Aryan

Etymology

English and European languages

The term Arya was first rendered into a modern European language in 1771 as Aryens by French Indologist Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, who rightly compared the Greek arioi with the Avestan airya and the country name Iran. In Germany, Johann Friedrich Kleuker's translation of Anquetil-Duperron's work led to the introduction of the term Arier in 1776.

The Sanskrit word ā́rya is rendered as 'noble' in William Jones' 1794 translation of the Indian Laws of Manu. The English Aryan (originally spelt Arian) appeared a few decades later, first as an adjective in 1839, then as a noun in 1849, probably after the German Arier (noun), arisch (adjective). During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the meaning varied between the broader category equivalent to Indo-European, and the narrower one equivalent to Indo-Iranian.

Use of Aryan to designate a "white non-Jewish person, especially one of northern European origin or descent" entered the English language from German, after this meaning was introduced in 1887 and further developed by German anti-Semitic propagandists in the context of a so-called "Aryan race". It is still used in far-right and white supremacist discourse, and sometimes appears in the names of such groups.

Indo-Iranian

The Sanskrit word ā́rya (आर्य) was originally an ethnocultural term designating those who spoke Vedic Sanskrit and adhered to Vedic cultural norms (including religious rituals and poetry), in contrast to an outsider, or an-ā́rya ('non-Arya'). By the time of the Buddha (5th–4th century BCE), it took the meaning of 'noble'. In Old Iranian languages, the Avestan term airya (Old Persian ariya) was likewise used as an ethnocultural self-designation by ancient Iranian peoples, in contrast to an an-airya ('non-Arya'). It designated those who belonged to the 'Aryan' (Iranian) ethnic stock, spoke the language and followed the religion of the 'Aryas'.

These two terms derive from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-Iranian stem *arya- or *āryo-, which was probably the name used by the prehistoric Indo-Iranian peoples to designate themselves as an ethnocultural group. The term did not have any racial connotation, which only emerged later in the works of 19th-century Western writers. According to David W. Anthony, "the Rigveda and Avesta agreed that the essence of their shared parental Indo-Iranian identity was linguistic and ritual, not racial. If a person sacrificed to the right gods in the right way using the correct forms of the traditional hymns and poems, that person was an Aryan."

Proto-Indo-European

The Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origin of the Indo-Iranian stem arya- remains debated. A number of scholars, starting with Adolphe Pictet (1799–1875), have proposed to derive arya- from the reconstructed PIE term *h₂erós or *h₂eryós, variously translated as 'member of one's own group, peer, freeman'; as 'host, guest; kinsman'; or as 'lord, ruler'. However, the proposed Anatolian, Celtic and Germanic cognates are not universally accepted. In any case, the Indo-Iranian ethnic connotation is absent from the other Indo-European languages, which rather conceived the possible cognates of *arya- as a social status (a freeman or noble), and there is no evidence that Proto-Indo-European speakers had a term to refer to themselves as 'Proto-Indo-Europeans'.

Early PIE: *h₂erós,

Anatolian: *ʔor-o-, 'peer, freeman',

Hittite: arā-, 'comrade, peer, companion, friend'; arawanni-, 'free, freeman (not being slave)'; natta ara, 'not proper to the community',

Lycian: arus-, 'citizens'; arawa-, 'freedom',

Late PIE: *h₂eryós,

Indo-Iranian: *arya-, 'Aryan, Indo-Iranian',

Old Indo-Aryan: árya-, 'Aryan, faithful to the Vedic religion'; aryá-, 'kind, favourable, true, devoted'; arí-, 'faithful; devoted person, ± kinsman';

Iranian: *arya-, 'Aryan, Iranian',

Avestan: airya- (pl. aire), 'Aryan, Iranian',

Old Persian: ariya-, 'Aryan, Iranian',

Celtic: *aryo-, 'freeman; noble'; or perhaps from *prio- ('first > prominent, eminent'),

Gaulish: ario-, 'freeman, lord; foremost',

Historical usage

Prehistoric Proto-Indo-Iranians

The term *arya was used by Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers to designate themselves as an ethnocultural group, encompassing those who spoke the language and followed the religion of the Aryas (Indo-Iranians), as distinguished from the nearby outsiders known as the *Anarya ('non-Arya'). Indo-Iranians (Aryas) are generally associated with the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BCE), named after the Sintashta archaeological site in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. Linguistic evidence show that Proto-Indo-Iranian (Proto-Aryan) speakers dwelled in the Eurasian steppe, south of early Uralic tribes; the stem *arya- was notably borrowed into the Pre-Sámi language as *orja-, at the origin of oarji ('southwest') and årjel ('Southerner'). The loanword took the meaning 'slave' in other Finno-Permic languages, suggesting conflictual relations between Indo-Iranian and Uralic peoples in prehistoric times.

