"Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the darkness that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second and third hand and reassert its right to judge and enquire in a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or true than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,—the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial and inimical distinction of Aryan and Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogenous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a “henotheistic” Vedic naturalism; the ingenious and brilliant extravagances of the modern sun and star myth weavers. (...) Western Philology has converted it [the word arya] into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values...."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Sri Aurobindo, 1910-1914, quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migrations
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Indo-Aryan migrations
78 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Indo-Aryan migrations →
Related Quotes
"In the Third Reich, even schoolchildren knew from their textbooks that this [= the Aryan] race had spread from the no…"
"So far as the Rig Veda is concerned, there is not a particle of evidence suggesting the invasion of India by the Arya…"
"The theory of the Aryan race set up by Western writers falls to the ground at every point… Why has the theory failed?…"
"The theory of invasion is an invention. This invention is necessary because of a gratuitous assumption which underlie…"
"The support which this theory receives from Brahmin scholars... is a very strange phenomenon. As Hindus they should o…"
"The discourse about the Indo-Europeans was also dependent on the most powerful movement of the nineteenth century, im…"
"The hypothesis, invented to fill the gap, that these ideas were borrowed by barbarous Aryan invaders from the civilis…"
"The indications in the Veda on which this theory of a recent Aryan invasion is built are very scanty in quantity and …"
"The bulk of the peoples now inhabiting India may have been the descendants of a new race from more northern latitudes…"
"It is best to admit that no proto-Aryan material culture has yet been identified in India."