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The Indo-Aryan migrations[note 1] were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages. These are the predominant languages of today's Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, North India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Indo-Aryan migration into the region, from Central Asia, is considered to have started after 2000 BCE as a slow diffusion during the Late Harappan period and led to a language shift in the northern Indian subcontinent. Several hundred years later, the Iranian languages were brought into the Iranian plateau by the Iranians, who were closely related to the Indo-Aryans.
The Proto-Indo-Iranian culture, which gave rise to the Indo-Aryans and Iranians, developed on the Central Asian steppes north of the Caspian Sea as the Sintashta culture (c. 2200-1900 BCE),[2] in present-day Russia and Kazakhstan, and developed further as the Andronovo culture (2000–1450 BCE).[3][4]
The Indo-Aryans split off sometime between 2000 BCE and 1600 BCE from the Indo-Iranians,[5] and migrated southwards to the Bactria–Margiana culture (BMAC), from which they borrowed some of their distinctive religious beliefs and practices.[6] From the BMAC, the Indo-Aryans migrated into northern Syria and, possibly in multiple waves, into the Punjab (northern Pakistan and India), while the Iranians could have reached western Iran before 1300 BCE,[7] both bringing with them the Indo-Iranian languages.
Migration by an Indo-European-speaking people was first hypothesized in the late 18th century, following the discovery of the Indo-European language family, when similarities between western and Indian languages had been noted. Given these similarities, a single source or origin was proposed, which was diffused by migrations from some original homeland.
This linguistic argument of this theory is supported by archaeological, anthropological, genetic, literary and ecological research. Genetic research reveals that those migrations form part of a complex genetic puzzle on the origin and spread of the various components of the Indian population. Literary research reveals similarities between various, geographically distinct, Indo-Aryan historical cultures. Ecological studies reveal that in the second millennium BCE widespread aridization led to water shortages and ecological changes in both the Eurasian steppes and the Indian subcontinent,[web 1] causing the collapse of sedentary urban cultures in south central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, and India, and triggering large-scale migrations, resulting in the merger of migrating peoples with the post-urban cultures.[web 1]
The Indo-Aryan migrations started sometime in the period from approximately 2000 to 1600 BCE,[5] after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia. It was part of the diffusion of Indo-European languages from the proto-Indo-European homeland at the Pontic–Caspian steppe, a large area of grasslands in far Eastern Europe, which started in the 5th to 4th millennia BCE, and the Indo-European migrations out of the Eurasian Steppes, which started approximately in 2000 BCE.[1][8]
These Indo-Aryan speaking people were united by shared cultural norms and language, referred to as ārya, "noble". Diffusion of this culture and language took place by patron-client systems, which allowed for the absorption and acculturation of other groups into this culture, and explains the strong influence on other cultures with which it interacted.
- ^ a b c Witzel 2005, p. 348.
- ^ Tkachev, Vitaly V. (2020). "Radiocarbon Chronology of the Sintashta Culture Sites in the Steppe Cis-Urals". Russian Archaeology. 2: 31–44.
The author presents the results of radiocarbon dating of burials from the Sintashta cemetery near Mount Berezovaya (Bulanovo) and Tanabergen II in the steppe Cis-Urals. The series consists of 10 calibrated radiocarbon dates, three of which were obtained using AMS accelerated technology. As a result of the implementation of statistical procedures, a chronological interval for the functioning of necropolises was established within the c. 2200–1770 BCE
- ^ Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age" Archived 9 December 2021 at the Wayback Machine, in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p.3: "...By Andronovo cultures we may understand only Fyodorovka and Alakul cultures..."
- ^ Parpola, Asko, (2020). "Royal 'Chariot' Burials of Sanauli near Delhi and Archaeological Correlates of Prehistoric Indo-Iranian Languages", in Studia Orientalia Electronica, Vol. 8, No. 1, Oct 23, 2020, p.188: "...the Alakul’ culture (c.2000–1700 BCE) in the west and the Fëdorovo culture(c.1850–1450 BCE) in the east..."
- ^ a b Lubotsky, Alexander (2020). "What language was spoken by the people of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex?", in Paul W. Kroll and Jonathan A. Silk (eds.), 'At the Shores of the Sky': Asian Studies for Albert Hoffstädt, Brill, Leiden/Boston, p. 6: "The breakdown of the Indo-Iranian branch into Indian and Iranian occurred somewhere between 2000 and 1600 bce, when future Indians left their tribesmen and crossed the Hindu Kush on their way to India..."
- ^ Beckwith 2009, p. 32.
- ^ Gopnik, Hilary, (2017). "The Median Confederacy", in Touraj Daryaee (ed.), King of the Seven Climes: A History of the Ancient Iranian World (3000 BCE - 651 CE), Ancient Iran Series, Vol. IV, UCI-Jordan Center for Persian Studies, p. 40: "...We can say for certain that the neighboring Assyrians recognized a group of people that they identified as coming from the 'land of the Medes' (māt madayya) as early as the reign of Shalmaneser III (858–824 BCE), and it is almost certain that Indo-Iranian-speaking peoples had settled in Western Iran at least some 500 years —if not 1,000 years—earlier than this..."
- ^ Beckwith 2009, p. 33.
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