The stem is also found in the Indo-Iranian god *Aryaman, translated as 'Arya-spirited,' 'Aryanness,' or 'Aryanhood;' he was known in Vedic Sanskrit as Aryaman and in Avestan as Airyaman. The deity was in charge of welfare and the community, and connected with the institution of marriage. Through marital ceremonies, one of the functions of Aryaman was to assimilate women from other tribes to the host community. If the Irish heroes Érimón and Airem and the Gaulish personal name Ariomanus are also cognates (i.e. linguistic siblings sharing a common origin), a deity of Proto-Indo-European origin named *h₂eryo-men may also be posited.

Ancient times

Vedic Sanskrit speakers viewed the term ā́rya as a religious–linguistic category, referring to those who spoke the Sanskrit language and adhered to Vedic cultural norms, especially those who worshipped the Vedic gods (Indra and Agni in particular), took part in the yajna and festivals, and practiced the art of poetry.

The 'non-Aryas' designated primarily those who were not able to speak the āryā language correctly, the Mleccha or Mṛdhravāc. However, āryā is used only once in the Vedas to designate the language of the texts, the Vedic area being defined in the Kauṣītaki Āraṇyaka as that where the āryā vāc ('Ārya speech') is spoken. Some 35 names of Vedic tribes, chiefs and poets mentioned in the Rigveda were of 'non-Aryan' origin, demonstrating that cultural assimilation to the ā́rya community was possible, and/or that some 'Aryan' families chose to give 'non-Aryan' names to their newborns. In the words of Indologist Michael Witzel, the term ārya "does not mean a particular people or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual, poetry, etc.)".

In later Indian texts and Buddhist sources, ā́rya took the meaning of 'noble', such as in the terms Āryadésa- ('noble land') for India, Ārya-bhāṣā- ('noble language') for Sanskrit, or āryaka- ('honoured man'), which gave the Pali ayyaka- ('grandfather'). The term came to incorporate the idea of a high social status, but was also used as an honorific for the Brahmana or the Buddhist monks. Parallelly, the Mleccha acquired additional meanings that referred to people of lower castes or aliens.

In the words of scholar Gherardo Gnoli, the Old Iranian airya (Avestan) and ariya (Old Persian) were collective terms denoting the "peoples who were aware of belonging to the one ethnic stock, speaking a common language, and having a religious tradition that centred on the cult of Ahura Mazdā", in contrast to the 'non-Aryas', who are called anairya in Avestan, anaryān in Parthian, and anērān in Middle Persian.

The people of the Avesta, exclusively used the term airya (Avestan: 𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀, airiia) to refer to themselves. It can be found in a number geographical terms like the 'expanse of the airyas' (airiianəm vaēǰō), the 'dwelling place of the airyas' (airiio.shaiianem), or the 'white forest of the airyas' (vīspe.aire.razuraya). The term can also be found in poetic expressions such as the 'glory of the airyas' (airiianąm xᵛarənō), the 'most swift-arrowed of the airyas' (xšviwi išvatəmō airiianąm), or the 'hero of the airyas' (arša airiianąm). Although the Avesta does not contain any dateable events, modern scholarship assumes that the Avestan period mostly predates the Achaemenid period of Iranian history.

Modern times

In the late Qajar era, modern ideas about the Aryan identity were introduced to Iran and significantly influenced its nationalistic movement. Iranian intellectuals, reflecting on their pre-Islamic, Indo-European past, embraced a version of the Aryan myth that contrasted their heritage with the Arab (or Semitic) influence introduced after the Arab conquest (7th century AD). In the 19th century, thinkers like Mirza Fatali Akhundov (1812–1878) and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani (1854–1896) promoted the idea of a grand, ancient Persian civilization. This narrative, which depicted Arab influence as destructive to Iranian culture while emphasizing shared roots with admired European civilizations, was widely disseminated through nationalist publications and became a cornerstone of 20th-century Iranian nationalist discourse.

