BC occurred with the Hittites, Kassites and Mittani. Perhaps yet earlier waves existed as well.

In some instances Aryan groups were re-aryanized. When the Celts came to Europe they already found Indo-European groups as the Thracians and Phrygians and Aryanized them further. In some instances the Indo-European influence affected the culture but did not change the language.

For example, the Finns and Hungarians in Europe, like the Dravidians in India, share a common culture with dominant Indo-European speakers but have retained their own different language on a common level.

Some scholars see the German language as an Indo-European or Aryanization of a population originally speaking a Finno-Ugrian language. This means that the Germans, thought to be a major or original Aryan group, might not have been Aryans at all originally, that is in terms of race or ethnicity. In fact, the spread of Indo-European languages is so broad through different populations that it was probably never the expression of a single race or ethnic group, which is what the process of Sanskritization provides us.

The spread of Indo-European languages requires a sophisticated and enduring early ancient culture to promote it and to sustain it, not a group of nomadic invaders but a cultural elite. Harappan India, the world’s largest urban civilization of its time from 3300-1900 BCE could have produced an earlier wave of cultural influence, or several such waves, which would not have required a massive movement of people to bring about. This is supported by the fact than many Harappan artifacts and themes have been found in West Asia and even Europe, while the reverse is not true.

Prakritization: The Development of Common Languages

A dominant cultural elite seeks to elevate the language through noble forms of expression, art, religion and culture, as well as through terms of trade and politics. At the same time there is an opposite movement to create a common language that is easier to speak, reflecting the needs of the less educated or non-elite of the culture. This process of an elite language breaking down into popular tongues can be called Prakritization from Prakrit, the Sanskrit term for common languages.

One great mistake linguistics have made is to look at all languages as Prakrits or common dialects and try to determine their rate of change accordingly. They fail to note that such refined or Sanskritic tongues are meant to exist for centuries and to stand above these changes, just as Latin endured with few changes throughout the Middle Ages.

Sanskritization aims at creating a pure but artificial language that transcends local language variations and can endure over time, thus sustaining an enduring civilization. At the same time, local influences break down these purer but more artificial forms into simpler but less elegant forms. Common dialects develop with their own logic as well as their interaction with the elite language of the culture.

Classical Sanskrit, for example, has taken in some Prakrit words, while the Prakrits of India, north and south, have many borrowings from Sanskrit. Common dialects can enrich elite languages, which can otherwise become artificial or sterile, while the influence of elite languages can bring continuity and depth to common tongues.

The process of Sanskritization is thus not always complete. It may not always change the common language or Prakrit of the people. A Latin or Sanskrit elite, for example, existed in groups like the Hungarians or Dravidians that do not have an Indo-European language. It is also possible that a Prakritization of a language that occurred at an early period could over time lose any traceable connection with its parent.

It is possible, for example, that Dravidian languages developed from Prakrits of Sanskrit or from an earlier ancestor of Sanskrit but at such an early period that their connection has been lost. As an elite language develops common forms of expression, it ceases to resemble its parent. With languages of many thousand years ago, it can be difficult to trace the connection between elite and common forms of expression.

Such Prakrits can develop their own culture or refinement, just as we now have English or German literature while in the Middle Ages such literature would have been only in Latin. Such elite Prakrits can become Sanskrits or new elite languages and have a similar such influences.

Three Forms of Elite Predominance

We can propose three forms of elite predominance based upon the nature of ancient civilizations and their social stratification. These would be cultural diffusion through the priests or sages (Brahmins), the nobility or kings (Kshatriya), or the merchants and farmers (Vaishya). Let us start with the last.

Merchants traveled throughout the ancient world as a necessary part of trade. They set up trading colonies in different, sometimes far away places. The most evident example of this was the Phoenicians, mainly a sea-faring people, whose various trading communities were spread far and wide. Harappan India, as the largest civilization in the third millennium BCE, would have had the largest and most extensive set of trading influences that could have facilitated language changes.

Kings, aristocrats and armies traveled as well. Some influence was by intermarriage. We note an extensive intermarriage in the royal families of north India as recorded in ancient records like the Puranas. Some intermarriage outside this sphere, perhaps as far as Mesopotamia and Egypt, would be probable. Sometimes bands of warriors traveled. The main Indo-European groups that appear in the Near East in the second millennium BCE like the Hittites, Kassites and Mittani appear mainly as bands of warrior elites that ruled a mass of people speaking a different language and having different customs.

