<b>How the âAryan invasion theoryâ came
to be</b>
As the Catholic ex-priest James Carroll (2001) has detailed in
Constantineâs Sword: The Church and the Jews, European
Christians have, for a tragically long time, denigrated and
reduced the living Jews among them, oppressing them
alternatively with genocide, inquisition, forced conversion,
expulsion, genocide⦠The same history has inflicted, on
Christians, a profound intellectual awkwardness: the ancient
âheroic ageâ of Christianity is Jewish! It just doesnât feel
comfortable, in an antisemitic civilization, that oneâs story of
origins should be Jewish; or that this story should be so much
longer than the Christian âNew Testamentâ; or that it should be
so much more interesting and fun to read. But it cannot be
avoided, because Christianity claims to have developed out of
ancient Judaism.
It is remarkable that this absurd state of affairs has
remained stable for so long, but signs that it would not remain
so forever began to appear in the eighteenth century. At this
time, many European intellectuals began looking for a way out,
and tried to give themselves an ancient âheroic ageâ that would
not be Jewish. Navaratna S. Rajaram explains that,
The humanist movement now known as the
European Renaissance was followed by voyages of
discovery in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, leading to greatly increased trade and
colonizing activities. This had resulted in Europe
becoming aware of the richness, antiquity and the
complexities of Indian history and culture. As Jim
Shaffer notes:
âMany scholars such as Kant and Herder, began to
draw analogies between the myths and philosophies
of ancient India and the West. In their attempt to
separate Western European culture from its Judaic
heritage, many scholars were convinced that the
origin of Western culture was to be found in India
rather than in the ancient Near East.â (Shaffer
1984:80)
At the time, skin color in particular was also capturing
the European imagination, because colonialism brought close
contact with dark-skinned peoples whom the Europeans, with
their more effective weaponry, had subjugated. So the story
these conquering Europeans came up with became that, in
ancient times, mirroring the contemporary experience, the socalled
âAryan raceââblond, blue-eyed, and white-skinnedâ
had burst forth from Central Asia and invaded everything,
becoming the ruling class in India, Iran, and Europe, replacing
the dark-skinned natives just as the modern Europeans in
colonial times were subjugating the dark-skinned natives
everywhere else
Not exactly original.
It was German intellectuals with a nationalist bent who
became most interested in this alternative âheroic ageâ story of
origins, the better to coalesce around it in pride. Why?
Because, for a long time, the Germans had been divided into
small principalities rather than unified into a single state, and in
consequence were pushed around by the other European
powers. The âAryan raceâ theory was a convenient and
unifying alternative myth of origins with which the German
nationalists were able to stir the imagination of the German
masses to mobilize together politically. The theory became
popular all over âNordicâ Europe, but the German nationalists
claimed special ownership over this theory by saying that the
Germans were the âpurestâ descendants of the original Aryans.
As a dominant European power, the British had zero
interest in fostering German unificationâand yet they
accidentally did just that, by sponsoring the âAryan raceâ
theory. Here is how it happened.
The British were looking for ways to undermine Indian
culture and pride in order more effectively to rule India. For
example, in 1831, Colonel Boden bequeathed to Oxford
University his entire fortuneâworth £25,000âto create the
Boden Professorship of Sanskrit, the explicit purpose of which
was to promote knowledge of Sanskrit among Englishmen so
as âto enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of
the natives of India to the Christian religionâ (quoted in
Rajaram 1995:71). More significantly, âas chairman of the
Education Board,â Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-1859)
âwas instrumental in establishing a network of modern English
schools in India, the principal goal of which was the
conversion of Hindus to Christianityâ (ibid. p.105). This is not
speculation: in a letter to his father in 1836, Macauley wrote,
It is my belief that if our plans of education are
followed up, there will not be a single idolater among
the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years
hence. And this will be effected without any efforts
to proselytize, without the smallest interference with
religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge
and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.â
quoted in Rajaram (1995:105)1
Macauley was obviously a narrow Christian chauvinist,
convinced of the superiority of Christian doctrine. And yet he
was not so self-assured that he felt comfortable with a level
playing field: to ensure that the Brahmins would become
Christians, he âwanted someone willing and able to interpret
Indian scriptures in such a way that the newly educated Indian
elite would see for itself the difference between their scriptures
and the New Testament and choose the latterâ (ibid. p.106). It
was in Germany that Sanskrit studies were flourishing the
most, so Macauley eventually recruited a German scholar to
make a translation of the Vedic scriptures that would
undermine Indian religion. That he selected his man with care
may be inferred from the fact that it took him fifteen years to
find him: the ardent German nationalist and Sanskrit scholar
Max Müller.
