Aryan race

The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept which emerged in the late 19th-century to describe people of Proto-Indo-European heritage as a racial grouping. Anthropological, historical and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.

A

The Aryan race theory is so absurd that it ought to have been dead long ago. But far from being dead, the theory has a considerable hold upon the people. . . . The first explanation is to be found in the support which the theory receives from Brahmin scholars. This is a very strange phenomenon. As Hindus, they should ordinarily show a dislike for the Aryan theory with its express avowal of the superiority of the European races over the Asiatic races. But the Brahmin scholar has not only no such aversion but most willingly hails it. The reasons are obvious. The Brahmin believes in the two nation theory. He claims to be the representative of the Aryan race, and he regards the rest of the Hindus as descendants of the non-Aryans. The theory helps him establish his kinship with the European races and share their arrogance and their superiority. . . . it helps him maintain and justify his overlordship over the non-Brahmins.
- BR Ambedkar, quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 2

C

Though it were proved that there was never an Aryan race in the past, yet we desire that in the future there may be one. This is the decisive standpoint for men of action.
- Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899), vol. 1, p. 266. Quoted in The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, p. 530.

The word ariane, Aryan, had taken on an equally bizarre meaning when applied to Fascist Italy: a swarthy Southern Catholic was Aryan whereas a blond and blue-eyed Milanese Jew was not. . . . Fascist words certainly pushed [the] ridiculous to the limit: one could become Aryan, which would seem to be biologically impossible. Children of mixed marriages who had been baptized by a certain time were officially Aryan . . . But trying to be Aryan or discriminated had a price . . . The idea of an Italian Aryan race, already laughable was rendered more absurd by the possibility of being Aryanized. All one had to do was prove that one's father was not Jewish but Aryan and one did that by claiming that one was born as a result of one's mother's adultery.
- Kate Cohen, The Neppi Modona Diaries: Reading Jewish Survival Through My Italian Family By Kate Cohen . quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines

G

The prophecy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus.
- Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Goebbels' diaries 27 March 1942

K

Both Gobineau and Chamberlain transformed the Aryan concept, which had its humble origins in philological research conducted by Jones in Calcutta at the end of the eighteenth century, into the political and racial doctrines of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
- Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, quoted from Malhotra, R., Nīlakantan, A. (Princeton, N.J.). (2011). Breaking India: Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines Kennedy, Kenneth A.R. ‘Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?’ Vol. 1, in The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia: Language, material culture and ethnicity Vol 1 of Indian philology and South Asian studies , by Kenneth A.R. Kennedy. Walter de Gruyter, 1995.

How could one recognize an Aryan, living or dead, when the biological criteria for Aryanness are non-existent?
- Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, “Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?” in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy,.,p. 61.
- quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009

M

To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar.
- Max Müller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas: And the Home of the Aryas (1888), ch. 6. As quoted in The New Yale Book of Quotations, p. 578.

There are Aryan and Semitic languages, [but] it goes against all rules of logic to speak, without an expressed or implied qualification, of an Aryan race, of Aryan blood, or Aryan skulls.
- Max Muller, (1880, cited in Leach 1990: 234 Leach, E., 1990. “Aryan Invasions Over Four Millennia.” In Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney. Stanford, CA: Stanford: University Press.). quoted in Jim Shaffer. South Asian archaeology and the myth of Indo-Aryan invasions in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge

N

The Latin malus ["bad") (beside which I set melas ["black"]) may designate the common man as the dark-colored, above all as the black-haired man ("hie niger est-"), as the pre-Aryan occupant of the soil of Italy who was distinguished most obviously from the blond, that is Aryan, conqueror race by his color; Gaelic, at any rate, offers us a precisely similar case- fin (for example in the name Fin-Gal), the distinguished word for nobility, finally for the good, noble, pure, originally meant the blond-headed, in contradistinction to the dark, black-haired aboriginal inhabitants.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, quoted in Lincoln, Bruce (1999), Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press., p 104-5

R

To speak of an Aryan race of three thousand years ago is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; but to speak of it as if it still existed today is quite simply absurd.
- Salomon Reinach, quoted by Léon Poliakov in The Aryan Myth, p.344
- quoted in Danino, M. (2009). A BRIEF NOTE ON THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY. PRAGATI| April-June 2009

Reinach challenged the very concept of an Aryan race—“To speak of an Aryan race … is to put forward a gratuitous hypothesis; to speak of it as though it still existed today is quite simply to talk nonsense” (1892: 90).
- Reinach S. 1892. L’origine des Aryens: histoire d’une controverse [The origin of the Aryans: history of a controversy]. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
- quoted in Michel Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence

T

The invention of an Aryan race in nineteenth century Europe was to have, as we all know, far-reaching consequences on world history. Its application to European societies culminated in the ideology of Nazi Germany. Another sequel was that it became foundational to the interpretation of early Indian history and there have been attempts at a literal application of the theory to Indian society. Some European scholars now describe it as a nineteenth century myth. But some contemporary Indian political ideologies seem determined to renew its life. In this they are assisted by those who still carry the imprint of this nineteenth century theory and treat it as central to the question of Indian identity. With the widespread discussion on 'Aryan origins' in the print media and the controversy over its treatment in school textbooks, it has become the subject of a larger debate in terms of its ideological underpinnings rather than merely the differing readings among archaeologists and historians.
- Romila Thapar, "The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics", Social Scientist, January-March 1996, p. 3.

Taylor rejected the association between race and language altogether. He found the theory of a single Aryan migration out of Asia “extremely shadowy … [resting] on no solid grounds whatever” (1890: 17).
- Isaac Taylor quoted in Michel Danino, in : Walimbe, S. R., & Schug, G. R. (2016). A companion to South Asia in the past. chapter 13. Aryans and the Indus Civilization: Archaeological, Skeletal, and Molecular Evidence
- Taylor I. 1890. The origin of the Aryans: an account of the prehistoric ethnology and civilization of Europe. New York: Scribner & Welford

W

As the children [of the Gods], these Germanic tribes burst forth into the midst of Semitico-Roman culture and lent it the pure strength of their blood. . . . As soon as they entered history, with the frankness of their blue eyes, their proud heroic stature, their simple patriarchal customs, their free communal associations, their loyal warlike confederations, their representations of the gods and their simple, honest, heroic traditions, they must undoubtedly have appeared from the outset as the true manifestation, without blurring or mixing, of the most noble ancient branch of the white race. Such is the Aryan.
- Count Hans von Wolzogen. Wolzogen, 1882, p. 85 (cited in Römer, 1985, p. 66). quoted in Jean-Paul Demoule - The Indo-Europeans_ Archaeology, Language, Race, and the Search for the Origins of the West

External links

Encyclopedic article on Aryan race on Wikipedia