Aryan
Sign in to saveAryan (), or Arya (borrowed from Sanskrit ārya), is a term originating from the ethno-cultural self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. It stood in contrast to nearby outsiders, whom they designated as non-Aryan (). In ancient India, the term was used by the Indo-Aryan peoples of the Vedic period, both as an endonym and in reference to a region called Aryavarta (), where their culture emerged. Similarly, according to the Avesta, the Iranian peoples used the term to designate themselves as an ethnic group and to refer to a region called Airyanem Vaejah (), which was their mythical homeland. The w
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"Aryan" is a term that originally referred to the self-designation of Indo-Iranian peoples in ancient times, used to describe both themselves as an ethnic group and the regions where their cultures developed. The term matters historically because it helps scholars understand how ancient Indo-Aryan and Iranian peoples identified themselves and distinguished themselves from neighboring groups, though it has since been misused in modern times for harmful purposes.
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Article
35 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- English and European languages
- Indo-Iranian
- Proto-Indo-European
- Historical usage
- Prehistoric Proto-Indo-Iranians
- Ancient times
- Ancient India
- Ancient Iran
- Indo-Iranian place names
- Graeco-Latin literature
- Modern times
- Iranian nationalism
- Religious use
- Personal names
- Scholarship
- 19th and early 20th century
- Contemporary scholarship
- Aryanism and racism
- Invention of the 'Aryan race'
- Early Romantic views
- North European hypothesis
- Theories of racial supremacy
- Transition to racial biology
- Aryan race and antisemitism
- Nazi racial theories
- Aryanism in India
- Racial interpretations of the ''Rigveda''
- British Raj
- "Aryan invasion theory"
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Bibliography
- Further reading
Aryan (), or Arya (borrowed from Sanskrit ārya), is a term originating from the ethno-cultural self-designation of the Indo-Iranians. It stood in contrast to nearby outsiders, whom they designated as non-Aryan (). In ancient India, the term was used by the Indo-Aryan peoples of the Vedic period, both as an endonym and in reference to a region called Aryavarta (), where their culture emerged. Similarly, according to the Avesta, the Iranian peoples used the term to designate themselves as an ethnic group and to refer to a region called Airyanem Vaejah (), which was their mythical homeland. The word stem also forms the etymological source of place names like Alania () and Iran ().
Although the stem may originate from the Proto-Indo-European language, it seems to have been used exclusively by the Indo-Iranian peoples, as there is no evidence of it having served as an ethnonym for the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The view of many modern scholars is that the ethos of the ancient Aryan identity, as it is described in the Avesta and the Rigveda, was religious, cultural, and linguistic, and was not tied to the concept of race.