Article published in:
Language, Culture and Society
Vol. 1:1 (2019) ► pp. 8–30

Lost in the hall of mirrors

The linguistics of Aryan as a knowledge domain in colonial and postcolonial India

| The University of Hong Kong

The category Aryan and the paradigm of ideas associated with it remains highly controversial in contemporary India, and the history, status, and impact of this concept are contested at many levels. This paper starts with the assumption that the genesis of this concept lies in Western linguistic theorizing, and analyzes in outline the reception and impact of Aryan Invasion Theory and the postulation of an Aryan-Dravidian divide. Radical Hindu nationalists reject all aspects of the colonial scholarship of India; other Indian scholars see Western scholarship as authoritative to the extent that it falls within the framework of secular modernity. The argument made here is that the entire Aryan paradigm rests on a faulty set of academic presumptions and that its impact has been more long lasting and destructive than even the application of race theory to the understanding of India. In this sense the paper accepts the criticisms made by radical Hindu nationalists of colonial linguistics, and this raises further complex issues about knowledge production and application, scholarly expertise and authority.

Keywords: Aryan, Aryan Invasion Theory, Dravidian, colonial and postcolonial linguistics, Hindutva, Dalits
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Hindu revivalist nationalism
  • 3.The Aryan paradigm
  • 4.The contemporary debate and Aryan invasion theory
  • 5.Outsider linguists versus insider understandings
  • 6.Concluding thoughts: A personal view
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 12 April 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.00002.hut
References
Ballantyne, T.
(2002) Orientalism and race: Aryanism in the British empire. Basingstoke: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, S. C.
(2016) Brahmo Samaj as an actor in the dissemination of Aryan invasion theory (AIT) in India. International Journal of Asian Studies, 131, 19–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baugh, J.
(2000) Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic pride and racial prejudice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Basu, T., Datta, P., Sarkar, S., Sarkar, T., & Sen, S.
(1993) Khaki shorts saffron flags. Hyderabad: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Bernal, M.
(1987) Black athena: Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization: The fabrication of ancient Greece, 1785–1985. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Bhutia, L.
(2016) An ideological tussle develops over references to India and Hinduism in American textbooks. Open Magazine, May 20 2016 Available at: http://​www​.openthemagazine​.com
Biswas, S.
(1995) Autochthon of India and the Aryan invasion. New Delhi: Genuine Publications.Google Scholar
Bryant, Edwin
(2001) The quest for the origins of Vedic culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Campbell, L.
(2007) Why Sir William Jones got it all wrong, or Jones’ role in how to establish language families. In J. Lakarra and J. Hualde (Eds.), Studies in Basque and Historical Linguistics in Memory of R. L. Trask (pp. 245–64). Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco.Google Scholar
Chakrabarti, D.
(2009) India: An archeological history. (2nd ed). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, J.
(Ed.) (1991) The Ram Khamhaeng controversy: Collected papers. Bangkok: Siam Society.Google Scholar
Clarke, J. J.
(2002) Oriental Enlightenment: The encounter between Asian and Western thought. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohn, B.
(1996) Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Colebrooke, H. T.
(1873) On the Sankrit and Prákrit languages. In E. B. Cowell (Ed.), Miscellaneous Essays: A New Edition with Notes, vol. 21 (pp. 1–32) London: Trübner. First published, Asiatic Researches, 71: 199–231 1801.Google Scholar
Cowan, R.
(2010) The Indo-German identification: Reconciling South Asian origins and European destinies 1765–1885. Rochester, NY: Camden House.Google Scholar
Das, A. C.
(1921) Rigvedic India. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.Google Scholar
Deshpande, M.
(2006) Aryan origins: brief history of linguistic arguments. In R. Thapar (Ed.), India: Historical beginnings and the concept of the Aryan (pp. 98–156). New Delhi: National Book Trust.Google Scholar
Deshpande, S.
(2003) Contemporary India: A sociological view. New Delhi: Viking.Google Scholar
Dirks, N.
(2001) Castes of mind: Colonialism and the making of modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Doniger, W.
(2014) The Hindus: An alternative history. New York, NY: Penguin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elst, K.
(1991) Ayodhya and After: Issues before Hindu Society. New Delhi: Voice of India.Google Scholar
Farrar, F.
(1878) Language and languages. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Figueira, D.
(2002) Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing authority through myths of identity. Albany, NY: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Fosse, L.
(2005) Aryan past and post-colonial present: the polemics and politics of indigenous Aryanism. In E. F. Bryant & L. Patton (Eds.), The Indo-Aryan controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history (pp. 434–467). Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Friese, K.
(2001) Liver is not mutton. In Civil Lines: New writing from India, Vol. 41 (pp. 7–34). New Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Gellner, E.
