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European scholars following Max Muller in the nineteenth century decided that the Vedic people - whom they called the Aryans after a misinterpretation of that Vedic term - invaded India around 1500 BC. They were said to have overthrown the primitive and aboriginal culture of the time, which was thought to be Dravidian in nature, and brought a more advanced civilization to the land (though they themselves were still regarded as barbarians). The indigenous aborigines were identified as the Dasyus or inimical people mentioned in the Vedas.

The rationale behind the late date for the Vedic culture given by Muller was totally speculative and based only on linguistic grounds. Muller had assumed that the five layers of the four Vedas and Upanishads were each composed in two hundred year periods before the Buddha at 500 BC, as they were in existence by that time.

However, the rates of change for languages are quite speculative, particularly for those languages, like Sanskrit or Latin which became scriptural or scholarly languages apart from common dialects. There are more changes of language within Vedic Sanskrit itself than there are in classical Sanskrit since Panini, regarded as a figure of around 500 BC, or a period of 2500 years. As classical Sanskrit has remained the same for that time period, the two hundred year strata for the Vedic language carries no weight at all. Each of these periods could have existed for any number of centuries and the two hundred year figure is likely too short a figure.

The idea that the Aryans were a particular race was not accepted by everyone. Max Muller himself rejected it. Yet it has become ingrained in the Aryan theory so much that the common mind has accepted it as a fact. This idea of the Aryans as a particular race, speaking a particular language I call the "first birth" of the Aryan theory. Yet in its first form the Aryan invasion was of people who were as or more advanced in culture than the indigenous aborigines that they overcame.

Harappa and Mohenjodaro were not excavated until the early part of the twentieth century. As by this time the 1500 BC date for the Vedic people was accepted and since Harappa dated before this it was uncritically accepted that the Harappan culture must be pre-Vedic. The Aryan invasion theory was rewritten to make the Aryans the uncivilized destroyers of the civilized Dravidian-Harappan culture. Yet few questioned this rewriting of the Aryan invasion theory in light of new evidence. This we could call the "second birth" of the Aryan invasion theory - in which the Vedic Aryans were not only violent and intolerant but the destroyers of one of the great civilizations of antiquity - which makes the Vedic Aryans appear as proto-Nazis. This is the view of the Aryan invasion that is most commonly accepted today, even after it has been accepted by all scholars that there is no evidence of any Harappan cities being destroyed by invaders. Because it is the most negative view of the Aryans, it has been most seized upon by those opposing Hindu or Vedic culture.

Meanwhile other archaeologists in the early part of this century pointed out that in the middle of the second millennium BC, various Indo-European appear in the Middle East, wherein Indo-European Hittites, Mittani and Kassites conquered and ruled Mesopotamia for some centuries. A Greek invasion of Europe was also postulated for this period, as it marked the period when the Minoan culture declined, which was assumed to be non-Indo-European. Hence an Aryan invasion of Greece and the Middle East was proposed. An Aryan invasion of India was regarded as another version of this same migratory movement of Indo-European peoples around the middle of the second millennium BC, which became one of the most dramatic migrations in the history of the world and for which no real cause has ever been given.

On top of this, excavators of the Indus Valley culture, like Wheeler, thought they found evidence of destruction of the culture by an outside invasion, confirming the idea (though Wheeler's so-called skeletal evidence of the massacre of Mohenjodaro has long since been refuted it still appears in many historical accounts even today!).

Vedic culture was thus said to be that of primitive nomads who came out of Central Asia with their horse-drawn chariots and iron weapons, like the Indo-European Hittites in the Near East who were among the first to use iron weapons, and overthrew the cities of the more advanced Harappan culture, with their cruder culture yet superior battle tactics. It was pointed out that no horses, chariots or iron were discovered in Harappan sites, and since such things are mentioned in the Vedas, this culture must be pre-Vedic.

To support this theory other aspects of the Vedas were molded according to it. Vedic references to destruction of cities were related to Harappa. The Vedic metal ayas was said to be iron, though it is only a generic term meaning metal. Vedic references to the ocean were reduced to mean only the Indus river or some other large body of water in northwest India or Afghanistan. Vedic references to rivers from the Indus to the Ganges, which are merely a list of rivers, were interpreted to show a movement from the west to the east of India. The Aryan invasion theory was imposed on archeological and literary evidence, even if it required altering the data.

This was how the Aryan invasion theory formed. The logic was inevitable. Once the image of invading Aryans was formed, it had to be drawn out to its ultimate form envisioning the Aryans like Atilla the Hun.

The Aryan invasion theory was invented to solve the riddle of languages. However the invasion theory itself is filled with problems. We could say that the Aryan invasion theory is an attempt to solve one riddle by postulating another.

