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One of the main ideas used to interpret - and
generally devalue - the ancient history of India is the theory of the Aryan invasion.
According to this account, India was invaded and conquered by nomadic light-skinned
Indo-European tribes from Central Asia around 1500-100 BC, who overthrew an earlier and
more advanced dark-skinned Dravidian civilization from which they took most of what later
became Hindu culture. This so-called pre-Aryan civilization is said to be evidenced by the
large urban ruins of what has been called the "Indus valley culture" (as most of
its initial sites were on the Indus river). The war between the powers of light and
darkness, a prevalent idea in ancient Aryan Vedic scriptures, was thus interpreted to
refer to this war between light and dark- skinned peoples. The Aryan invasion theory thus
turned the "Vedas", the original scriptures of ancient India and the
Indo-Aryans, into little more than primitive poems of uncivilized plunderers.
This idea - totally foreign to the history of India, whether
north or south - has become almost an unquestioned truth in the interpretation of ancient
history. Today, after nearly all the reasons for its supposed validity have been refuted,
even major Western scholars are at last beginning to call it in question.
In this article we will summarize the main points that have arisen.
This is a complex subject that I have dealt with in depth in my book "Gods, Sages and
Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization", for those interested in further
examination of the subject. The Indus valley culture was pronounced pre-Aryans for several
reasons that were largely part of the cultural milieu of nineteenth century European
thinking As scholars following Max Muller had decided that the Aryans came into India
around 1500 BC, since the Indus valley culture was earlier than this, they concluded that
it had to be pre-Aryan. Yet the rationale behind the late date for the Vedic culture given
by Muller was totally speculative. Max Muller, like many of the Christian scholars of his
era, believed in Biblical chronology. This placed the beginning of the world at 400 BC and
the flood around 2500 BC. Assuming to those two dates, it became difficult to get the
Aryans in India before 1500 BC. (for the rest go to the above site).
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