Aryan race: Encyclopedia - Aryan race

Aryan race

The term Aryan race refers to a model of racial identity that was prevelant in Europe from around the 1880s through to 1945, most notably in Nazi Germany. It has become associated with the theory that north European Nordic peoples constitute a master race.

The word "Aryan" derives from cultures of Iran and India. It was originally used in various Indo-Iranian languages. Possibly it originally referred to clan-identity, but it certainly later had a meaning roughly similar to "noble" or "honorable". It was sometimes used by the speakers of these languages to refer to those who were ennobled by spirtual knowledge.

Support for the superiority of the Aryan race is sometimes referred to as Aryanism. This should not be confused with the unrelated religious belief known as Arianism.

Aryan race - Origin of the concept

The word arya first appears in the Rigveda and the Gathas around 1500 BCE, with the meaning of "noble person", though also with an ethnic significance. The word is also attested in Old Persian inscriptions and other Persian sources from c. 500 BCE onwards that refer to an Aryan lineage or nation. The word Iran is derived from the word Aryan. India is also referred to as Aryavarta, which means "the Land of Aryans". Because these peoples were the most ancient known speakers of "Indo-European" languages, the word Aryan was adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian peoples, but also to Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the Romans, Greeks, the Germans, Celts and Slavs. It was argued that all of these languages originated from a common root - spoken by an ancient people who must have been the ancestors of the European, Iranian, and North Indian peoples.

The idea that the north Europeans were the "purest" of these peoples was later propagated most assiduously by the Comte de Gobineau and by other writers, most notably his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who wrote of an "Aryan race" – those who spoke Indo-European languages and were claimed to be the "noblest" of peoples.

Modern Iranians consider their ethnicity and stock as being Aryan, and many Indians are considered to be "Aryans". Contemporary anthropologists who believe in the existence of an ancient Aryan "race" generally have the opinion that its closest descendants today are the Persians or Iranians) and the North Indian peoples, (those who speak Indo-Aryan languages), not the Europeans or the Germans; so possibly the Ossetes and Slavs, but not the Nordic race with which they were equated in Nazi ideology.

Aryan race - The culture of the Aryans

It is generally accepted that the cultures of ancient Persia and India have common roots, and that the common ancestor was in turn a descendent of the original proto-Indo-European culture, along with other influences. Elements of the original Aryan culture included the worship of the gods Indra, Varuna, Agni, and Mithra, and the ritualistic use of a possibly hallucinogenic drink called Soma, extracted from an unknown plant. However, as groups separated and migrated, these religious practices diverted changed. Eventually the Persian Zoroastrian and Indian Vedic faiths emerged from the primal Aryan belief-system, and the ancestral Aryan gods gave rise to different pantheons.

Aryan race - Imperialist nationalistic and Nazi uses of the term

During the 19th century, it was commonly believed that the Aryan race originated in the southwestern steppes of present-day Russia, and including the Caucasus Mountains. The Steppe theory of Aryan origins was not the only one circulating during the nineteenth century, however. Many British, American and German scholars argued that the Aryans originated in ancient Germany or Scandinavia, or at least that in those countries the original Aryan ethnicity had been preserved.

Aryan race - British Raj

In India, under the British Empire, the British rulers also used the idea of a distinct Aryan race in order to ally British power with the Indian caste system. It was widely claimed that the Aryans were white people who had invaded India in ancient times, subordinating the darker skinned native Dravidian peoples, who were pushed to the south. Thus the foundation of Hinduism was ascribed to white invaders who had established themselves as the dominant castes, and who were supposed to have created the sophisticated Vedic writings. Much of these theories was simply conjecture fuelled by European imperialism (see white man's burden). All discussion of Aryan or Dravidian "races" remains highly controversial in India to this day, but does continue to affect political and religious debate. Some Dravidians, and supporters of the Dalit movement, most commonly Tamils, claim that the worship of Shiva is a distinct Dravidian religion, to be distinguished from Brahminical "Aryan" Hinduism. In contrast, the Indian nationalist Hindutva movement argues that no Aryan invasion or migration ever occurred, asserting that Vedic beliefs emerged from the Indus Valley Civilisation, which is usually supposed to have pre-dated the advent of the supposed Aryans in India. See also: Indo-Aryan migration or Aryan invasion theory

