Definition of Aryan: Linguistic or Racial?

Both. 

I agree with Maqsad and Sirius 99. Although it has become more of a linguistic term now, which is completely natural since people mix and adopt languages, there definitely must have been an original race who were the first speakers. Just like English , it has become the native tongue for so many nations in the world, but we all know that the Anglo-Saxons who came from north west Germany were the first or original speakers of it.

Edited by omshanti - 23-Feb-2007 at 09:59

The same topic is repeated unnecessarily.

ok, i've been away from this for a while. spring break .

Originally posted by sirius99 Not sure about Vedic but in Avesta they refer as a race. Some Persian kings refer themselve have aryan lineage. Like Darius the Great (500 BC). You can look it up in Wiki If you trust them.

right, as there are several indian kings who claim aryan lineage themselves. but, even a simple observation shows that the majority (literally, >50%. i don't know any real numbers here) of indians do not look like iranians, and i think it would be fair to say around 500BC, this was the case as well. so this leads to the question, what does aryan lineage mean?

Originally posted by omshanti I agree with Maqsad and Sirius 99. Although it has become more of a linguistic term now, which is completely natural since people mix and adopt languages, there definitely must have been an original race who were the first speakers. Just like English , it has become the native tongue for so many nations in the world, but we all know that the Anglo-Saxons who came from north west Germany were the first or original speakers of it.

does there have to be an original race that composed the aryan language? not all languages originate with race. languages such as swahili, for example, are an emalgamation of several cultures and languages. for an example closer to india, look at hindi. it is essentially persian, arabic, and sanskrit/prakriti combined into a new language. what race do you attribute the creation of hindi to? would it not be more appropriate to define hindi speakers by culture and not by race?

Originally posted by cryptic After about 1960, the word race started to be used  to descibe scientific anthropological races.  Some uneducated people may still use  the term "race" to desribe ethnicities, but this is declining.   So, in sources translated or written before about 1960, the aryans are defined as a race.  In actuality, the Aryans were racially caucasoid and were probably a collection of closely affiliated ethnic groups like the Celts (Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Bretonese).  These ethnic groups are distinct, but speak related languages and have common cultural roots.

where are you getting the "probably closely affiliated with Celts?" from? why not iranians, or other central asians?

Originally posted by Hick all i can say is there not a major difference between 90% of indians who have dark skin and look same, doesn't matter if your from north or south india, its only when you you go north of Delhi india in areas like punjab, himachal, kashmir that the skin colour turns more fairer and ofcourse once you go in to northern pakistan people are much fairer there.

I'm not worried about what indians look like. my question is before we start throwing the word aryan around, we should first realize its definition and figure out why it's defined that way.



i am aware that the word aryan was once racial. however, i'm more interested in the modern definition. do people still conceive of the aryan as a race, or have people adopted a linguistic definition now?

Originally posted by AlokaParyetra does there have to be an original race that composed the aryan language? not all languages originate with race. languages such as swahili, for example, are an emalgamation of several cultures and languages. for an example closer to india, look at hindi. it is essentially persian, arabic, and sanskrit/prakriti combined into a new language. what race do you attribute the creation of hindi to? would it not be more appropriate to define hindi speakers by culture and not by race?

When did I define Hindi speakers or speakers of any other language by race? In my post I wrote very clearly that people mix and adopt languages therefore it is completely natural for terms such as Aryan to have become linguistic rather than racial. It is meaningless to use Aryan in a racial sense in modern times since it is such an old term and if there was an ''original people'' they must be extinct by now. I only stated that there must have been a race or a people who were the original speakers of a language from which all the related languages sprang out. In my opinion the more ancient a language or a language family is, the more possibility that there was an original people. The more ancient it is, the more local/closer would be the peoples and cultures that influenced its formation..
You wrote that Hindi is Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit combined in to a new language. So why is Hindi classified as an Indic language? Why not Iranic or Semitic? English has been heavily influenced by other languages such as Latin or Celtic languages as well, but why is it classified as a Germanic language instead of Celtic or Romance? All the languages in the world are influenced by other languages, but still there are the basic grammar and vocabulary which make it possible to distinguish them in to certain language families and tell their roots.


Edited by omshanti - 06-Mar-2007 at 00:18

Originally posted by AlokaParyetra i took it that you were suggesting that there must have been an original people .

I did suggest that , and in my previous post I did clarify and explain the reasons as to why I have that opinion.

Originally posted by AlokaParyetra Hindi is classified as Indic because of the region it is spoken in, not because of any grammatical attributes. both tamil and hindi are indic, but there grammar is different. the correct linguistic classification for hindi would be indo-european, because its grammar is IE.

I disagree with you that Hindi is classified as Indic because of the region it is spoken in. I do not think that linguists simply classify languages because of their geographical locations, otherwise the Hungarian language would have been classified as Indo-European or Romanian as Slavic , but as we know they are not.
As far as I know the word Indic is used as in Indo-Aryan, a devision of the Indo-Iranian branch within the larger Indo-European family. Hindi is classified as Indic (Indo-Aryan) because it is a descendant of Sanskrit. Tamil is not classified as Indic. It belongs to the Dravidian language family, so ofcourse it has different basic grammar and vocabulary from Indic languages such as Hindi.

Originally posted by AlokaParyetra i am not denying that the aryan language is this or that. what i am saying is that linguistics != race, and that distinction should be made and kept when talking about aryan this or aryan that.

If that is your opinion , why the question to start this topic?
''Aryan'' in the modern linguistic term (if ever used ) is not a single language but a group of related languages. So I do not think that there is or was a single language called the ''Aryan language''.
If you go to Iran and ask an avarage person who does not know any thing about linguistics or history ''Aryan'' is more of a mythical racial term, which in my opinion indicates that the word ''Aryan'' started off as a racial term in the ancient times and that there is a certain continuity/tradition from the ancient times of its racial sense/usage.
Perhaps the distinction should be made between its ancient sense and its modern sense.



Edited by omshanti - 05-Mar-2007 at 20:08

Originally posted by AlokaParyetra i still maintain that Hindi is considered Indic because of the region it is spoken in. Were Hindi to be spoken in south africa, for example, it would probably be considered an African language. For example, Afrikaans is most closely related to dutch than any other language, but it is still considered an African language due to the region of the world it is spoken in.

Afrikaans is classified as a low-Franconian language which is a division of west-Germanic languages. It is not classified as Afro-Asiatic, nor as Nilo-Sahararan, nor as Niger-Congo, nor as khoi-San...etc, which are the language families existent in African continent. I think you are confusing geographical terms that are simply used as names for languages/language families with the actual linguistic classificatons. Afrikaans might be called ''Afrikaans '' but it is not classified as an ''African'' language. As for ''Indic'', It does not mean languges spoken in Indian sub-continent , it is a name/word simply given (for convenience) to a specific languge group/family.

Originally posted by AlokaParyetra I agree, but what exactly is its modern sense? Most of the topics in this sub-forum have the word Aryan in it, and most of the time it is thrown around. For example, someone will claim indians are 72% Aryan, and then someone else will take personal offense and get mad, claiming there is no way 72% of indians are Aryan or have any Aryan "blood." Now, if we don't even agree on what Aryan means, how can this be resolved?

In my opinion the modern sense of ''Aryan'' is to know that it is an anceint term and that it is completely irrerelevant for use in modern times as a racial term, Linguistically it is sometimes (rarely) used as a name for the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. However this is a definition/sense of ''Aryan'' that I came to see only after I studied the related subjects such as history, linguistics, anthropology..etc. Some people who have not studied/searched enough or some people who have ethnocentric/nationalistic views on things might use it differently. You can't make every body agree with your opinions, if you do not like the way some people use ''Aryan'' just try to see what is behind it and why they use it in that particular way. It might stop bothering you.

Edited by omshanti - 06-Mar-2007 at 20:09

woah, what happened to north indian and all his posts and threads?

I do not think that there is a right or  only definition of the word ''Aryan'' or in fact any existing word that we use, because every single person is different and has different point of views, perceptions and philosophy. The point is how do we find a common ground within all those different perceptions when communicating. Also In my opinion people who use this kind of terms in racist or nationalistic ways have some kind of insecurity, but people who are disturbed by it have some kind of insecurity too. It might be good to look  within and ask yourself why you are so bothered by it and why is it such a big issue for you. This is just an internet forum where any body can post and write what ever they want. History is a fact and unchangeable, it does not change just because some people wrote something they want in this forum. So in my opinion it is a waste  of time to be bothered by every single post, and that is probably why so many people are not bothered.



In order to know more about the English word ''Aryan'' we have to look in to the original word ''Arya''  from which it was derived. ''Arya'' or ''Airya'' was used in both Avestan and Sanskrit. The English interpretation was mostly taken from Avestan.

This is the Avestan meaning according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arya#Iranian_airiia

Iranian airiia

• airya meaning "nobly born" and "respectable", but also "Iranian"
• airyana or "Iranian"

"Iranian", as used above, refers to all Iranian peoples, at the time not yet differentiated from each other at the time of the composition of the Zoroastrian Yashts texts, where Zarathustra is described to have lived in Airyanem Vaejah meaning "Root-land of Aryans". The word "Iran" (Ērān) itself comes from Proto-Iranian *Aryānām - (land) of the Aryas. Airya was distinguished from anairya, non-Iranian, and is clearly to be understood as the name of a self-identified nation, ethnic group, or linguistic group. The word and concept of Airyanem Vaejah is present in the name of the country Iran (lit. Land of Aryans) which is a modern-Persian form of the word "Aryana" (lit. Country of Aryans). ^[1] Aryana in ancient history was also a name of a part of present-day Afghanistan.

The word "arya" (in the form āriyā, آریا), in the modern Persian language, also means "noble", "Aryan", or "Iranian" The word is both related to language and ethnicity and is found in various forms of boys' and girls' names. "Aryan" is also commonly used as a boy's name in various Indic languages.

In the Avesta, apart from the Airyanem Vaejah, "Airya-shayana" (abode of the Aryans) is also addressed. It is the entire homeland of the Aryans as opposed to the root-land.

Zoroaster is generally regarded as the first of the great prophets, and the earliest of the great thinkers; his people in the holy texts of Avesta are referred to as Airyas, and their homeland located in eastern Iran as Airyanem Vaejah

Edited by omshanti - 06-Mar-2007 at 23:52