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The question for me is whether what might be called a second "Brahmanic Ascendancy", in the political and not just the sacerdotal realm, predates the British embrace of the caste system as a governing rather than a religious institution. The caste system, itself, would seem to date back at least to the Gupta Empire.
The strong consensus is that PIE originated in the Eurasian steppes. If anything, it was Europe that culturally retrogressed during the "Dark Ages" following the fall of Rome, under the heels of an "anti-rationalist" Christianity, during which the classical heritage of Greece and Rome was almost lost.
Ultimately, it was Arabs, Jews, and Irish monks, and not the Church, who saved what became the foundation of the "Western Tradition" (Aristotle, et al), but which likely wouldn't have happened without the opening to Eastern influences and inventions (including arabic numerals, the number zero, algebra, gun powder, guns and cannons, steel, movable type, paper, hospitals and medical science, universities, and chess, for instance) following the Crusades.
Higher cultures, including Hinduism, it seems to me, are hybrids, rather than simple autochthonous developments. The search for unitary cultural grounds, rather than stages of dynamic synthesis, is futile.
It might not have originated there, but it was widely used there. Present day Afganistan and Pakistan were once battlegrounds . Also The population movement has always been outward than inward. India had teh largest population and economy until 17/18th centuries and they wouldnt have risen in a flash.
The only significant outward migration from the Indian Subcontinent to Europe I'm aware of was that of the Gypsies (or Roma). From the article from The Hindu I linked to earlier:
Quote:
2. The second argument put forward was that R1a lineages exhibited much greater diversity in India than elsewhere and, therefore, it must have originated in India and spread outward. This has been proved false because a mammoth, global study of R1a haplogroup published last year showed that R1a lineages in India mostly belong to just three subclades of the R1a-Z93 and they are only about 4,000 to 4,500 years old.
The Hephthalites (Huna or "White Huns") were instrumental in the fall of the Gupta Empire (c. 550 CE), about the same time as 1) the beginning of endogamy within the higher castes (as a reaction to invasion?) [see earlier link I posted] and 2) the beginning of the out-migration of the Romani (Gypsies), who genetically trace back to the Dalits ("Untouchables") [European Roma descended from Indian 'untouchables', genetic study shows - Telegraph].
Brother the varna system( cleverly marketed by the British as caste system) existed even before 5000 years. The term Dalit is a term that came into picture only in the last century, whereas I am talking about 5000 years ago when everything including warfare was advanced.
When research is conducted by scholars whose history is only few 100 years old, it is difficult to go further back and accept what existed.
Brother the varna system( cleverly marketed by the British as caste system) existed even before 5000 years. The term Dalit is a term that came into picture only in the last century, whereas I am talking about 5000 years ago when everything including warfare was advanced.
When research is conducted by scholars whose history is only few 100 years old, it is difficult to go further back and accept what existed.
Do you have a source/link?
I didn't say that the caste system dated back to the fall of the Gupta Empire, but that, according to the genetic study I cited and linked, strict endogamy among the upper castes dated from that time. Prior to that, upwardly-mobile gene flow/mixing was apparently much more common. The Guptas, themselves, have been reputed to have been Vaishyas. One of the theories I've read is that the White Huns interrupted the Guptas' trade links with the Roman Empire.
There is widespread evidence for caste divisions throughout Indo-European/Aryan cultures - the Vikings (Earls, Churls, Thralls = Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas), for instance. The Indo-Aryan invasion was primarily males, so they would have taken their wives from the indigenous population.
THE NON-BRAHMAN movements of western and southern India during the colonial period were the most powerful expressions of a pan-Indian upsurge that sought to confront and destroy the millennial-old caste hierarchy. Brahmanism had been given shape as the ideology of the ruling class in the middle of the first millennium BC, with an exclusive intelligentsia claiming cultural purity and sacredness. This ideology and the caste hierarchy it was linked to gained hegemony over its greatest rival, Buddhism, about a thousand years later. It succeeded in maintaining its dominance under vastly changed material conditions even during the colonial period and the 50 years of Independence, with the Congress representing the "moderate'' and the Jan Sangh (now BJP) the "extremist'' form of the Brahmanic ideology.