Aryan race - Theosophy

These debates also led to the Theosophical movement founded by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott at the end of the nineteenth century. This was an early kind of New Age philosophy, that took inspiration from Indian culture, in particular from the Hindu reform movement the Arya Samaj founded by Swami Dayananda. Blavatsky argued that humanity had descended from a series of "Root Races", naming the fifth root race (out of seven) the "Aryan" Race. She thought that the Aryans originally came from Atlantis and described the Aryan races with the following words: "The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis." (Secret Doctrine, vol.II, p.249).

Blavatsky used "Root Race" as a technical term to describe human evolution over the large time periods in her cosmology. However, she also claimed that there were modern non-Aryan peoples who were inferior to Aryans. She regularly contrasts "Aryan" with "Semitic" culture, to the detriment of the latter, asserting that Semitic peoples are an offshoot of Aryans who have become "degenerate in spirituality". She also states that some peoples are "semi-animal creatures". These latter include "the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China." There are also "considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc." (The Secret Doctrine vol.II, pp.195-6)

Despite this, Blavatsky's admirers claim that her thinking was not connected to fascist or racialist ideas, asserting that she believed in a Universal Brotherhood of humanity and wrote that "all men have spiritually and physically the same origin" and that "mankind is essentially of one and the same essence." (The Key to Theosophy, Section 3). Nevertheless, Guido von List (and his followers such as Lanz von Liebenfels) later took up some of Blavatsky's ideas, mixing her ideology with nationalistic and fascist ideas. Such views also fed into the development of Nazi ideology. However, the theosophical publications such as The Aryan Path were strongly opposed to the Nazi usage, attacking racialism.

Aryan race - Nazism

The theory of the Northern origins of the Aryans was particularly influential in Germany. It was widely believed in that the Vedic Aryans were ethnically identical to the Goths, Vandals and other ancient Germanic peoples of the Völkerwanderung. This idea was often intertwined with anti-semitic ideas. The distinctions between the "Aryan" and "Semitic" peoples were based on the linguistic and ethnic history described above. In this way Semitic peoples came to be seen as a foreign presence within "Aryan" societies, and the Semitic peoples were often pointed to as the cause of conversion and destruction of social order and values leading to culture and civilization's downfall by Nazi and Pre-Nazi theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg, Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. According to the Nazi ideologists, the Aryan was a master race that built a civilization that dominated the world ten thousand years ago. This alleged civilization declined because the inferior races mixed with the Aryans but it left traces of their civilization in Tibet (via Buddhism), and even Central America, South America, Ancient Egypt.

A complete, and highly speculative and racist theory of Aryan and anti-Syrian and anti-Semitic history can be found in Rosenberg's publication, "Race and Race History". Rosenberg's account of ancient history is very well researched, but his conclusions require great leaps in logic. But the seemingly scholarly nature of such works was very effective in spreading Aryan supremist theories among German intellectuals in the early 20th century, especially after the first World War. These and other ideas evolved into the Nazi use of the term "Aryan race" to refer to what they saw as being a "master race" of people of northern European descent, going to extreme and violent lengths to "maintain the purity" of this race through a far-reaching eugenics program (including anti-miscegenation legislation, compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and the mentally deficient, the execution of the institutionalized mentally ill as part of a euthanasia program, and eventually the systematic targeting of Jews, Gypsies, and Homosexuals in the Holocaust). This usage now has nearly no meaning outside of Nazi or Neo-Nazi ideology.

Aryan race - Quotations

"I have declared again and again that if I say Aryans, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language… 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

"I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects." – J. R. R. Tolkien, responding to a German publisher who was inquiring about the possibility of printing a German translation of The Hobbit.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Aryan race", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki