Aryan (IPA: /ˈɛɹiən/) is an
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
denoting variously
- in historical or dated usage,
- the Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages...
and their speakers, viz. the IranianThe Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly on the Iranian plateau and beyond in central, southern, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. As a group of people, they are predominantly defined along linguistic lines as speaking the Iranian...
and Indo-AryanIndo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Today, there are over one billion native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, most of them native to South Asia, where they...
peoples
- the Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
more generally and their speakers,
- The "Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in European culture in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race...
" taken to correspond to the original speakers of Indo-European languages and their present day descendants.
- in contemporary usage,
- in colloquial English informed by Nazi racism
Nazism developed several theories concerning races. The Nazis claimed to scientifically measure a strict hierarchy among "human race"; at the top was the "Nordic race" or "Aryan race", followed by lesser races....
, persons corresponding to the "Nordic", "blond-haired, blue-eyed" physical ideal of Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
- within US white supremacism, the "white race
White American is an umbrella term officially employed by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S...
".
Aryan is a term used by old persian kings. Its sad people from europe want to steel this term and call themself aryan despite the fact that the term aryan means "iranian".
I am sick and tired of stupid and uneducated people who think that iranian aryans look like white people. The real aryans of iran look like typical black haired and brown eyed iranians you see on tehran or in shiraz. Darius called himself aryan 2000 years ago, and he had black hair and brown eyes.
I dont concider white-looking iranians with blue eyes and blond hair aryan or persian. These people are mix of other, many times russian/east european people.
The men on this video are all Iranian Aryan. They were geniuses. They created, invented and discovered so much.
Howard R. Turner writes: "Persian artists and scientists, princes and labourers together made a unique culture that has directly and indirectly influenced societies on every continent."
A very very famous American philosopher and scientist sad persians (many of the men on my video) were and is still one of the greatest and most genius people mankind have ever seen.
Search on Will durant on google.
How can people spit on these mens faces and call them arabs? The people on this video were all patriots who always refered themselfs as Iranian or aryans. Its a shame some idiots call them "arabs".
For example, Ibn-sina or Avicenna, was one of the greatest scientist during the hole middle age. European and American scientist usually call Avicenna the "father of medicine".
The first well known chemists were persian.
It's very dangerous to take conclusions about things you have not even studied carefully.
Germans and Iranians both speak a indo-european language. Thats absolutely true.
But the indo-european language is devided into two different groups.
The first group is called centum. Almost all the western european countries belong to the centum group.
The secound group is called Satem or "Proto-Indo-European". In this group you will find Indo-Iranian language, Sanskrit, Dardic, Slavic and baltic language.
By other words, NO, the german language and iranian language is not that close related. Iranian language is closer, much closer related to the indic and daric language.
Acctually there was not that much mix between iranians and arabs. Carletoon was a professor from USA, he studied races, he took genetic tests and he studies the "caucasoid" race during many years. According to the tests that carletoon did, iranian people (irano-afghan race) are not that much related to semits or "arabs". He sad Iranians have not been mixed as much as people think.
The greeks described the persians as dark skinned, brown eyed and black haired. If you want proof then just look at pictures, sculptures and wallpaintings that are over 2000 years old. If thats not enought then read Herotodos, he is famous for many things. He was a greek and was working as an anthrolopogist. He sad that persians looked like greeks in one way, but he also sad that persians were much darker than the average greek.
by sorrypapawxz
As an adaptation of the Latin
Arianus, referring to
IranGreater Iran refers to the regions that have significant Iranian cultural influence...
, 'Aryan' has "long been in English language use". Its history as a loan word began in the late 1700s, when the word was borrowed from
SanskritVedic Sanskrit is an Old Indic language. It is the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism, compiled over the period of the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BC. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the...
ā́rya-Ārya is an Old Indic and Old Iranian language self-designator that first appears in the ancient religious literature of the Indians and of the Iranians...
to refer to speaker of
North Indian languagesThe Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family.SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , Marathi ,...
.. When it was determined that
Iranian languagesThe Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
— both living and ancient — used a similar term in much the same way (but in the Iranian context as a self-identifier of
Iranian peoplesThe Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly on the Iranian plateau and beyond in central, southern, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. As a group of people, they are predominantly defined along linguistic lines as speaking the Iranian...
), it became apparent that the shared meaning had to derive from the ancestor language of the shared past, and so, by the early 1800s, the word 'Aryan' came to refer to the group of languages deriving from that ancestor language, and by extension,
the speakers of those languagesIndo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Dardic, Iranian, and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages.-Origin:...
.
Then, in the 1830s, based on the erroneous theory that words like "Aryan" could also be found in European languages, the term "Aryan" came to be used as the term for the
Indo-European language groupThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, Iran, and northern India, and historically also predominant in Anatolia and Central Asia...
, and by extension, the speakers of those languages. In the 19th century, "language" was still considered a property of "ethnicity", and thus the speakers of the Indo-European languages came to be the so-called "
Aryan raceThe Aryan race is a concept historically influential in European culture in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race...
", as contradistinguished from the so-called "
Semitic raceIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
". By the late 19th century, the notions of an "Aryan race" became closely linked to Nordicism, which posited Northern European racial superiority over all other peoples (including Indians and Iranians). This "master race" ideal engendered both the "
AryanizationAryanisation in Nazism which literally means to make Aryan. It was principally used to refer to the expulsion of non-Aryans from Nazi Germany, Austria and the territories it controlled. It was based on the ideology of an Aryan master race and generally was to the benefit of Nazi supporters and...
" programs of
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
, in which the classification of people as "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" was most emphatically directed towards the exclusion of Jews.
[Under the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, a non-Aryan was defined as "an individual descended from a non-Aryan (in particular Jewish parents or grandparents)" .] By the end of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the word 'Aryan' had become firmly associated with the racial theories and atrocities committed by the Nazi regime.
In colloquial modern English it is typically used to signify the Nordic racial ideal promoted by the Nazis.
In present-day
IndiaThe Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent and other terms, is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate south of the Himalayas, forming a peninsula which extends southward into the Indian Ocean...
, the original ethno-linguistic signifier has been mostly lost, the denotation having been semantically replaced by other, secondary, meanings. In
IranGreater Iran refers to the regions that have significant Iranian cultural influence...
, the original self-identifier lives on in ethnic names like "
AlaniThe Alans or Alani were a group of Sarmatian tribes, nomadic pastoralists of the 1st millennium AD who spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian.-Name:The various forms of Alan — Greek: Αλανοί, Αλαννοί; Chinese: 阿蘭聊...
", "
IrIron is one of the two main dialects of the Ossetic language, spoken in the Caucasus. The majority of the Ossetians speak Iron, notably in the East, South and Central parts of North Ossetia-Alania, while in the West the Digor dialect is much more prevalent. This dominance can be shown in the fact...
", and in the name of Iran itself. In present-day academia, the terms "
Indo-IranianIndo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Dardic, Iranian, and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages.-Origin:...
" and "
Indo-EuropeanIndo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan, a 19th century term for Indo-European speakers.* Proto-Indo-European language, the reconstructed common ancestor of all Indo-European languages....
" have made most uses of the term 'Aryan' obsolete, and 'Aryan' is now mostly limited to its appearance in the term "
Indo-AryanIndo-Aryan refers to:* Indo-Aryan languages* Indo-Aryan migration, a supposition that holds that the Indo-Aryans migrated to India.* Indigenous Aryans, a theory that holds that the Indo-Aryans are native to India....
" to represent (speakers of) North Indian languages. Notions of an "Aryan race" only survive in the context of fascist nationalism, in which nationhood is defined by ancestry.
Before the 19th century
The meaning of 'Aryan' that entered the English language in the late 1700s was the one associated with the technical term used in comparative philology, which in turn had the same meaning as that evident in the very oldest Old Indic usage, i.e. as a (self-)identifier of "(speakers of) North Indian languages".