If such an invasion did occur, what would have caused it? Central Asia is not a very favorable region for producing populations even today, as we have already noted. How could it produce the populations necessary to overrun not only India but much of the Middle East and Europe. Ancient India was not uninhabited. After the long urban Harappan age it was highly populated at the time of the proposed invasion. Such populations could not have easily been overwhelmed, forced to move or be assimilated. After all it was not an organized conquest but a random movement of tribal peoples which is postulated for the Aryans.

What would cause the proto-Aryans to move, and in so many directions, to Europe, the Middle East and India? Generally when groups migrate it is in one direction. People do not abandon their homelands and move in all directions with such fury without a reason, particularly nomadic people who are wedded to their territory.

How could the primitive Aryans have been so successful in conquering the civilizations of the world from Greece to India, as well as imposing much of their culture, or at least language, on older and more sophisticated civilizations? Language, after all, is the most difficult aspect of culture to change. Many countries, for example, Europe under Christianity or Iran and Pakistan under Islam, have changed their religion but not their language. How could the primitive Aryans be so successful at doing this, when they were not only less sophisticated but less numerous than the peoples they overran as well as illiterate?

We should note that Afghanistan is not an easy place to cross through even today. Even Alexander lost most of his army trying to cross this region by land. How could sufficient numbers of people have done it in ancient times so as to overwhelm the existent population of north India. In the historical period armies from Central Asia have been able to conquer north India at times. But they have not been able to change the population or to impose their language on the subcontinent. How could disorganized nomads, such as the Vedic people were supposed to have been, accomplish this and also remove any record or memory of what they had done?

To assume that the proto-Aryans were just simply vicious and had to ruthlessly conquer everyone, that with some advantages like the use of the horse they were able to do so, does not work either. Such vicious conquests cause tremendous resistance in the conquered people which is not in evidence in ancient India, Greece or elsewhere where the Aryans have been found. The ancient Indo-European peoples did not have a reputation as being as being particularly cruel. In the ancient Middle East of the second and first millennium BC, for example - in which a number of Indo-European peoples existed like the Hittites, Mittani and Kassites - the reputation for cruelty did not go to them but to the Semitic Assyrians against whom they fought. While the Assyrians and Babylonians enslaved the Jews, it was the Persians, who called themselves Aryans, who released them from their captivity! In any case, no evidence of such movement of populations into India or destroyed cities has been found.

After the formulation of the Aryan invasion theory, archeology did not stop. New finds continued. These however have gradually undermined the invasion theory.

Harappan civilization (3100-1900 BC) was the largest in the world up to its time. Harappan sites have now been found as far west as to the coast of modern Iran, as far north as Turkestan on the Amu Darya river (a region usually identified with the Aryans), as far northeast as the Ganges, and south to the Godavari river. A site has even been found on the coast of Arabia. Thousands of sites have been found with several cities, like Ganweriwala on the Sarasvati river and Dholavira near the ocean in Kutch, as large as the first two major cities found, Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Most sites remain unexcavated and new explorations are likely to push the boundaries of this civilization yet further. A civilization of this size could not have been quickly or easily overrun by either migration or invasion.

Harappan culture maintained a continuity and uniformity that is unparalleled in cultures up to that date. The cities were the best planned of the era, with wide streets and excellent sewage systems. There was a uniformity of arts, crafts, weights and measures throughout the region. Such an organized civilization could not have so easily been taken over, nor could its cultural traditions, particularly its language, be very easily changed, much less eradicated.

It was originally proposed that the Harappan culture was ended abruptly by the Aryan invaders. Evidence however revealed that the sites were abandoned rather than destroyed, along with major ecological changes in the region, with shifting rivers, floods, and desertification of parts of the region, along with the drying up of the Sarasvati river which we have already noted. Unfortunately most historians, particularly from the West, did not know of the importance of the Sarasvati in Vedic literature and merely treated it as a forgotten river to everyone.

Because of this evidence some scholars have given up the idea that the Vedic people destroyed the Harappan culture and proposed that the Vedic people came after the decline of the culture and merely took over the remnants of it. In this it was the abandoned Harappan cities that the Aryans came to, but this view still usually portrayed the advent of the Aryans as violent. This post-Harappan violent invasion I would call "the third birth of the Aryan invasion theory," though it is unclear what they destroyed. It shows the theory already in question.

Other scholars proposed that the Aryans came into the Indus civilization itself during its later period and that Harappan culture was a composite of Aryan and non-Aryan elements, though there is nothing particularly composite about Harappan culture. Most scholars of such views would still like to portray the Aryan advent as violent though no proof for that has ever been found. Meanwhile no evidence of such migrations during the Harappan period has been found either.

