Aryan Dravidian Racial Divide, a Widely Popular Error of Comparative Philology
One of the sources of confusion and division in interpreting the history of ancient India is the notion of Aryans and Dravidians, a proposed racial division that is at the heart of Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) or its later versions Aryan Migration Theory (AMT). Currently, there are many studies using genetic markers to investigate this division but that is not the focus of this post. This post is about looking at the question of the Aryan Dravidian divide through the eyes of Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950).
Originally, the idea of the Aryan Dravidian racial divide was built on classifications made by Comparative Philologists during the early stages of development of that branch of study.
Somewhere in 1913/14, Sri Aurobindo notes:
…there was the elaborate division of civilised humanity into the Aryan, Semitic, Dravidian & Turanian races, based upon the philological classification of the ancient and modern languages….The philologists have, for instance, split up, on the strength of linguistic differences, the Indian nationality into the northern Aryan race & the southern Dravidian…1
Language and race
When Sri Aurobindo came to Pondicherry in South India, he himself had a ‘second-hand belief in the racial difference’ as we can find in his writings:
Two observations that were forced on my mind, gave a serious shock to my second-hand belief in the racial division between Northern Aryans and Southern Dravidians. The distinction had always rested for me on a supposed difference between the physical types of Aryan and Dravidian and a more definite incompatibility between the northern Sanskritic and the southern non-Sanskritic tongues. I knew indeed of the later theories which suppose that a single homogeneous race, Dravidian or Indo-Afghan, inhabits the Indian peninsula; but hitherto I had not attached much importance to these speculations.
I could not, however, be long in Southern India without being impressed by the general recurrence of northern or “Aryan” types in the Tamil race. Wherever I turned, I seemed to recognise with a startling distinctness, not only among the Brahmins but in all castes and classes, the old familiar faces, features, figures of my friends of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Hindustan, even, though this similarity was less widely spread, of my own province Bengal. The impression I received was as if an army of all the tribes of the North had descended on the South and submerged any previous populations that may have occupied it. A general impression of a Southern type survived, but it was impossible to fix it rigidly while studying the physiognomy of individuals. And in the end I could not but perceive that whatever admixtures might have taken place, whatever regional differences might have been evolved, there remains, behind all variations, a unity of physical as well as of cultural type throughout India.2
Sri Aurobindo’s linguistic research
Subramanya Bharati, well known Tamil poet, was one of the close associates of Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. Sri Aurbindo studied Tamil as part of his linguistic research and his investigations revealed one thing:
… there was always the difference of language to support the theory of a meeting of races. But here also my preconceived ideas were disturbed and confounded. For on examining the vocables of the Tamil language, in appearance so foreign to the Sanskritic form and character, I yet found myself continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally, between the Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocable not only suggested the connection, but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And it was through this Dravidian language that I came first to perceive what seems to me now the true law, origins and, as it were, the embryology of the Aryan tongues.3
It was this investigation that lead him to his deep research into the Vedas where the Philologists had put the vedge of Aryan Dravidian division.
I was unable to pursue my examination far enough to establish any definite conclusion, but it certainly seems to me that the original connection between the Dravidian and Aryan tongues was far closer and more extensive than is usually supposed and the possibility suggests itself that they may even have been two divergent families derived from one lost primitive tongue. If so, the sole remaining evidence of an Aryan invasion of Dravidian India would be the indications to be found in the Vedic hymns.
It was, therefore, with a double interest that for the first time I took up the Veda in the original, though without any immediate intention of a close or serious study. It did not take long to see that the Vedic indications of a racial division between Aryans and Dasyus and the identification of the latter with the indigenous Indians were of a far flimsier character than I had supposed.4
Sri Aurobindo’s conclusion
After his extensive study of the Vedas, Sri Aurobindo concluded:
… the indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built, are very scanty in quantity and uncertain in their significance. There is no actual mention of any such invasion. The distinction between Aryan and un-Aryan on which so much has been built, seems on the mass of the evidence to indicate a cultural rather than a racial difference. The language of the hymns clearly points to a particular worship or spiritual culture as the distinguishing sign of the Aryan, — a worship of Light and of the powers of Light and a self-discipline based on the culture of the “Truth” and the aspiration to Immortality, — Ritam and Amritam. There is no reliable indication of any racial difference.5
Widely popularised errors
Based on his study of languages and the Veda, Sri Aurobindo dismissed the idea of racial difference based on the linguistic division of the languages of India.
The races of India may be all pure Dravidians, if indeed such an entity as a Dravidian race exists or ever existed, or they may be pure Aryans, if indeed such an entity as an Aryan race exists or ever existed, or they may be a mixed race with one predominant strain, but, in any case, the linguistic division of the tongues of India into the Sanscritic & the Tamilic counts for nothing in that problem. Yet so great is the force of attractive generalisations & widely popularised errors that all the world goes on perpetuating the blunder, talking of the Indo-European races, claiming or disclaiming Aryan kinship & building on that basis of falsehood the most far-reaching political, social or pseudo-scientific conclusions.6
Regarding the attempts to equate philological classifications with racial classifications, Sri Aurobindo observes:
More sensible & careful reflection has shown us that community of language is no proof of community of blood or ethnological identity; the French are not a Latin race because they speak a corrupt & nasalised Latin, nor are the Bulgars Slavs in blood because the Ugrofinnish race has been wholly Slavonicised in civilisation and language.7
… sound observation shows a single physical type with minor variations pervading the whole of India from Cape Comorin to Afghanistan. Language is therefore discredited as an ethnological factor.8
Sri Aurobindo says “ I regard the so-called Aryans and Dravidians as one homogeneous race.”9
I find in the Aryan & Dravidian tongues, the Aryan and Dravidian races not separate & unconnected families but two branches of a single stock. The legend of the Aryan invasion & settlement in the Panjab in Vedic times is, to me, a philological myth.10
References
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/14/aryan-origins-introductory
- https://incarnateword.in/arya/01/the-foundations-of-the-psychological-theory
- https://incarnateword.in/arya/01/the-foundations-of-the-psychological-theory
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/15/the-foundations-of-the-psychological-theory
- https://incarnateword.in/arya/01/modern-theories
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/14/aryan-origins-introductory
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/14/aryan-origins-introductory
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/14/aryan-origins-introductory
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/15/interpretation-of-the-veda
- https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/14/the-gods-of-the-veda-the-secret-of-the-veda