In Pahlavi Iran (1925–1979), nationalism was used to popularize the Aryan myth and promote Iranian antiquity, bolstering both national identity and the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty. This "Aryan and Neo-Achaemenid nationalism" emerged prominently in the 1930s and remained influential throughout the Pahlavi period. In 1935, Reza Shah mandated that the country be known internationally as 'Iran' (a name linked to the term 'Aryan') rather than 'Persia', which was seen as a foreign label derived from the southern province of Fars. His son, Mohammad Reza, later adopted the title "King of the Kings, Light of the Aryans" (Shahanshah Aryamehr), and in the 1970s, he even proposed an 'Aryan brotherhood' among Iran, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan as a means to foster regional peace and celebrate a shared legacy of a distinguished civilization.

The word ārya is often found in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain texts. In the Indian spiritual context, it can be applied to Rishis or to someone who has mastered the four noble truths and entered upon the spiritual path. According to Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru, the religions of India may be called collectively ārya dharma, a term that includes the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism).

The word ārya is also often used in Jainism, in Jain texts such as the Pannavanasutta. In Avaśyakaniryukti, an early Jaina text, a character named Ārya Mangu is mentioned twice.

The name Aryan (including derivatives such as Aaryan, Arya, Ariyan or Aria) is still used as a given name or surname in modern South Asia and Iran. There has also been a rise in names associated with Aryan in the West, which have been popularized due to pop culture. According to the U.S. Social Security Administration in 2012, Arya was the fastest-rising girl's name in popularity in the U.S., jumping from 711th to 413th position. The name entered the top 200 most commonly used names for baby girls born in England and Wales in 2017.

Scholarship

19th and early 20th century

The term 'Aryan' was initially introduced into the English language through works of comparative philology, as a modern rendering of the Sanskrit word ā́rya. First translated as 'noble' in William Jones' 1794 translation of the Laws of Manu, early-19th-century scholars later noticed that the term was used in the earliest Vedas as an ethnocultural self-designation "comprising the worshipers of the gods of the Brahmans". This interpretation was simultaneously influenced by the presence of the word Ἀριάνης (Ancient Greek) ~ Arianes (Latin) in classical texts, which had been rightly compared by Anquetil-Duperron in 1771 to the Iranian airya (Avestan) ~ ariya (Old Persian), a self-identifier used by the speakers of Iranian languages since ancient times. Accordingly, the term 'Aryan' came to refer in scholarship to the Indo-Iranian languages, and, by extension, to the native speakers of the Proto-Indo-Iranian language, the prehistoric Indo-Iranian peoples.

During the 19th century, through the works of Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), Christian Lassen (1800–1876), Adolphe Pictet (1799–1875), and Max Müller (1823–1900), the terms Aryans, Arier, and Aryens came to be adopted by a number of Western scholars as a synonym of '(Proto-)Indo-Europeans'. Many of them indeed believed that Aryan was also the original self-designation used by the prehistoric speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, based on the erroneous assumptions that Sanskrit was the oldest Indo-European language and on the linguistically untenable position that Ériu (Ireland) was related to Arya. This hypothesis has since been abandoned in scholarship due to the lack of evidence for the use of arya as an ethnocultural self-designation outside the Indo-Iranian world.

Contemporary scholarship

In contemporary scholarship, the terms 'Aryan' and 'Proto-Aryan' are still sometimes used to designate the prehistoric Indo-Iranian peoples and their proto-language. However, the use of 'Aryan' to mean 'Proto-Indo-European' is now regarded as an "aberration to be avoided". The 'Indo-Iranian' subfamily of languages – which encompasses the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani branches – may also be referred to as the 'Aryan languages'.

However, the atrocities committed in the name of Aryanist racial ideologies during the first part of the 20th century have led academics to generally avoid the term 'Aryan', which has been replaced in most cases by 'Indo-Iranian', although its Indic branch is still called 'Indo-Aryan'. The name 'Iranian', which stems from the Old Persian *Aryānām, also continues to be used to refer to specific ethnolinguistic groups.

Indo-Aryan refers to the populations speaking an Indo-Aryan language or identifying as Indo-Aryan; they form the predominant group in Northern Indian subcontinent. The largest Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic groups are Hindi–Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Odia, and Sindhi. More than 900 million people are native speakers of an Indo-Aryan language.

