Topic 2 - Indo – Aryan Language Theory

 

Language is one of the key factors that bring about diversity both culturally and socially. As of 2021, there are over 7139 languages being spoken (How many languages are there in the world? | Ethnologue). How did this diversity originate in the first place? – This is a complex yet fascinating question that several researchers are trying to answer using scientific evidence. However, this hasn’t stopped people from speculating. In fact, the earliest known explanations as to how this diversity originated are from some religious books. 

For instance, the “Tower of Babel” incident in the Book of Genesis explains how multiple languages originated – “The story of its construction, given in Genesis 11:1–9, appears to be an attempt to explain the existence of diverse human languages. According to Genesis, the Babylonians wanted to make a name for themselves by building a mighty city and a tower “with its top in the heavens.” God disrupted the work by so confusing the language of the workers that they could no longer understand one another. The city was never completed, and the people were dispersed over the face of the earth.” (Tower of Babel | Story, Summary, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica). Dante’s Divinia Comedia which talks about Hebrew being the first language given by god to man – “Dante's “De vulgari eloquentia” began with an elaborate discussion of God's giving Adam the sacred language of Hebrew in the Garden of Eden… Dante's explanation used time as a sufficient cause of language change, which explained the later divergence of Latin into Spanish, French, and Italian, as one of three groups of related languages in Europe. Italian, praised as the most illustrious of all…” (Sir William Jones, language families, and Indo-European (tandfonline.com)). 

It all changed when there was a major breakthrough in this theory by Sir William Jones in the 1786 who reject the “divine hypothesis”. William Jones proposed the “Indo-European” language hypothesis which suggests that several languages that we know today would have originated from a single language. Thus, he popularized the term “Aryan” which he used to refer to his “Proto-Indo-European” languages (Aryan - World History Encyclopedia). Jones was a multilinguist who studied several languages such as French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Latin etc. He was able to identify the similarities between these languages. He discovered further similarities between the languages mentioned above and Persian.  This led to him wondering how these similarities originated because the country that spoke Persian wasn’t even close to the European continent. In Sir William Jones, language families, and Indo-European (tandfonline.com), the author says that Jones was puzzled about this – “He said that he could not explain with certainty "how so many European words crept into the Persian language,".

Jones then travelled to India and studied Sanskrit. He observed several similarities between Sanskrit and the other European languages which led to him coming up with the theory that these languages had a common ancestor and published a paper on it. This led to people moving away from mythological explanation to more scientific and linguistic explanations. “The impact of the work was enormous, as it brought about the separation of religion from language and eschewed mythology for a more scientific approach to linguistics. This paper The Early History of Indo-European Languages delves into the similarities in sounds between these languages.

 

Source: The Early History of Indo-European Languages (journal article) (archive.org)

Jones work influenced many people. One of them was a French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau who saw Jones’ work as a proof for his belief that “White People” were superior to the others and claimed that all white people were of “Aryan blood”. He was the first one to say that the common “Aryan” language was the language of the “Aryan race”. Thus linking language with race. These were the foundational ideas over which the “Nazi” party was created (Aryan - World History Encyclopedia).

Another person who was influenced by Jones was the German Indologist Friedrich Max Muller. Muller came up with the Aryan migration theory. He believed that the Aryans that migrated to the west wherein ‘”racial purity” was maintained and that another set of Aryans migrated eastwards first to Iran and then to the Indian subcontinent. Then, the Western Aryans conquered the Eastern Aryans as they were “physically superior” and kept Sanskrit as the official language in the Indian subcontinent. (Aryan - World History Encyclopedia). 

Sources:

How many languages are there in the world? | Ethnologue

Tower of Babel | Story, Summary, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica

Sir William Jones, language families, and Indo-European (tandfonline.com)

Aryan - World History Encyclopedia

The Early History of Indo-European Languages (journal article) (archive.org)