Indo-Aryan peoples

Contemporary Indo-Aryan speaking groups
	1978 map showing geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages. (Urdu is included under Hindi. Romani, Domari, and Lomavren are outside the scope of the map.) Dotted/striped areas indicate where multilingualism is common. Central Dardic Eastern Northern Northwestern Southern Western
Total population
	~1.5 billion[citation needed]
Regions with significant populations
India	over 911 million
Pakistan	over 233 million
Bangladesh	over 160 million
Nepal	over 26 million
Sri Lanka	over 14 million
Myanmar	over 1 million
Maldives	over 300,000
Bhutan	over 240,000
Languages
	Indo-Aryan languages
Religion
	Indian religions (Mostly Hindu; with Buddhist, Sikh and Jain minorities) and Islam, Christians and some non-religious atheist/agnostic

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Indo-Aryan peoples refers to both the pastoralist Indo-Aryan people migrating from Central Asia into South Asia in the second millennium BCE, introducing the Proto-Indo-Aryan language,^[1]^[2] as well as to contemporary ethnolinguistic groups speaking modern Indo-Aryan languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European language family.

History

Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC). The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The GGC, Cemetery H, Copper Hoard, OCP and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan migrations.

The introduction of the Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent was the result of a migration of Indo-Aryan people from Central Asia into the northern Indian subcontinent (modern-day India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka). These migrations started approximately 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia.^[3]

The Proto-Indo-Iranians, from which the Indo-Aryans developed, are identified with the Sintashta culture (2100–1800 BCE),^[4]^[5] and the Andronovo culture,^[3] which flourished ca. 1800–1400 BCE in the steppes around the Aral sea, present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The proto-Indo-Aryan split off around 1800–1600 BCE from the Iranians,^[6] moved south through the Bactria-Margiana Culture, south of the Andronovo culture, borrowing some of their distinctive religious beliefs and practices from the BMAC, and then migrated further south into the Levant and north-western India.^[7]^[1] The migration of the Indo-Aryans was part of the larger diffusion of Indo-European languages from the Proto-Indo-European homeland at the Pontic steppe which started in the 4th millennia BCE.^[1]^[8]^[9] The GGC, Cemetery H, Copper Hoard, OCP and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryans.

The Indo-Aryans were united by shared cultural norms and language, referred to as aryā, "noble." Diffusion of this culture and language took place by patron-client systems, which allowed for the absorption and acculturalisation of other groups into this culture, and explains the strong influence on other cultures with which it interacted.

While the Indo-Aryan linguistic group occupies mainly northern parts of India, genetically, all South Asians across the Indian subcontinent are descendants from a mix of South Asian hunter-gatherers, Iranian hunter-gatherers, and Central-Asian steppe pastoralists in varying proportion.^[10]^[11] Additionally, Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burmese speaking people contributed to the genetic make-up of South Asia.^[12]

Indigenous Aryanism propagates the idea that the Indo-Aryans were indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages spread from there to central Asia and Europe. Contemporary support for this idea is ideologically driven, and has no basis in objective data and mainstream scholarship.^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16]^[17]

List of historical Indo-Aryan peoples

Contemporary Indo-Aryan peoples

Notes

References

Citations

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 Anthony 2007.
↑ Erdosy 2012.
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 Anthony 2009, p. 49.
↑ Anthony 2007, p. 390 (fig. 15.9), 405–411.
↑ Kuz'mina 2007, p. 222.
↑ Anthony 2007, p. 408.
↑ George Erdosy (1995). "The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity", p. 279
↑ Johannes Krause mit Thomas Trappe: Die Reise unserer Gene.Eine Geschichte über uns und unsere Vorfahren. Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 2019, p. 148 ff.
↑ "All Indo-European Languages May Have Originated From This One Place". IFLScience. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
↑ Reich et al. 2009.
↑ Narasimhan et al. 2019.
↑ Basu et al. 2016.
↑ Witzel 2001, p. 95.
↑ Jamison 2006.
↑ Guha 2007, p. 341.
↑ Fosse 2005, p. 438.
↑ Olson 2016, p. 136.
↑ "India". The World Factbook.
↑ "Pakistan". The World Factbook.
↑ "Bangladesh". The World Factbook.
↑ "Population of Lhotshampas in Bhutan". UNHCR. 2004. Archived from the original on 16 October 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2016.

