"India: The Original Home of Aryans" by Dr S. Srikanta Sastri

 

APPENDIX (1)

 

The theory of the indigenous origin of the Aryans has been advocated by a number of scholars. MM. Ganganath Jha has tried, to prove that the original home was the Brahmarshi-desa(2). D. S. Triveda suggests that the original home of the Aryans was in the region of the river Devika in Multan(3). L. D. Kalla advocates the claims of Kashmir and the Himalayan region(4). The various arguments in favour of this view may be summed up as follows:

 

1. There is no evidence to show that the Vedic Aryans were foreigners or that they migrated into India within traditional memory. Sufficient literary materials are available to indicate with some degree of certainty, that the Vedic Aryans themselves regarded Sapta-Sindhu as their original home (devakrita-yoni or devanirmita-desa). Migrating races look back to the land of their origin for centuries. The Parsis in India remember their origin after eight hundred years. The ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians remembered their respective lands of origin even though they had forgotten their location. The Vedic Aryans, if at all they came from outside, therefore, must have lived in Sapta-Sindhu so many centuries before the Vedic period that they had lost all memory of an original home(5).

 

2. The linguistic affinities are not positive proofs of Aryan immigration. The Vedic Sanskrit has the largest number of vocables found in the Aryan languages. These are preserved in the languages of the Sanskritic family in different parts of India even when there has been inter-racial contact for centuries. On the other hand, if the pre-Vedic Aryan language was spoken in different parts of Europe and Asia where the Aryans had settled before coming to India, how is it that only a few vocables are left in the present- day speech of those parts, while the largest number of them is found in the distant places of ultimate settlement and racial ad- mixture in India? On the contrary this disparity can easily be explained if the pre-Vedic was the language of the homeland of Aryans and the other Aryan languages came into existence as a result of the contact between migrating Aryans and non-Aryan elements outside India and Persia(6).