Indo-Aryan Migration - History and Political Background

History and Political Background

The terms North Indian and South Indian are ethno-linguistic categories, with North Indian corresponding to Indo-European-speaking peoples and South Indian corresponding to Dravidian-speaking; however, because of admixture, these two groups often overlap. Certain sample populations of upper caste North Indians show affinity to Central Asian caucasians, whereas southern Indian Brahmins' relationship is further. In 19th century Indo-European studies, the language of the Rigveda was the most archaic Indo-European language known to scholars, indeed the only records of Indo-European that could reasonably claim to date to the Bronze Age. This "primacy" of Sanskrit inspired some scholars, such as Friedrich Schlegel, to assume that the locus of the Proto-Indo-European Urheimat (primary homeland) had been in India, with the other dialects spread to the west by historical migration. This was however never a mainstream position even in the 19th century. Most scholars assumed a homeland either in Europe or in Western Asia, and Sanskrit must in this case have reached India by a language transfer from west to east, in a movement described in terms of invasion by 19th century scholars such as Max Müller. With the 20th century discovery of Bronze-Age attestations of Indo-European (Anatolian, Mycenaean Greek), Vedic Sanskrit lost its special status as the most archaic Indo-European language known.

The Indus Valley civilization (IVC) was discovered in the 1920s. The discovery of the Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Lothal sites changed the theory from a migration of "advanced" Aryan people towards a "primitive" aboriginal population to a migration of nomadic people into an advanced urban civilization, comparable to the Germanic migrations after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. The decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation at precisely the period in history for which the Indo-Aryan migration had been assumed, provides independent support of the linguistic scenario. This argument is associated with the mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro as the victims of conquest wars, and who famously stated that the god "Indra stands accused" of the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

In the later 20th century, ideas were refined along with data accrual, and migration and acculturation were seen as the methods whereby Indo-Aryans spread into northwest India around 1500 BC. These changes were thought to be in line with changes in thinking about language transfer in general, such as the migration of the Greeks into Greece (between 2100 and 1600 BC) and their adoption of a syllabic script, Linear B, from the pre-existing Linear A, with the purpose of writing Mycenaean Greek, or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe (in stages between 2200 and 1300 BC).

Recent genetic research indicates that the Indian subcontinent was subjected to a series of massive Indo-European migrations about 1500 BC. The Austro-Asiatic tribals are hypothesized to have been the earliest inhabitants of India, while incoming Indo-European tribes may have displaced Dravidian-speaking tribals southward. However, the study's authors posit that a major influx into India occurred from the Northeast as well. It has also been noted that there is an underlying unity of present-day female lineages in India, and that historical gene flow has led to the obliteration of congruence between genetic and cultural affinities.