We see strong such warrior traditions in early Indo-Europeans like the Greeks, Celts and Persians. The very term Arya among the Persians, Celts and Hindus seems to reflect primarily a warrior type of aristocracy. Such groups could have been responsible for such an elite predominance stimulating cultural and linguistic changes.

However, the third and most important group was the priests and sages, the Brahmins and rishis. Ancient India was a rishi culture, a culture dominated by the influence of various families of great sages like the Angirasas, Bhrigus, Kashyapas and their diversifications as other Vedic families.

Great rishis like Vasishtha and Vishvamitra and their families had a stature and an influence that was much more important than any king or dynasty. In the struggles between kings and rishis in ancient India, it was the rishi that usually won. A king without the sanction of a great rishi was regarded as illegitimate and was often removed from power.

The Vedic rishis were something like missionaries in spreading their spiritual culture as we have noted elsewhere in the book. The rishis traveled far and wide, bringing their teachings to all types of people and setting up new cultures. In this process their language would have spread as well.

The rishis would have the strongest and most conscious influence on culture. They would educate and train new people in traditions of chanting, rituals and other daily customs, perhaps giving them new names. The Vedic rishi language or Proto-Sanskrit could have been the basis of many such language and cultural changes in the ancient world. The Vedic rishi was famous as a loka-krit or maker of culture.

In all three instances of elite predominance small groups could effect major changes on cultures without needing a major migration of masses of people. Such an influence would be stronger on groups that did not have a large population or set traditions of their own. This explains how Indo-European languages and culture could spread through Central Asia and Europe, which was a sparsely populated area.

It explains why such groups could influence Mesopotamia, which had its own larger populations and older traditions, but not become the dominant culture over time. More importantly, it explains why ancient India could not have been Aryanized the same way. Ancient India had a significant population and old traditions that could not be easily changed down to a mass level by a process of elite predominance from Iran or Central Asia.

I would propose, therefore, that the ancient Europeans were gradually Aryanized by a combination of these factors of elite predominance. No doubt some peoples did migrate out of the Indian cultural domain, which in ancient times included Afghanistan, if not portions of

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Central Asia and Iran. These were probably mainly Kshatriya or warrior people but must have included other groups with priests, merchants and servants as part of their retinue. Merchants, of course, traveled on their own. Overland trails like the Silk Trail were probably in operation by that time.

But, most importantly, the rishis traveled. They came into new cultures and molded them along Vedic lines. Let us note that the Vedic model of religion is more culturally based and not simply a belief or label change as is the case with missionary religion. Therefore, the rishi would have had a deeper and more sensitive impact on native cultures.

As the rishis traveled the rishi culture became modified according to local influences. New rishi cultures were produced, like the Druidic culture of the Celts that continued a process of Aryanization in a slightly different form. This process of Aryanization on different levels of merchants, aristocrats and rishi, taking new forms in new cultures, easily explains the linguistic connections between Indo-European groups as well as other cultural connections in the ancient world.

Therefore, as an extension of the idea of Sanskritization I would propose a process of Aryanization mainly based on the rishi model, but also considering the influence of the aristocracy and trade.

Limitations of Any Linguistic Model

We should, however, not push the language model of culture too far. The main limit of any linguistic model is that culture is always more than language, however important language may be. Culture also has an important place for religion, technology and commerce as well as the other aspects of civilization and cannot be reduced to language alone.

The spread of culture does not always include the spread of language. Groups that share the same culture may speak diverse languages. The best example of this is Mesopotamia. There is a cultural continuity between the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians of the region, extending to Hittites and Kassites without a corresponding dominant elite language shared by all.

If we look at cultural diffusion through language alone we can make many mistakes. It is also possible that a dominant cultural elite can impose much of its culture but not its language. Beyond the spread of language is a more general spread of culture that may not proceed through language but through religion, technology, agriculture or other factors, in which language may not be dominant. For example, Indian civilization spread to Indonesia without turning the local language into an Indo-European tongue, though many common and place names became Sanskritic.

Isolating language and looking at its development apart from the rest of culture can be misleading. A purely linguistic approach to history is fraught with danger. Linguistic data, particularly that surmised or reconstructed, must be brought in harmony with more solid archaeological and other forms of evidence. Otherwise it can cause more confusion than help.