(2006) Nations and nationalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. First published 1983.Google Scholar
Gidwani, B.
(1994) Return of the Aryans. New Delhi: Penguin.Google Scholar
Greenberg, J.
(1955) Studies in African linguistic classification. New Haven, CT: Compass Press.Google Scholar
(1987) Language in the Americas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, R.
(1981) The language myth. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Havell, E.
(1918) The history of Aryan rule in India: From the earliest times to the death of Akbar. London: Harrap.Google Scholar
Heller, M., & McElhinny, B.
(2017) Language, capitalism, colonialism: Towards a critical history. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, R.
(Eds.) (2012) The invention of tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hutton, C.
(2005) Race and the Third Reich: Linguistics, racial anthropology and genetics in the dialectic of Volk. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
(2013) Fictions of affinity and the Aryan paradigm. In M. Messling & O. Ette (Eds.), Wort-Macht-Stamm: Rassismus und determinismus in der philologie (pp. 89–103). Munich: Fink.Google Scholar
(2017) Phonocentrism and the concept of Volk: The case of modern China. In A. Morris-Reich & D. Rupnow (Eds.), Ideas of “race” in the history of the humanities (pp. 273–296). London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ilaiah, K.
(1996) Why I am not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva philosophy, culture and political economy. Calcutta: Samya.Google Scholar
Jones, Sir William
(1799) On the Hindus. The third anniversary discourse, Delivered 2 February, 1786. The works of Sir William Jones (Vol. 11, pp. 19–34). London: G.G. and J. Robinson.Google Scholar
Kaiwar, V.
(2003) The Aryan model of history. In V. Kaiwar & S. Mazumdar (Eds.), Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on race, Orient, nation (pp. 13–61). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kelly, L.
(2016) California’s Hindu textbook controversy: Redefining Hindu American identity. Unpublished masters thesis, University of Toulouse. Available at: http://​dante​.univ​-tlse2​.fr​/2308​/13​/Kelly​_Leah​_M12016​.pdf
Laine, J.
(2003) Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Censorship in brown and white. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 371: 708–716. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leach, E.
(1964) Political systems of Highland Burma. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Leifer, W.
(1971) India and the Germans: 500 years of Indo-German contact. Bombay: Shakuntala.Google Scholar
Leopold, J.
(1974) The Aryan theory of race in India 1870–1920: Nationalism and internationalist versions. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 71, 271–297. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Malhotra, R.
(2014) Indra’s net: Defending Hinduism’s philosophical unity. New Delhi: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Malhotra, R., & Neelakandan, A.
(2011) Breaking India; Western interventions in Dravidian and Dalit faultlines. New Delhi: Amaryllis.Google Scholar
Maw, M.
(1990) Visions of India. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
McGetchin, D.
(2009) Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism: Ancient India’s rebirth in modern Germany. Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.Google Scholar
Messling, M.
(2016) Gebeugter Geist. Rassenlogik und Erkenntnis in der modernen europäischen Philologie. Göttingen: Wallstein.Google Scholar
Misra, S. S.
(2005) The data of the Rigveda and the Aryan migrations: Fresh linguistic evidence. In E. Bryan & L. Patton (Eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy; Evidence and inference in Indian History (pp. 181–233). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Momin, S.
(2017) When the last dome fell: A first-person account of the Babri Masjid demolition. The Hindu, December 6 2017 Available at: www​.thehindu​.com
Morris, R.
(Ed.) (2010) Can the subaltern speak? Reflections on the history of an idea. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mortimer, J.
(1983) Annie Besant and India 1913–1917. Journal of Contemporary History, 181, 61–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, F. M.
(1860) A history of Ancient Sanskrit literature, so far as it illustrates the primitive religion of the Brahmans (2nd ed.). London: Williams and Norgate.Google Scholar
(1912) Biographies of words and the home of the Aryas. London: Longmans. First published 1888.Google Scholar
Nanda, M.
(2000) Postmodernism and religious fundamentalism: A scientific rebuttal to Hindu science. New Delhi: Navayana.Google Scholar
(2004) Prophets facing backward: Postmodern critiques of science and the Hindu nationalism in India. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
(2009) The God market: How globalization is making India more Hindu. New Delhi: Random House.Google Scholar
(2016) Science in Saffron: Skeptical essays on history of science. New Delhi: Three Essays Collective.Google Scholar
Palacas, A.
(2001) Liberating American Ebonics from Euro-English. College English, 631, 326–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pereltsvaig, A., & Lewis, M.
(2015) The Indo-European controversy: Facts and fallacies in historical linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Prashad, V.
(2012) Uncle Swami: South Asians in America today. New York, NY: The New Press.Google Scholar