Sources

Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse The Wheel And Language. How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World. Princeton University Press.
Basu A, Sarkar-Roy N, Majumder PP (February 2016). "Genomic reconstruction of the history of extant populations of India reveals five distinct ancestral components and a complex structure". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 113 (6): 1594–9. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113.1594B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1513197113. PMC 4760789. PMID 26811443.
Beckwith, Christopher I. (16 March 2009). Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400829941. Retrieved 30 December 2014.
Bryant, Edwin (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-513777-9.
Erdosy, George, ed. (2012), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, Walter de Gruyter
Fosse, Lars Martin (2005), "ARYAN PAST AND POST-COLONIAL PRESENT. The polemics and politics of indigenous Aryanism", in Bryant, Edwin; Patton, Laurie L. (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and inference in Indian history, Routledge
Guha, Sudeshna (2007), "Review. Reviewed Work: The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History by Edwin F. Bryant, Laurie Patton", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series, 17 (3): 340–343, doi:10.1017/S135618630700733X
Jamison, Stephanie W. (2006). "The Indo-Aryan controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history (Book review)" (PDF). Journal of Indo-European Studies. 34: 255–261.
Kuz'mina, Elena Efimovna (2007), J. P. Mallory (ed.), The Origin of the Indo-Iranians, Brill, ISBN 978-9004160545
Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L. (1999). The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC. Cambridge University Press. pp. 87–88. ISBN 0-5214-7030-7. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
Mallory, JP. 1998. "A European Perspective on Indo-Europeans in Asia". In The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern and Central Asia. Ed. Mair. Washington DC: Institute for the Study of Man.
Narasimhan, Vagheesh M.; Patterson, N.J.; Moorjani, Priya; Rohland, Nadin; et al. (2019), "The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia", Science, 365 (6457): 7487, doi:10.1126/science.aat7487, PMC 6822619, PMID 31488661
Reich, David; Thangaraj, Kumarasamy; Patterson, Nick; Price, Alkes L.; Singh, Lalji (2009), "Reconstructing Indian population history", Nature, 461 (7263): 489–494, Bibcode:2009Natur.461..489R, doi:10.1038/nature08365, ISSN 0028-0836, PMC 2842210, PMID 19779445
Trubachov, Oleg N., 1999: Indoarica, Nauka, Moscow.
Witzel, Michael (2001), "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts" (PDF), Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, 7 (3): 1–115
Witzel, Michael (2005), "Indocentrism", in Bryant, Edwin; Patton, Laurie L. (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Evidence and inference in Indian history, Routledge

External links

[FOOTNOTEAnthony2007-1] 1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 Anthony 2007.

[FOOTNOTEErdosy2012-2] Erdosy 2012.

[FOOTNOTEAnthony200949-3] 3.0 ^3.1 Anthony 2009, p. 49.

[FOOTNOTEAnthony2007390_(fig._15.9),_405–411-4] Anthony 2007, p. 390 (fig. 15.9), 405–411.

[FOOTNOTEKuz'mina2007222-5] Kuz'mina 2007, p. 222.

[FOOTNOTEAnthony2007408-6] Anthony 2007, p. 408.

[7] George Erdosy (1995). "The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity", p. 279

[8] Johannes Krause mit Thomas Trappe: Die Reise unserer Gene.Eine Geschichte über uns und unsere Vorfahren. Propyläen Verlag, Berlin 2019, p. 148 ff.

[9] "All Indo-European Languages May Have Originated From This One Place". IFLScience. Retrieved 26 December 2019.

[FOOTNOTEReich_et_al.2009-10] Reich et al. 2009.

[FOOTNOTENarasimhan_et_al.2019-11] Narasimhan et al. 2019.

[FOOTNOTEBasu_et_al.2016-12] Basu et al. 2016.

[FOOTNOTEWitzel200195-13] Witzel 2001, p. 95.

[FOOTNOTEJamison2006-14] Jamison 2006.

[FOOTNOTEGuha2007341-15] Guha 2007, p. 341.

[FOOTNOTEFosse2005438-16] Fosse 2005, p. 438.

[FOOTNOTEOlson2016136-17] Olson 2016, p. 136.

[18] "India". The World Factbook.

[19] "Pakistan". The World Factbook.

[20] "Bangladesh". The World Factbook.

[UNHCR1-21] "Population of Lhotshampas in Bhutan". UNHCR. 2004. Archived from the original on 16 October 2012. Retrieved 23 March 2016.

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