One aspect of its success was the ability of the elite to define the "Indian'' identity in its own terms, claiming that the core of Indian culture lay in Sanskrit, the Vedic tradition and the Vedanta. Since the 19th century this has been projected as "Hinduism.'' This was the "Great Tradition,'' the national tradition. All other challenging cultural traditions, whether based on the masses of the Bahujans and the Dalits, or among the Adivasis or in linguistic-national identities, were relegated to regional or local "Little Traditions.'' Devatas like Murugan or Vithoba were proclaimed as forms of Vishnu or Shiva; Adivasi religions today are similarly appropriated. The choice placed before the masses was and is "Sanskritisation'' versus "westernisation;'' no force has existed projecting a "Dalit'' or "Bahujan'' or "Dravidian'' all-India identity.
The question of whether "the core of Indian culture lay in Sanskrit, the Vedic tradition and the Vedanta", underpinned by the caste system, rather than being a system of cultural, social, economic, and racial hegemony and oppression imposed, at least initially, by lighter-skinned Indo-European invaders (designating themselves as "noble", or Aryan) on a darker-skinned indigenous population, and the role of the British in further intensifying and supporting it, is very much at the heart of this discussion, it seems to me. At least the latest Y-DNA results have punctured the central presupposition that is involved.
As it is, however, the lower non-Brahmanic castes are complicit in the continuing exclusion and oppression of the Dalits, in defense of the relative privileges they possess, not withstanding their inferior status. Any kind of pan-Dravidian revolutionary movement overthrowing the caste system is a long way off. That doesn't mean there aren't underlying tensions that could eventually come to a real head.
The question of whether "the core of Indian culture lay in Sanskrit, the Vedic tradition and the Vedanta", underpinned by the caste system, rather than being a system of cultural, social, economic, and racial hegemony and oppression imposed, at least initially, by lighter-skinned Indo-European invaders (designating themselves as "noble", or Aryan) on a darker-skinned indigenous population, and the role of the British in further intensifying and supporting it, is very much at the heart of this discussion, it seems to me. At least the latest Y-DNA results have punctured the central presupposition that is involved.
As it is, however, the lower non-Brahmanic castes are complicit in the continuing exclusion and oppression of the Dalits, in defense of the relative privileges they possess, not withstanding their inferior status. Any kind of pan-Dravidian revolutionary movement overthrowing the caste system is a long way off. That doesn't mean there aren't underlying tensions that could eventually come to a real head.
And there is no way you or anyone can prove "the lighter skinned" invaders. Just see the timeline or chronology of events connecting Max Mueller, Hitler, Aryan invasion theory etc. Everything were comfortably created at the end of 18th century. The Germans had no real history to stick to, so they invented those terms to benefit them. The Germans needed some history and British needed to erase some. So there came these Aryan lies.
I am not denying any migration or people or DNA tests. But the history distorters needs to come up with some more convincing lies to succeed.
To conclude, core of Indian culture never lay in Sanskrit, no oppression took place in terms of color. If it was why do Tamilians build huge temples and perform services in Sanskrit till date??
Scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad recently discovered that genetic differences and caste system were the main reasons behind the region-wise variation in the skin colour of Indians. The study , which was led by senior scientist Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj in collaboration with Estonian Biocentre and five other research institutes, has been published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. It indicates that social structure defined by the caste system has a "profound influence on skin pigmentation". The team had studied 1,825 individuals belonging to 52 diverse populations across India with regard to the caste-colour concept.
"Unlike Africans and Europeans, we do not have homogeneous skin colour throughout the country. This could be due to different waves of human migration into India and recent admixture of all Indian populations," Dr Thangaraj said, adding that skin colour was found to vary significantly among ethnic groups and social categories.
[...]
"Our study clearly reflects the profound influence of strict marriage patterns and multi-layered endogamy adding further to the variation in skin colour," said another researcher Dr Chandana Basu.
The term "Indo-European" came about due to linguistic similarities between Indian/Sanskrit-based and many European languages. It designates a family of languages, descending from a commonly shared language-heritage (PIE), and not a specific racial/genetic group. It can in no way be inferred to signify racial or ethnic superiority/purity.
Genes for skin-color, light or dark, are selected for based on latitude and sun exposure. That invaders from the north (not just Indo-Europeans, but also Scythians, Macedonians, Kushans, White Huns, etc.) were lighter-skinned is simply a matter of their geographic origination (the northern Eurasian steppes). Tamils/Dravidians, however, originated from Southeast Asia...
The Germans had no real history to stick to, so they invented those terms to benefit them.
excuse me !
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