(2014) Wendy Doniger’s book is a tribute to Hinduism’s complexity, not an insult. The Guardian on-line, Feburary 12 2014, available at: www​.theguardian​.com
Pulgram, E.
(1959) Proto-Indo-European reality and reconstruction. Language, 351: 421–426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1961) The nature and use of proto-languages. Lingua, 101: 18–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramaswamy, K., Nicolas, A. de, & Banerjee, A.
(Eds.) (2007) Invading the sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism studies in America. New Delhi: Rupa.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, S.
(2004) The lost land of Lemuria: Fabulous geographies, catastrophic histories. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ramirez, D., Wiley, T., Klerk, G. de, Lee, E. and Wright, W.
(Eds.) (2005) Ebonics: The urban education debate. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Renu, L. N.
(1994) Indian ancestors of Vedic Aryans. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.Google Scholar
Rocher, R., & Rocher, L.
(2012) The making of Western Indology: Henry Thomas Colebrooke and the East India Company. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Said, E.
(1978) Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Saraswati, S. V.
(1996) Āryāvart (The Original habitat of Aryans). New Delhi: Vijaykumar Govindram Hasanand.Google Scholar
Schlegel, F.
(1819) Über J. G. Rhode: Über den Anfang unserer Geschichte. Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur 81, 413–468.Google Scholar
Seth, S.
(2009) Putting knowledge in its place: Science, colonialism, and the postcolonial. Postcolonial Studies 121, 373–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shankar, Shalini
(2008) Desi land: Teen culture, class, and success in Silicon Valley. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steadman-Jones, R.
(2007) Colonialism and grammatical representation: John Gilchrist and the analysis of the “Hindustani” language in the late Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Talageri, S.
(1993) Aryan invasion theory: A reappraisal. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.Google Scholar
Tavakoli-Targhi, M.
(2003) Orientalism’s genesis amnesia. In Sucheta Mazumdar (Ed.), Antinomies of modernity: Essays on race, Orient, nation (pp. 98–124). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thapar, R.
(1989) Imagined religious communities? Ancient history and the modern search for a Hindu identity. Modern Asian Studies 231, 209–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1996) The Theory of Aryan race and India: history and politics. Social Scientist 241, 3–29.Google Scholar
(2000) The Past and prejudice. Revised edition. New Delhi: National Book Trust.Google Scholar
(2001) Syndicated Hinduism. In G.-D. Sontheimer & H. Kulke (Eds.), Hinduism Reconsidered (pp 54–81). New Delhi: Manohar.Google Scholar
Theertha, S. D.
(1941) The menace of Hindu imperialism. Lahore: Har Bhagwan.Google Scholar
Tilak, B. G.
(1903) The Arctic home in the Vedas. Poona: Tilak Brothers.Google Scholar
[
ToI] (2010) Supreme Court lifts ban on James Laine’s book on Shivaji. The Times of India, July 9 2010 Available at: timesofindia​.indiatimes​.com
Toref-Ashkenazi, C.
(2009) Der romantische mythos vom Ursprung der Deutschen. Friedrich Schlegels Suche nach der indogermanischen Verbindung. Göttingen: Wallstein.Google Scholar
Trautmann, T.
(1997) Aryans and British India. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Languages and nations: The Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vickery, M.
(1991a) The Ram Khamhaeng inscription, a Piltdown skull of Southeast Asian history? In J. Chamberlain (Ed.), The Ram Khamhaeng controversy (pp. 3–52). Bangkok: The Siam Society.Google Scholar
(1991b) Piltdown Skull – Installment 2. In J. Chamberlain (Ed.), The Ram Khamhaeng controversy (pp. 333–418). Bangkok: The Siam Society.Google Scholar
Warren, W.
(1885) Paradise found: Cradle of the human race at the North Pole. Boston, MA: Haughton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Willson, A. L.
(1964) A mythical image: The ideal of India in German romanticism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Witzel, M.
(2005) Indocentricism: Autochtonous visions of ancient India. In E. F. Bryant & L. L. Patton (Eds.), The Indo-Aryan controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian history (pp. 341–404). Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wongthes, M.
(2003) Intellectual might and ational myth: A forensic investigation of the Ram Khamhaeng controversy in Thai society. Bangkok, Thailand: Matichon.Google Scholar
Wright, R.
(1998) Sociolinguistic and ideological dynamics of the Ebonics controversy. The Journal of Negro Education 671, 5–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yap, A. C.
(2016) South Asian Community Debates “South Asia”, “India” Ahead of Textbook Updates. NBCNews, May 16 2016 Available at www​.nbcnews​.com

Full-text

Lost in the hall of mirrors
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Leeman, Jennifer
2020. The nexus of academic knowledge, political agendas, and self-identification in census ethnoracial classification. Language, Culture and Society 2:1 ► pp. 92 ff. DOI logo
Ngué Um, Emmanuel
2020. Had Ferdinand de Saussure spoken Wolof or Basaa…, the discipline of linguistics would have fared differently. Language, Culture and Society 2:1 ► pp. 107 ff. DOI logo
Tupas, Ruanni
2020. Experts and the geopolitics of knowledge production. Language, Culture and Society 2:1 ► pp. 116 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.