[The context being religious, Max Müller understood this to especially mean "the worshipers of the gods of the Brahmans". If this is seen from the point of view of the religious poets of the RigVedic hymns, an 'Aryan' was then a person who held the same religious convictions as the poet himself. This idea can then also be found in Iranian texts.] This usage was simultaneously influenced by a word that appeared in classical sources (Latin and Greek
Arianes, e.g. in Pliny 1.133 and Strabo 15.2.1-8), and recognized to be the same as that which appeared in living Iranian languages, where it was a (self-)identifier of the "
(speakers of) Iranian languagesThe Iranian peoples are an ethnic and linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly on the Iranian plateau and beyond in central, southern, and southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe. As a group of people, they are predominantly defined along linguistic lines as speaking the Iranian...
". Accordingly, 'Aryan' came to refer to the
languages of the Indo-Iranian language groupThe Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages...
, and by extension, native
speakers of those languagesIndo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Dardic, Iranian, and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages.-Origin:...
.
19th century
In the 19th century, linguists still supposed that the age of a language determined its "superiority" (because it was assumed to have genealogical purity). Then, based on the (now known to be erroneous) assumption that Sanskrit was the oldest Indo-European language, and the (now known to be untenable) position that Irish
Éireis the Irish name for the island of Ireland and the sovereign state of the same name.- Etymology :The modern Irish Éire evolved from the Old Irish word Ériu, which was the name of a Gaelic goddess. Ériu is generally believed to have been the matron goddess of Ireland, a goddess of sovereignty, or...
was etymologically related to "Aryan", in 1837
Adolphe PictetAdolphe Pictet was a Swiss linguist.Pictet is well-known for his research in the field of comparative linguistics. He was the cousin of the biologist Francois Jules Pictet.-Works:...
popularized the idea that the term "Aryan" could also be applied to the entire Indo-European language family as well. The groundwork for this had been laid in 1808,
when Friedrich Schlegel, a German scholar who was an important early Indo-EuropeanistIndo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...
, came up with a theory that linked the Indo-Iranian words with the German word Ehre, 'honor', and older Germanic names containing the element ario-, such as the SwissThe Suebi or Suevi were a group of Germanic peoples who were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with Ariovistus' campaign, c...
[sic] warrior AriovistusAriovistus was a leader of the Suebi and other allied Germanic peoples in the second quarter of the 1st century BC. He and his followers took part in a war in Gaul, assisting the Arverni and Sequani to defeat their rivals the Aedui, and settled in large numbers in conquered Gallic territory in the...
who was written about by Julius CaesarGaius Julius Caesar , , was a Roman military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
. Schlegel theorized that far from being just a designation of the Indo-Iranians, the word *arya- had in fact been what the Indo-Europeans called themselves, meaning [according to Schlegel] something like 'the honorable people.' (This theory has since been called into question.)
Following this linguistic argument, in the 1850s
Arthur de GobineauJoseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the racialist theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...
supposed that "Aryan" corresponded to the suggested prehistoric Indo-European culture (1853-1855,
Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races). Further, de Gobineau believed that there were three basic races – white, yellow and black – and that everything else was caused by race
miscegenationMiscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups, that is, marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside one's racially or ethnically defined group....
, which de Gobineau argued was the cause of chaos. The "
master raceThe master race was a concept in Nazi ideology, which holds that the Teutonics , one of the branches of what in the late 19th and early 20th century was called the Aryan race, represent an ideal and "pure race"...
", according to de Gobineau, were the Northern European "Aryans", who had remained "racially pure". Southern Europeans (to include Spaniards and Southern Frenchmen), Eastern Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterners, Iranians, Central Asians, Indians, he all considered racially mixed, degenerated through the
miscegenationMiscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups, that is, marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside one's racially or ethnically defined group....
, and thus less than ideal.