Given that the rise of German Prussia as a European
power was then worrying the British, and given the fateful
consequences of Max Müllerâs work for Prussian expansion, it
is ironic that it was the Prussian ambassador, Christian Karl
Hosias, who brought the 31-year-old Müller to meet Thomas
Babbington Macauley, the man who would become his British
sponsor. It was hardly fitting for a German nationalist to assist
the British in their efforts to turn themselves into an even more
formidable international power, but Max Müller was also a
devout Protestant Christianâand hard up. So, for the sake of
Christianity, and for the sake of his own economic stability, he
accepted payment from the British East India Company for the
work that Macauley commissioned (ibid. pp.106-107). A letter
that he wrote to his wife in 1866 shows that Max Müller took
his Christian mission seriously:
â¦this edition of mine and the translation of the
Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate
of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that
country. It [the Vedic scripture] is the root of their
religion and to show them what that root is, I feel
sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung
from it during the last three thousand years.
Rajaram quotes the above passage and comments that,
since Müller had no particular reason to misrepresent his
motives in a private letter to his wife, we may take the above as
a sincere expression of his intent (ibid. p.108). I think thatâs
reasonable. Rajaram (ibid. p.114) also quotes a letter that
Müller wrote to N.K. Majumdar, an Indian social reformer, late
in his life:
The first thing you have to do is to settle how much
of your ancient religion you are willing to give up, if
not as utterly false, still as antiquated; â¦Tell me
some of the chief difficulties that prevent you and
your countrymen from openly following Christ, and
when I write to you I shall do my best to explain how
I and many who agree with me have met them, and
solved them⦠(In Devi Chand 1988:xxvi-xxvii)
This leaves little doubt that Müllerâs purpose was to
undermine Indian belief, which is hardly a recommendation for
someone who is supposed to be a scholarly authority on Indian
beliefs, and the author of the Vedic translation that many
scholars still today are using.
In one sense Macauleyâs effort was highly successful,
because the upper-class Indians whom Macauley targeted
responded very well to British-style educationâexcept that
they didnât convert to Christianity. But if Macauley failed to
undermine Indian religion, he did manage to create a new
religion in Europe, because Müllerâs work was a huge log in
the fire of the âAryan raceâ theory.
Though he was not the only one or the first German
nationalist to do this, Müller interpreted the words âAryaâ and
âAryan,â which appear repeatedly in the Rigveda, as referring
to a raceâthe ancestral âAryan raceâ to which the German
nationalists were learning to imagine themselves as the purest
descendants. Thus, for example, âin 1861 he gave a series of
lectures under the title âScience of Languagesâ in which he
made extensive use of Vedic hymns to show that the Vedic
words Arya and Aryan were used to mean a race of peopleâ
(ibid. p.109). This completely contradicts the way in which
these words are used in the original Sanskrit. For this distortion
Müller bears a special responsibility because, âUnlike most
other German romantics and nationalists, he as a Sanskrit
scholar was fully aware that in Sanskrit, Arya does not refer to
any raceâ (ibid.; original emphasis). Not all Sanskrit scholars
followed Müller in this. For example, âShlegel, no less a
romantic or German nationalist always used the word Aryan to
mean âhonorableâ or ânobleâ which is much closer to the
original Sanskrit in meaningâ (ibid. p.110). But the
interpretation of the Aryans as a supposed race was more
influential by far. And it matters, because it was the claim that
the ancient Sanskrit texts speak of a supposed Aryan raceâ
when they donâtâthat became the basis for the belief that there
had ever existed such a race or people.
As it turned out, Max Müller was very successful with
this âAryan raceâ stuff, and the emerging ideology was
instrumental to Otto von Bismarckâs push to create a unified
German empire by extending the borders of his native Prussia.
Ever since the 1700s, when Frederick I of Prussia had
âraised the army to 80,000, effectively making the whole state
a military machine,â1 Prussia had been, as in the case of the
ancient Greeks, though not quite as extreme, society as army.
