winters on the Steppe (Germans found this out the hard way in the early 1940s; the Steppe winters are in the orders of magnitude way worse than anything in Europe) - these factors and a few others made the Eurasian nomads particularly dangerous in all forms of warfare. Despite their warlike nature, even the Goths and the Vandals struggled to stave off the Huns. It was a very difficult task.
I would venture to say (based on my experiences in North India) that the vast majority of Indians in the north (inclduing in the Punjab) are part Mongolic. This makes sense. Even the "Moghuls" that ruled India for two centuries were basically Mongols.
The Aryan Invasion theory remains controversial in (many circles in) India because it was used as a post hoc justification for imperialism, and the colonization of India, by the British. Essentially they were saying that the British were not doing anything bad because it was the destiny of Indians to be perpetually invaded and ruled by light-skinned invaders. The British were following in the footsteps of the glorious Aryans!
Some British intellectuals may have justified it this way but the most eloquent ones did not.
The most vocal supporter of British imperialism (by far) in Britain in the 20th century was Winston Churchill. And he never justified it on the basis of the Aryan invasion theory. Here is a speech by Churchill on India:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/105-our-duty-in-india
>Anonymous: If "historically illiterate" means "masses didn't have proper education", the author is misinformed.
I'm the OP, and that's not what I meant. I guess it was a poor choice of words. I should have said "historically ignorant" or "largely unaware of one's history". The people were very socially conscious but their historical knowledge was a jumble of legends. There was no concept of accurate timelines. A lot of the BCE-era history was discovered for the first time in 19th century archaeological excavations; even most elites in India were unaware of all the stuff that got dug up.
>Dr. Van Nostrand: Dravidian invasion would explain the presence of Brahui in Baluchistan.
But then again ,they could just be a remnant of the Gypsy exodus of India (gypsy are related ethnically more to South Indian and Central Indian than Northwestern populations).
Where did you get this gem from? Gypsies speak Romani, which lies properly in the Indo-Aryan language family with no Dravidian features. Even ethnically I believe they have been linked to the nomadic populations in Rajasthan. That their origin is in North-West India is quite widely accepted.
Some British intellectuals may have justified it this way but the most eloquent ones did not.
The most vocal supporter of British imperialism (by far) in Britain in the 20th century was Winston Churchill. And he never justified it on the basis of the Aryan invasion theory. Here is a speech by Churchill on India"
You will forgive for being tired of oratory of gasbags like Churchill.
Regarding Churchill and the AIT as justification for imperialism
You couldnt be more wrong. He did allude to it wholeheartedly
....
WINSTON CHURCHILL'S SPEECH ON THE SECOND READING OF THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA BILL, February 11, 1935 (Excerpts)
https://www.history.ubc.ca/faculty/friedrichs/sites/default/files/documents/Documents/Additional_Required_Readings/churchil.doc
"...None of it is true. All of it is utterly untrue. We are no more aliens in India than the Mohammedans or the Hindus themselves. We have as good a right to be in India as anyone there except, perhaps, the Depressed Classes, who are the original stock."
So it is pretty obvious what he believes- Indian history is nothing more than a series of invaders coming in and making it their home and India is really a hodge podge of these peoples with no common thread.So therefore it is perfectly moral for the British to come along and set up shop as well.
He hypocrtically sheds crocodile tears for the "Depressed classes" -a people which he despised the most due to their inability to assert themselves on the military,economic or social scene.
He and other British colonials admired power like heartist/roissyian teenage girls.If Churchill was a woman , he would be called a star f*cker.
So your so called "elouent" may not have been as vocal about it but the mindset is the same and every now and then the most benign mask of the Indophile Indologist slips to reveal the ugly Victorian supremacist underneath.
To say nothing of Churchill! Who was ugly both inside and out!
Where did you get this gem from? Gypsies speak Romani, which lies properly in the Indo-Aryan language family with no Dravidian features. Even ethnically I believe they have been linked to the nomadic populations in Rajasthan. That their origin is in North-West India is quite widely accepted."
We have a saying in India...There are some people after you narrate the entire Ramayana(our national epic) to them, they will ask you who Rama(the hero of said epic) was
I guess the equivalent for you would be after listening to the Odyssey , you would enquire who Odysseus was
If you are puzzled as to why one ethnic group speaks the language of another group,then seriously what good are you.
Also what are "Dravidian" features vs "Aryan" features.Dravidian and Aryan are recognized as more linguistic than racial groups
Anyway evidence for gypsies of South Indian origin
1.http://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/more-on-gypsy-origins.html
his study of Romani Y-DNA confirms prior Y-DNA studies suggesting a possible gypsy link to South India as an at least partial Gyspy urheimat, despite linguistic ties to the province of Punjab in Northwest India, and mtDNA evidence that could be places other than Punjab as well.
Since the mtDNA and linguistic evidence does not show the same kind of strong Southern Indian affinity, this suggests a possible male dominated migration from South India to Northwest India (probably Punjab) who marry local woman and then continue their migration through West Asia to Europe.
2. I think it is more Rajasthan than Punjab as their traditional clothing and dancing resembles Rajasthan more than Punjab
3. There are "Dravidian" influences in Rajasthan all the way from 3000 BC since their first migration/invasion into "Aryan" territory and participation in the Saraswati civlization
4.Rajasthan was invaded later in the 6th century by Chalukyas and Rashtrakutas,two South Indian dynasties who were the ancestors of many Rajput clans
5.The Romani language is related closest to Sinhala ,an Indo Aryan language spoken in Sri Lanka with a great deal of "Dravidian" influence in vocabulary and grammar
>I guess the equivalent for you would be after listening to the Odyssey , you would enquire who Odysseus was
No, thank you. The Ramayana saying works for me. I'm Indian too; not sure why you thought otherwise.
>If you are puzzled as to why one ethnic group speaks the language of another group,then seriously what good are you.
Leaving my personal worth aside, I now get what you were trying to convey when you tried to link the Brahui people with gypsies, though I think that theory is still a stretch with little evidence to support it.
Anonymous 8/14 wrote:
If "historically illiterate" means "masses didn't have proper education", the author is misinformed.
Read "The Beautiful Tree" by Dharampal. He had written this account based on British archives to demolish the lie that Hindus/Indians were illiterate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharampal#Historical_research_into_18th_and_early_19th_century_Indian_society
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/beautifultree.pdf
By the actions of the British the true education of the Punjab was crippled, checked and is nearly destroyed; opportunities for its healthy revival and development were either neglected or perverted.
- Dr Leitner, an English college principal at Lahore
Of course that is all sentimental religious/ nationalist nonsense. Historically most Indians were illiterate and those who weren't had read little other than useless religious texts. At independence only 13% of Indians could read, which was then the highest proportion achieved in Indian history (thanks in no small measure to Sunday School the English had achieved 50+% literacy by 1840). However, around a quarter of Indians are still unlettered today.
As the intellectual giant Macaulay explained in 1835:
[11] ... But when we pass from [Sanscrit and Arabic] works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same. [...]
[13] The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those of Europe differ for the worse, and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of treacle and seas of butter. [...]
[31] ...to encourage the study of a [Sanscrit and Arabic religious] literature, admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature inculcated the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly preserved. It is confirmed that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion. We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those who are engaged in the work of converting the natives to Christianity. And while we act thus, can we reasonably or decently bribe men, out of the revenues of the State, to waste their youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ass or what texts of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat?
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