By the 1880s a number of linguists and anthropologists argued that the "Aryans" themselves had originated somewhere in northern Europe. A specific region began to crystallize when the linguist Karl Penka (
Die Herkunft der Arier. Neue Beiträge zur historischen Anthropologie der europäischen Völker, 1886) popularized the idea that the "Aryans" had emerged in Scandinavia, and could be identified by the distinctive Nordic characteristics of blond hair and blue eyes. The distinguished biologist Thomas Henry Huxley agreed with him, coining the term "Xanthochroi" to refer to fair-skinned Europeans (as opposed to darker Mediterranean peoples, who Huxley called "Melanochroi").
This "Nordic race" theory gained traction following the publication of
Charles MorrisCharles Morris was a prolific American journalist, novelist and author of popular historical textbooks.He was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Pearson Morris and Margaret Burns. After studying locally he worked as a teacher in Chester, but in 1856 moved to Philadelphia where he...
's
The Aryan Race (1888), which argued that the "original Aryans" could be identified by their blond hair and other Nordic features, such as
dolichocephalyCephalic index is the ratio of the maximum width of the head multiplied by 100 divided by its maximum length ....
(long skull). A similar rationale was followed by
Georges Vacher de LapougeGeorges Vacher de Lapouge was a French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and racialism.- Biography :...
in his book
L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899, "The Aryan and his Social Role"), in which the French anthropologist argued that the "dolichocephalic-blond" peoples were natural leaders, destined to rule over more brachiocephalic (short-skulled) peoples. Archetypes of these short-skulled people, according to Vacher de Lapouge, were the
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
s. To this idea of "races", Vacher de Lapouge espoused what he termed
selectionismEugenics is the study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans, with the aim of improving the species. Widely popular in the early decades of the 20th century, after having become associated with the Holocaust, it has largely fallen into disrepute.- Overview :As a social movement...
, and which had two aims: first, achieving the annihilation of trade unionists, considered "degenerate"; second, the prevention of labour dissatisfaction through the creation of "types" of man, each "designed" for one specific task.
Meanwhile, in India, the
British colonial governmentThe British Raj was the British colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; it can also refer to the period of dominion, and even the region under the rule...
had followed de Gobineau's arguments along another line, and had fostered the idea of a superior "Aryan race" that co-opted the Indian caste system in favor of imperial interests. In its fully developed form, the British-mediated interpretation foresaw a segregation of Aryan and non-Aryan along the lines of caste, with the upper castes being "Aryan" and the lower ones being "non-Aryan". The European developments not only allowed the British to identify themselves as high-caste, but also allowed the Brahmans to view themselves as on-par with the British. Further, it provoked the reinterpretation of Indian history in racialist and, in opposition, Indian Nationalist terms, and – in following a special interpretation of
Max MüllerFriedrich Max Müller , more commonly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
's identification of "Aryan" as a national name – gave rise to the so-called "Out of India" theory, which sought an Indian origin of the Indo-European "Aryans".
The racialist ideas that were developing independently in India and Europe fused in esoterica. In
The Secret DoctrineThe Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, a book originally published as two volumes in 1888, is Helena P. Blavatsky's magnum opus. The first volume is named Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis...
(1888), Helena Petrovna Blavatsky saw the "Aryans" as the fifth of her seven "
Root RaceIn theosophy, Root Race is a term first used in the late 19th century by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in her book The Secret Doctrine...
s", dating them to about a million years ago, and tracing them to
AtlantisAtlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias.In Plato's account, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC...
. She considered "Abraham" to be a corruption of a word meaning "No Brahmin", from whom the
SemitesIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
– "degenerate in spirituality and perfected in materiality" – had descended, and who were one rung down on the Root Race scale. The Jews, according to Blavatsky, were a "tribe descended from the
TchandalasChandala or Chandal is an opprobrious term, reserved for a despised group of peoples in India by people of India in the Sanskritic literature. Currently it is a caste title used specifically in the Indo-Aryan speaking regions of India...
of India, the
outcastsDalit is a self-designation for a group of people traditionally regarded as low caste or untouchables . Dalits are a mixed population of numerous caste groups all over South Asia, and speak various languages. It is impossible to differentiate between Dalits and the various other caste groups on the...