Though Prussia had lostâlike everybody elseâto Napoleon
Bonaparte, by the time it provoked a war with France in 1870-
71 (after provoking wars with Denmark and Austria), it was
again a redoubtable fighting machine. The outcome of the
Franco-Prussian war was a resounding victory for Prussia,
1 "Prussia." Britannica Student Encyclopedia from Encyclopædia Britannica
Online.
http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8409/ebi/ar...e?tocId=9276562
[Accessed April 20, 2005].
which then allowed its leader, Bismarck, to annex the south
German principalities, creating Germany. In order to expand
Prussiaâs borders to create the German Empire or âReich,â
Bismarck appealed to the German speaking peoples of Europe
in a way that shows the importance of the âAryan raceâ theory
of German origins:
Bismarckâs famous exhortation to the German
people, over the heads of their particular political
leaders, to âthink with your bloodâ was a[n]â¦attempt
to activate a mass psychological vibration
predicated upon an intuitive sense of consanguinity.
An unstated presumption of a Chinese (or German)
nation is that there existed in some hazy, prerecorded
era a Chinese (or German) Adam and
Eve, and that the coupleâs progeny has evolved in
essentially unadulterated form down to the
present.âConnor (1994[1978]:93-94)
The Germans were learning to think of themselves as
the exalted pure descendants of an Aryanânot JewishâAdam
and Eve: the âAryan race.â This worked so well that even in
Austria, which was then a major power in Europe, a movement
grew among the German-speakers to join âGermany.â For
example, âa large part of the membership [of the student
fraternity Deutsche Lesehalle in Vienna] insisted on Austriaâs
subservience to Germanyâ¦and supported Austriaâs eventual
union with Bismarckâs militant empireâ (Elon 1975:52). This
view was widespread. As is well known, the mood of
nineteenth century pan-German nationalism continued into the
twentieth century, making Adolf Hitlerâs bloodless annexation
of his native Austriaâunder the banner of a now truly assertive
âAryan raceâ ideologyârelatively easy.
German nationalism produced a tragic irony: âMany, if
not most, Jewish students in Austria were ardent German
patriotsâ (Elon 1975:53). In fact, hardly anybody was more
infatuated with German culture than the German-speaking
Jews: âmany Jewish intellectuals were dazzled by the rise of
German power under Bismarckâ (ibid.). It took these Jews a
long time to recognize the dangers to them inherent in German
power, something that can be dramatically appreciated by the
fact that one of the Austrian Jews who most firmly believed
himself to be âGerman,â and who was initially most in love
with the rise of Germany, was Theodore Herzl, the very man
who in time would create the Zionist movement to protect the
European Jewish population from the antisemitic violence that
he finally realized would engulf his people. And yet German
nationalism was clearly antisemitic, based on the âAryan raceâ
theory that exalted white skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair, and
explicitly desired to exclude Jews: ââNowadays one must be
blond,â Herzl wrote in a revealing note found among his papers
from that timeâ (ibid. p.54). Herzlâs own pro-German
fraternity, Albia, soon became a nest of antisemites, and in
March of 1883 he resigned in anger (ibid. pp.60-61)âbut it
was a while still before he became seriously worried for the
fate of the Jews, and despite the eventual success of his
belatedly feverish and heroic efforts to create a Jewish
homeland, his dire predictions would find themselves
confirmed in the twentieth-century German assault against the
Jewish people.
The Western Jewish naïveté before the growing
German threat appears to many, in hindsight, remarkable; but
properâi.e., historically informedâhindsight produces an
exactly opposite assessment: this was normal. Herzlâs
biographer, Amos Elon, writes that âNever was an attachment
by a minority [German-speaking Jews] to a majority [Germans]
so strongâ (1975:53), and yet the modern Jewish attachment to
and infatuation with the United States is arguably stronger,
despite the fact that US foreign policy towards Israel in the
twentieth-century, and into the twenty-first, has been a series of
stunningly vicious attacks, something the Jews appear entirely
blind to, but of which I have now given a book-length
demonstration.1 Anybody who has read historian Christopher
Simpsonâs 1988 work, which documents, with material
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that US
Intelligence was created after the World War by absorbing in
secret tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals, cannot be
surprised that US foreign policy has prepared the impending
destruction of the Jewish state.2 But most Jews have not read
Conclusion
The best current evidence agrees with the view that the Iranians
are a development out of the Vedic-Indian civilization of the
Sarasvati river (later, the Indus Valley), and it appears that
they emerged into their own at least in part as a result of
ideological movements produced by class conflict, with the
proto-Iranians representing the ancient left, and in turn
producing a world-saving leftist movement: Zoroastrianism. In
time, as we shall see, the Zoroastrians would sponsor a more
radical leftist movement: Judaism.
