The Problem Of Aryan Origins

Preface to the First Edition

This little book started to take shape in response to a suggestion by my friend Arabinda Basu who has a mind which - in Shelley's phrase - has grown "bright, gazing at many truths". The suggestion was that I contribute a paper to a Russian conference which was due to be held some time in October 1977.

There was no definite information except that the original home of the group of related tribes going by the name "Aryan" was the subject, with a special focus on the "Aryan imigration into India". As I had been interested in problems of ancient history, I thought it was a good opportunity to present an Indian point of view which I considered the most legitimate and pertinent in the field.

My paper began to grow as I warmed up to the complex theme of Aryan origins. "The fascination of what's difficult", à la Yeats, drew me onward all the more, since I was putting forth ideas of an unconventional order elaborating a few conclusions of Sri Aurobindo's, arrived at from several sides.

It is supposed to be the rule for a preface to give a précis of the book. I have already added, to the discussion covered by thirteen chapters and an appendix in two parts, an analytic review of them. This should serve as a detailed summary, a topical guide from page to page. What I may give now is a brief quotation from Sri Aurobindo which does not occur in the body of the book but which may be regarded as a flashing hint of the thesis to be unfolded.

There was a rejoinder by Sri Aurobindo published in the Madras daily, The Hindu, of August 27, 1914 to a misunderstanding of the very first article of his series, The Secret of the Veda, commencing in his own periodical, the Arya, where he had written of the background of the Upanishads' Brahmavada (Doctrine of Brahman, the Vedantic philosophy as opposed to the ritualism attributed by many later Vedantins to the Rigveda). In the course of that rejoinder he explained:

"My point was that such knowledge, when it expressed a developed philosophy and psychology, stood in need of historical explanation. If we accept the European idea of an evolving knowledge in humanity, - and it is on that basis that my argument proceeded, - we must find the source of the Brahmavada either in an extraneous origin such as a previous Dravidian culture, - a theory which I cannot admit, since I regard the so-called Aryans and Dravidians as one homogeneous race, - or in a previous development, of which the records have either been lost or are to be found in the Veda itself... As to the origins of the Vedic religion, that is a question which cannot be solved at present for lack of data. It does not follow that it had no origins or in other words that humanity was not prepared by a progressive spiritual experience for the Revelation."

Surely, what this implies is: (1) an essentially spiritual expression everywhere in the Rigveda in symbolic terms mostly connected with the conditions of the time; (2) a presence of Dravido-Aryanism or Aryo-Dravidianism prac-tically native to our subcontinent and perhaps even having a lost common linguistic background in antiquity, instead of an Aryan invasion of a Dravidian country in not too distant an epoch; and (3) a remote past to this racially undivided though multi-featured phenomenon of spirituality in ancient India itself, whose final source cannot be satisfactorily traced. The last point leaves the pre-Rigvedic religious history in the dark but does not necessarily exclude the faint glimmer of some ultimate habitat from the haze of a semi-mythical memory in the spiritual consciousness which was symbolically expressive.

The direction in which the possible clues seem to point will be our answer to the question of the Dravido-Aryans' homeland farthest in time. The answer to the other question - namely, whether the Rishis of the Rigveda were immigrants a mere three thousand five hundred years ago, as generally believed - will be an emphatic "No", and here a host of arguments archaeological, literary and linguistic can

be mustered. In giving this answer a lot of ground has been traversed in order to set the several insights and inferences of a versatile genius, both intellectual and spiritual, like Sri Aurobindo, within whatever framework of technical scholarship one could supply in addition to his own masterly working out of several aspects of his vision.

By the time my exposition was ready I learned that no paper could be submitted to the Russian conference unless the writer was one of the invitees. Besides, it had grown beyond any permissible definition of a paper, and the desire to make it as sound as possible took it past the month of October. When it had reached a presentable stage, Arabinda Basu succeeded in firing the imagination of the Sri Ma-Sri Aurobindo Milan Kendra of Calcutta. That enterprizing group of disciples of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother took up the publication of my adventurous attempt. And it is thanks to the liberal offer of funds without any fanfare by Mr. Tarapada Majumdar and to the leadership of that rare combination of sympathetic understanding, organizational ability and executive drive, Mr. Ajit Roychowdhury, that The Problem of Aryan Origins has solved the problem of moving from its origins in its author's mind towards its destination, the general public of thoughtful readers.

Grateful acknowledgements are owed to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust for permission to quote from Sri Aurobindo's works and to the Archaeological Survey of India for letting me use a photograph of two Harappān Seals. The sources of the helpful quotations from various historical writers are duly mentioned in the footnotes as well as in the Bibliography.

February 21, 1980

K.D.S.