One main piece of evidence that is proposed is the division of Indo-European languages into kentum and shatam divisions, based upon ‘sh’ and ‘k’ pronunciation. However, in north India traditional Vedic pronunciation (the Shukla Yajur Veda tradition) of the Vedic word Purusha, has always been Purukha, showing that such proposed divisions after often not rigid at all. This ‘sh’ was in fact pronounced as a ‘kh’. So linguistic boundaries are often not as rigid as supposed.

Conclusions

A migration theory, particularly of a primitive people, cannot explain complex connections between languages, or the existence of language families such as the Indo-European. More diverse cultural interactions are required for this.

We cannot speak of an original Indo-European language but only of the emergence of an Indo-European language family over time through a long process of cultural development, with migration playing a secondary role. It is possible that some existing Indo-European languages were Aryanized at a later time, rather than being Indo-European at their origin.

It is probably better not to speak of language families at all but only of language affinities, not by a common ancestry but by a process of communication or interaction. Just as individuals can have various affinities without being members of the same family, so can languages.

The Indo-European group of languages does not reflect the spread of a single group of people or speakers of an original Proto-Indo-European tongue. It is a construct that arose through history by the interaction of various cultural and linguistic influences, dominated by groups that spoke mainly Indo-European tongues.

We cannot speak of an original Indo-European homeland but only of the region where an Indo-European cultural influence first arose. We cannot speak of an original Indo-European people but only of the oldest people that spoke such a type of language and even this group may not have been uniform in its ethnicity.

We must discriminate between common dialects that change quickly over time and more enduring courtly or priestly languages that can exist for centuries with little change. We cannot apply the same rates of language change to each.

The spread of Indo-European languages requires an early dominant culture. Prior to Anglicization, Latinization and historical diffusions of Indo-European languages must have been earlier waves into the third millennium BCE and earlier.

We can at best speak of an original dominant Indo-European culture that I would identify with Vedic/Harappan India. So far it is the oldest significant Indo-European culture that could give the basis for such a vast and enduring cultural diffusion, including language. It would also require a large population growing out of a fertile region like India to seed so many cultures in different parts of the world.

This would not be easy in steppe-nomadic region, especially in ancient times, which could only support small populations leading a precarious existence. Throughout history, more Indians have migrated out of India than have come in. This is still the case today.

To explain the Indo-European connections we need an advanced culture, with a dominant Indo-European language, before 3000 BCE, and which was able to sustain its influence into the second millennium BCE. Vedic/Harappan India, which included parts of Afghanistan, alone can fit this need.

Ancient India

The Rig Veda, the oldest Indian text, shows a dominant religious, political and merchant (Brahman, Kshatriya and Vaishya) culture that Sanskritized the region of north India and then areas beyond. This is mainly the influence of the Bharata and Ikshvaku kings and rishis. Yet early forms of Sanskrit probably existed that had already started the process, such as probably existed at a much earlier period like that of King Yayati.

Manu himself probably represents the earliest phase of the Sanskritization process, particularly as the name of his daughter Ila means speech and probably refers to both the spiritual culture and elite language that his influence initiated. Classical India under the Mauryas and Guptas had another phase of Sanskritization when the ruling elite spoke classical Sanskrit as in the plays of Kalidasa.

The process of Sanskritization goes on today. It is most evident in Dravidian languages that have a greater percentage of Sanskrit words. We also note that South Indians have more classically Sanskrit surnames.

Perhaps there were earlier forms of language like a Proto-Sanskrit that had more commonalities with Dravidian or Semitic languages as we move more back into the primordial linguistic field.

In any case, an Aryan invasion/migration model is not necessary to explain the existence of Indo-European languages in India. Such an invasion/migration raises more questions than it answers. To replace we must look to a process of Sanskritization and Aryanization that is more spiritual and cultural in form, rather than a crude shift of populations. Further, the whole notion of Aryan invasion or migration has collapsed under the weight of scientific evidence. So it hardly makes sense to keep using it as the basis for language development.

What we need to do is look to culture to explain language and interpret language as part of culture. History can explain language, but language cannot explain history. The more dominant the language or language family, the stronger the culture needed to create and sustain it over time. This does not mean that migration and ethnicity play no role in the spread of language but that they should not be made into the prime determinative factors.

(Adapted from the book Rg Veda and the History of India by David Frawley. 2001. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.)