Indo-Aryan peoples

The Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of 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. The early 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, Indo-Aryan speakers are found south of the Indus, across the modern-day regions of Bangladesh, Nepal, eastern-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and northern-India.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
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B

• The Indo-European conquest of India did not end with the Vedas. It continued over a period of centuries, as the Old Indic–speaking people spread their language and culture across northern India and points beyond. At the same time, the local peoples of India heavily influenced the newcomers, who mixed with them in every way conceivable, eventually producing a distinctive new hybrid culture.
  • Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road (Princeton UP, 2009), p. 42

H

• Even today one finds overall in the realm of the Indo-Aryans and their anthropological and geographical surroundings blond and blue-eyed types, so that we may assume that the dark-haired and dark-eyed ‘north Indians’ became darker partly under the influence of the climate [and] partly through admixture with the dark-skinned pre-Aryan inhabitants of ancient India.
  • Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, quoted in Adluri, V., & Bagchee, J. (2014). The nay science : a history of German Indology. Oxford University Press.

K

• You Aryans came from outside.
  • Mallikarjuna Kharge, the then leader of the Congress parliamentary party and now its party chairman, who said on the floor of the Lok Sabhā (India’s House of Commons) in 2015: quoted in [1]

L

• It may be in vain to try and identify the Indo-Aryans [since] language, ethnic identity and culture are individual components that can be combined in many different ways, and nothing allows us to state that, knowing language x and culture x, we are dealing with ethnic group x.
  • B. Lyonnet (1994). "Central Asia, the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians: Some Reassessments from Recent Archaeological Data." South Asian Archaeology (1:425-434). Ed. Asko Parpola and Petteri Koskikallio. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

S

• They (Aryans) don't belong to India and hence, don't love India. They are foreigners, the enemy within. As Aryans, they are also India's first foreigners. If Muslims and Christians are foreigners, and must get out of India, as India's first foreigners, the Aryans are duty bound to get out first.
  • Syed Shahabuddin's Muslim India (27.3.89) quoted in Talageri, "The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism"

V

• The object of the peoples of Europe is to exterminate all in order to live themselves. The aim of the Aryans is to raise all up to their own level, nay, even to a higher level than themselves.
  • Swami Vivekananda, "The East and the West" (Translated from Bengali), Complete Works, vol. 5 (7th ed., 1959), p. 537