Iranian (or Iranic) is used to designate the speakers of Iranian languages or the peoples who identify as "Iranians", especially in Greater Iran. Modern Iranian ethnolinguistic groups include Persians, Pashtuns, Kurds, Tajiks, Balochs, Lurs, Pamiris, Zazas, and Ossetians. An estimated 150 to 200 million people are native speakers of an Iranian language.

Some authors writing for popular consumption have kept on using the word 'Aryan' for all Indo-Europeans in the tradition of H. G. Wells, such as the science fiction author Poul Anderson, and scientists writing for the popular media, such as Colin Renfrew. According to F. B. J. Kuiper, echoes of "the 19th century prejudice about 'northern' Aryans who were confronted on Indian soil with black barbarians [...] can still be heard in some modern studies."

Aryanism and racism

Invention of the 'Aryan race'

During the Romantic era, thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and, later, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) developed the idea of a nation (Volk) as an organic cultural community rooted in shared history, folklore, myths, poetry, and especially a common language. They saw linguistic ties as natural evidence of tribal connections, linking a Volk's ancestry to the origins of its language. In this context, some European scholars began to interpret the newly established Indo-European linguistic connection as evidence of a shared cultural and ethnic heritage, at times drawing parallels between modern Europeans and ancient Persians. In 1808, Friedrich Schlegel, in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, proposed that the Indo-European languages (including Germanic) originated from a common ancestral tongue in ancient India or Persia. His work popularized the idea of a primordial "Indo-European people" (Urvolk) that had migrated westward from their 'original homeland' (Urheimat) in Asia.

In the second half of the 19th century, the idea that Indo-European languages had originated from Asia gradually lost ground in Western European scholarship. From the late 1860s onward, alternative models of Indo-European migrations began to emerge, some of them locating the ancestral homeland in Northern Europe. In 1868, Theodor Bensen proposed that the Aryans originated in Europe, and that some migrated to Asia to establish ancient Eastern civilisations, which he claimed had later "degenerated" through racial mixing on the periphery. This 'northern thesis' found growing support among German anthropologists and linguists such as Lazarus Geiger, Theodor Poesche, Ludwig Wilser, Karl Penka, and Gustaf Kossinna, and contributed to the emerging tendency to use the word Aryan as a synonym for Nordic or Germanic.

Karl Penka, credited as "a transitional figure between Aryanism and Nordicism", argued in 1868 that the Aryans originated in southern Scandinavia. In 1878, German-born anthropologist Theodor Poesche proposed locating the original Aryan homeland in Lithuania. In the early-20th century, German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna (1858-1931), seeking to link prehistoric material cultures to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, argued on archaeological grounds that the 'Indo-Germanic' (Indogermanische) migrations had originated from a homeland in northern Europe. Until the end of World War II, research on the Indo-European Urheimat broadly fell into two camps: Kossinna's followers, who favoured a northern European homeland, and those, initially led by Otto Schrader (1855–1919), who supported a Eurasian steppe homeland, the view that would later become dominant among scholars.

Theories of racial supremacy

While Schlegel and early 19th-century proponents of Aryan migrations defined the Aryans in linguistic and cultural rather than biological terms, reflecting the influence of early national thinkers such as Herder, later scholars, including Julius Klaproth (1783–1835) and Frédéric Eichhoff (1799–1875), helped shift the concept of the ancient Aryans toward racial and biological interpretations. Racially-oriented interpretations of the Vedic Āryas as 'fair-skinned foreign invaders' coming from the North gradually paved the way for the adoption of the term Aryan as a racial category connected to a supremacist ideology known as Aryanism, which portrayed the Aryan race as a so-called 'superior race' responsible for most of the achievements of ancient civilizations.

Arthur de Gobineau, author of the influential Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–1855), viewed the white race (and particularly its Aryan branch) as the only truly civilized one, conceiving cultural decline and miscegenation as intimately intertwined. Relocating the Aryans' origins from Asia to northern Europe, Gobineau argued that the ancient Aryans (an offshoot of the 'white race') had spread across the world and founded the great civilizations of antiquity, before degenerating through intermixture with the 'inferior' indigenous populations, which he saw as the primary cause of civilizational decay. The last 'pure' Aryans, he believed, were the Germanics. Gobineau divided humanity into three 'primary races' (white, yellow, and black) classifying both Aryans and Semites within the white race. In the decades following his work, however, the term Aryan increasingly came to be used in racialist discourse as a synonym for non-Jewish, a development that marked the transition from Gobineau's theory of racial hierarchy to the explicitly anti-Semitic Aryan ideology of the late 19th century.

