On Mar 17, 4:41 pm, use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr.
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> The ethnic meaning of "Arya"
>
> By Koenraad Elsthttp://koenraadelst.blogspot.com
> Saturday, March 12, 2011
>
> In debates on the politically controversial term Arya, we keep
> hearing from Hindus and Buddhists that it only means "noble", as in
> the Buddha's "four noble (Arya) truths". This bespeaks a deficient
> sense of historicity, i.c. the realization that terminology is
> susceptible to change.
>
> While the term had no racial ("Nordic") or linguistic ("Indo-
> European") meaning, it did originally have an ethnic meaning. On
> this, invasionist linguist JP Mallory and anti-invasionist historian
> Shrikant Talageri agree. At least, it has a relative ethnic meaning,
> not designating a particular nation, but being used by several Indo-
> European nations (viz. Anatolians, Iranians and Paurava Indians) in
> the sense of "compatriot", "one of us". This term, in India, then
> evolved to "one who shares the civilizational norms of the Vedic
> Paurava tribes", "Veda-abiding", "civilized". And thence "noble".
>
> The use of Arya cognates in Hittite and Lycian (Anatolian) in the
> sense of "compatriot, fellow citizen" is given in standard textbooks
> of Indo-European linguistics, such as JP Mallory's, and in the On-
> line Etymological Dictionaryhttp://www.etymonline.com/
>
> The same in Iranian is beyond dispute. Iran itself is from Airyanam
> Khshathra. In 2006, Tajikistan hosted the UNESCO-sponsored World
> Aryan Fair, where "Aryan" in effect meant "Iranian", including
> Baluch, Kurd, Osset (Scythian), Pathan and Tajik. Non-Iranians
> including Indians were Anairya to them, regardless of whether they
> called themselves Arya.
>
> The evidence for Arya used in the Rg-Veda in the sense of
> "compatriot" is given at length in Talageri's latest two books, The
> Rg-Veda, a Historical Analysis and The Rg-Veda and the Avesta, the
> Final Evidence. He arrived at his conclusions without any knowledge
> of the linguists' findings. What he shows is that the Paurava tribe,
> in which (particularly, in whose Bharata clan) the Veda hymns were
> composed, referred to its own members as Arya. All others, including
> Iranians ("Dasa", "Dasyu", "Pani") and non-Paurava Indians (Yadava,
> Aikshvaku et al.), were counted as Anarya.
>
> Contrary to Arya Samaji and other modern-moralistic interpretations,
> Arya does not mean "good" nor Anarya "bad": even a hostile reference
> to a traitorous fellow-Paurava calls him Arya, even non-Paurava
> friends whose virtues are praised remain Anarya. It is only when
> Paurava Vedic tradition become normative for the neighbouring tribes
> that Arya gradually loses its Paurava exclusiveness and acquires the
> non-ethnic meaning of "Vedic", "partaking of Vedic tradition",
> "civilized", "noble"; and "Anarya" becomes "barbarian".
>
> One resultant semantic development is "upper-caste", meaning those
> people who received the Vedic initiation. Since Kshatriyas and
> Brahmins had their own more specific titulature, the general
> honorific Arya often designated the Vaishya. It is also used as a
> form of address to any honoured person, which is probably the origin
> of the present-day honorific suffix -ji, evolved through the Prakrit
> forms ayya, ajja, 'jje. In South India, the term Arya designated the
> Northern immigarnts who described themselves as such: Buddhist and
> Jaina preachers and Brahmin settlers. They latter's caste names Aiyar
> and Aiyangar are evolutes of Arya.
>
> It is in the sense of "noble" that the Buddha spoke of the Arya 4
> truths and 8-fold path. However, we must take into account the
> possibility that he used it in the implied sense of "Vedic", broadly
> conceived. That after Vedic tradition got carried away into what he
> deemed non-essentials, he intended to restore what he conceived as
> the original Vedic spirit. After all, the anti-Vedicism and anti-
> Brahmanism now routinely attributed to him, are largely in the eye of
> the modern beholder. Though later Brahmin-born Buddhist thinkers
> polemicized against Brahmin institutions and the idolizing of the
> Veda, the Buddha himself didn't mind attributing to the gods Indra
> and Brahma his recognition as the Buddha and his mission to teach;
> and when predicting the future Buddha Maitreya, had him born in a
> Brahmin family; and had over 40% Brahmins among his ordained
> disciples.
>
> I haven't looked into original sources about this yet, but surmise
> that pre-war racists waxed enthusiastic about descriptions by
> contemporaries of the Buddha as tall and light-skinned. That would be
> "Aryan" in the then-common sense of "Nordic". Nowadays, some scholars
> including Michael Witzel suggest that the Buddha's Shakya tribe may
> have been of Iranian origin (from Shaka, "Scythian"), which would
> explain their fierce endogamy. They practised cousin marriage, e.g.
> th Buddha himself had only four great-grandparents because his
> paternal grandfather was the brother of his maternal grandmother
> while his maternal grandfather was the brother of his paternal
> grandmother. The Brahminical lawbooks prohibited this close endogamy
> (gotras are exogamous) and like the Catholic Church, imposed respect
> for "prohibited degrees of consanguinity"; but it was common among
> Iranians. (It was also common among Dravidians, a lead not yet fully
> exploited by neo-Buuddhists claiming the Buddha as "pre-Aryan".) The
> Shakya-s justified it through pride in their direct pure descent from
> Arya patriarch Manu Vaivasvata, but this could be an explanation
> adapted to the Indian milieu hiding their Iranian origin (which they
> themselves too could have forgotten), still visible in their physical
> profile. Thus far the "Iranian Buddha" theory.
>
> It is possible and indeed likely that other Indian tribes
> contemporaneous with the Vedic Paurava-s also called themselves Arya
> (and the Paurava-s Anarya), but they have left us no texts to prove
> it. Such usage may have facilitated the adoption of the term Arya in
> the (to them) new meaning of "Vedic".
>
> The 19th-century claims of the use of an "Arya" cognate as ethnic
> self-designation in Celtic ("Eire") and Germanic have been abandoned,
> as well as the relation with German Ehre, "honour" (which is from
> *aiz-, cognate with Latin aes-timare, whence English esteem). There
> is no firm indication that it ever was a pan-Indo-European or Proto-
> Indo-European self-designation and thus a valid synonym for "Indo-
> European".
>
> Keywords - Arya, Aryan Invasion, Buddha, Iran, Talageri Shrikant
>
> More at:http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2011/03/ethnic-meaning-of-arya.html
>
> Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
> Om Shanti
>
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