Coming to the present time, given the facts that there was no destruction of Harappa and no evidence of any large scale migrations of people, the latest form of "the Aryans coming from the outside" (as for example, represented by Romila Thapar, who is a well-known Marxist historian generally opposed to Vedic culture) is of a gradual migration of small groups pastoral peoples during the same period of the second millennium BC.

It is now generally agreed that the decline of Harappan urbanism was due to environmental changes of various kinds, to political pressures and possible break in trading activities, and not to any invasion. Nor does the archaeological evidence register the likelihood of a massive migration from Iran into north-western India on such a scale as to overwhelm the existing cultures.

If invasion is discarded then the mechanisms of migrations and occasional contacts come into sharper focus. The migrations appear to have been of pastoral cattle-herders who are prominent in the Avesta and the Rig Veda.(*7)


From the ferocious Aryan hordes we have come down to mild pastoral migrants coming not with iron and chariots but only herds of cattle. This Aryan migration theory I call the "fourth birth of the Aryan invasion theory."

How small groups of pastoral migrants can accomplish changing the language of a subcontinent - which already had given birth to its own great civilization - and imposing their own culture and social system upon it, is highly improbable and almost absurd. An existent complex cultural order - such as ancient India indicates - can easily assimilate a few cattle herders moving in, but such groups cannot be given the credit to assimilate the whole culture of a subcontinent. Cattle-herders only expand their territory gradually, and are not hard for existent populations to resist. Nor were the Harappans without their own cattle. They had a long tradition of cattle-rearing and could hardly be overwhelmed by an outside entrance of new cattle-breeders, particularly of a more primitive nature.

The Aryan migration explanation is even weaker than the invasion theory. If such a migration was small and did not have any great impact on existing populations or leave any archeological record, as is the case, it could not have changed the region on the level of language either, which to reiterate is the hardest and slowest part of culture to change. If the culture and population of a region did not change, it is ridiculous to think that the language changed independently of these. The migration theory is merely the invasion theory on its death bed, but even it is a great improvement over the usual Aryans smashing Harappa scenario which has captured the imagination of so many people.

The propositions of time, place and people for the Aryan invasion has continually shifted as it has always been a theory in search of facts, not one based on anything solid. The only logical conclusion of the continual retreat of the Aryan invasion theory from a destructive invasion to a pastoral migration is the complete abandonment of it. The continual changes in the theory relative to the data which disproves it only shows the invalidity at its core. The Aryan invasion has gone from a bang to whimper and will soon fade out altogether.

Many things thought to have been Vedic and not Harappan, are now found to have existed in the Harappan culture. To preserve the Aryan invasion in the face of this evidence there are even a few scholars who would give credit to the pre-Aryans for most of what has been regarded as Vedic culture (like Shendge *8), including the Vedic Gods, the Brahmanical ritual, and most of the Vedic hymns, as well as all the Puranas - which are all claimed to have been stolen and retranslated from the indigenous people - even the caste system itself has been said to be pre-Aryan! In this instance the pre-Vedic people practiced the same rituals, chanted the same hymns as the Vedas, and were ruled by their own priestly class, except in a non-Indo-European language. This leads us to another absurdity. How could the Vedic people translate the entire pre-Vedic culture into their own massive and etymologically consistent corpus of literature and ritual when they themselves are said to have been illiterate, while the group whose culture they assumed in total could not preserve any literary record of their own!

For such scholars even the Vedas themselves are the invention of pre-Vedic people! While this radical fringe may not be taken seriously by other proponents of the invasion, such thinkers do have their point. Almost everything thought to be Harappan can be found in the Vedas. If there was an Aryan invasion it would have had to have taken over the existent culture in its entirety to account for this. Yet a more logical conclusion is there was no invasion and Vedic and Harappan culture were never really different. Such absurdities are unnecessary when we accept that the Vedic people were present in India from an early period and represent the civilization of the subcontinent going back to the pre-Harappan era.

Another recent view, which is also on the radical fringe that other invasion proponents may not accept either, that of Asko Parpola,(*9) claims that the struggles mentioned in the Vedas were not in India at all, but in Afghanistan between two different groups of Indo-Iranian peoples. Even if we accept this view, which contradicts all the others, it totally fails to explain how the Vedic culture ever came to India, which is left a total blank. If the Vedas show the conquest of an early Indo-Iranian culture in Afghanistan, what shows the conquest of India? Certainly the Puranas do not. Moreover Parpola's view is refuted by the many references to places and rivers in India, like Sarasvati, Indus and Yamuna, which are common in the Rig Veda. Yet his view is also based upon a valid point. The conflicts represented in the Vedas are between people of the same basic cultural group or inter-Aryan battles, including the Iranians. As Parpola has assumed the invasion theory to be true, the only place for such an inter-Aryan conflict is Afghanistan, not in non-Aryan India. However, if we give up the invasion theory there is no need for such far fetched views.