Christian Lassen (1800–1876), a student of Schlegel, glorified the ancient Aryans as "the most gifted" and "perfect in talent", attributing to them an unparalleled cultural and intellectual refinement. He contrasted the Aryans with the Semites, helping establish an intellectual dichotomy between the two groups that would later take on racial overtones by subsequent writers on the topic. In this tradition, French orientalist Ernest Renan (1823–1892) portrayed the Semites as 'non-Aryans' and the Aryans as a creative and progressive race destined to lead human civilization. Similarly, Swiss linguist Adolphe Pictet (1799–1875) described the Aryans as the providential race and direct ancestors of Europeans. Influenced by Lassen and Renan, he depicted a fundamental moral and spiritual opposition between the Semitic and the superior Aryan peoples.

Aryanism in India

In 1888, Max Müller, whose early effort to trace physical differences between Aryans and Dāsas in the Rigveda had inadvertently launched racial interpretations of Vedic texts, denounced talk of an "Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair" as a nonsense comparable to a linguist speaking of "a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar". Nevertheless, an increasing number of Western writers, particularly anthropologists and popularizers influenced by Darwinian theories, came to conceive the Āryas of the Rigveda as a 'physical-genetic species' distinct from other human groups – rather than as an ethnolinguistic category.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, noted anthropologists Theodor Poesche and Thomas Huxley quoted from the Rigveda to suggest that the Aryans were blond and tall, with blue eyes and dolichocephalic skulls. Throughout the 20th century, physical anthropologists continued to debate these racial interpretations — some associating Indo-European speakers with light physical traits, others rejecting any biological basis for such claims. According to archeologist Elena Kuzmina (1931–2013), both the Avesta and the Rig Veda support the view that the Aryans did possess light eyes, light skin, and light hair, whereas linguist Hans Henrich Hock has argued that most Vedic passages traditionally cited for this interpretation may refer instead to contrasts between dark and light worlds rather than to human pigmentation.

Most modern scholars state that the historical Aryans, the Vedic period Bronze Age tribes who composed the Rigveda and the Avesta, and who were the ancestors of contemporary Indo-Aryan and Iranian peoples, were highly unlikely to have been blond or blue-eyed, contrary to the proponents of Aryanism and Nordicism. They further assert that even in ancient times, the Aryan identity as asserted in the Rig Veda was cultural, religious, and linguistic, not racial; nor do the Vedas contemplate racial purity. The Rig Veda affirms a ritualistic barrier: an individual is considered Aryan if they sacrifice to the right gods, which requires performing traditional prayer in the traditional language, and does not connote a racial barrier. Michael Witzel states that term Aryan "does not mean a particular people or even a particular 'racial' group but all those who had joined the tribes speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to their cultural norms (such as ritual, poetry, etc.)".

From the mid-1930s onward, certain SS ideologues and Adolf Hitler himself increasingly expressed admiration for the ancient Indo-Aryan civilization of northern India and its modern North Indian upper-caste heirs. They interpreted the Vedic texts and the varna system as evidence that a light-skinned Aryan warrior elite had once imposed rigorous racial hierarchy on the subcontinent. By late 1944, as relations with the United Kingdom hardened into total enmity, Hitler privately described the Maurya Empire under Chandragupta Maurya and Bindusara (pointedly excluding the later Buddhist Ashoka) as the historical pinnacle of Aryan statecraft, a racially pure empire that had unified nearly the entire subcontinent through conquest and iron discipline. Senior Ahnenerbe researchers received orders to emphasise linguistic, mythic, and racial parallels between the ancient Indic and Germanic traditions. In the final year of the war, Hitler and elements within the SS leadership began to regard upper-caste North Indians of purportedly unmixed Indo-Aryan descent as distant racial cousins and as the natural bearers of a future Hindu Rashtra aligned with National Socialist principles. Late-war German propaganda celebrated Subhas Chandra Bose as the authentic voice of Aryan India, and a small number of Indian Legion volunteers were reclassified as "honorary Aryans" in internal SS documents of early 1945. These ideological shifts, which included tentative plans to support a post-war independent India free from British rule and modelled on Hindutva ideology, remained largely theoretical due to the rapid military collapse of the Third Reich.