".
In Iran, racialist rhetoric became a literary idiom during the 7th century, i.e. in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest, when the Arabs became the primary "
OtherThe Other or constitutive other is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the Same. It refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is 'other' than the concept being considered. The term often means a person other than oneself, and is often capitalised...
" – the
anaryasAnīrān or Anērān is an ethno-linguistic term that signifies "non-Iranian" or "non-Iran." Thus, in a general sense, 'Aniran' signifies lands where Iranian languages are not spoken...
– and the antithesis of everything Iranian (i.e. Aryan) and
ZoroastrianA Zoroastrian is an adherent to Zoroastrianism, the first monotheistic religion that is based on the teachings and philosophies of Zoroaster....
. But "the antecedents of [present-day] Iranian ultra-nationalism can be traced back to the writings of late nineteenth-century figures such as Mirza Fath Ali Akhunzadeh and
Mirza Aqa Khan KermaniMirza Aqa Khan Kermani was an Iranian literary critic.Kirmānī emphasized "that it is meaning, not the mode of expression, that exerts the real influence on the reader," and thus discouraged the "destruction of the natural clarity of language .....
. Demonstrating affinity with Orientalist views of the supremacy of the 'Indo-European peoples' and the mediocrity of the 'Semitic race,' Iranian nationalist discourse idealized pre-Islamic
[Achaemenid and Sassanid
] empires, whilst negating the 'Islamization' of Persia by Muslim forces." In the 20th century, different aspects of this idealization of a distant past would be instrumentalized by both the
Pahlavi monarchyThe Pahlavi dynasty ruled Iran from the crowning of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1925, following the overthrow of Ahmad Shah Qajar, the last ruler of the Qajar dynasty, already weakened by Soviet and British occupation....
, and by the
Islamic republicIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
that followed it; the Pahlavis used it as a foundation for anticlerical monarchism, and the clerics used it to exalt Iranian values vis-á-vis westernization.
20th century
Back in Europe, in a summary of the status-quo,
Hermann HirtHermann Hirt was an Indo-Europeanist.Hirt made foundational contributions to the study of Proto-Indo-European language accent and ablaut. He is the author of the Indogermanische Grammatik, published in seven volumes between 1921 and 1937.- External links :* at titus.uni-frankfurt.de...
(1905,
Die Indogermanen - Hirt consistently used
Indogermanen, not
Arier, to refer to the Indo-Europeans) asserted that there was no longer any question that the plains of northern Germany were the
UrheimatUrheimat is a linguistic term denoting the original homeland of the speakers of a proto-language.-Indo-European homeland:...
(p. 197) of the Indo-European languages, and he connected the "blond type" (p. 192) with the core population of the early, "pure" Indo-Europeans. The identification of the Indo-Europeans with the north German Corded Ware culture bolstered this position. First proposed by
Gustaf KossinnaGustaf Kossinna was a linguist and professor of German archaeology at the University of Berlin...
in 1902, it gained currency over the following two decades, until
Vere Gordon ChildeVere Gordon Childe was an Australian philologist by training who later specialised in archaeology. Usually known as just Gordon Childe, he was perhaps best known for his excavation of the unique Neolithic site of Skara Brae in Orkney and for his Marxist views which influenced his thinking about...
concluded that "the Nordics' superiority in physique fitted them to be the vehicles of a superior language" (1926,
The Aryans: a study of Indo-European origins).
Gordon Childe would later regret having expressed that idea, but the depiction as possessors of a "superior language" became a matter of national pride in learned circles of Germany. Against the background of the lost
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
(portrayed to have been lost because Germany had been betrayed from within – miscegenation was at fault, more evidence for which was seen in the "corruption" represented by socialist trade unionists and other "degenerates"),
Alfred Rosenberg' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
asserted that there was a "racial threat" to Germany's homogeneous "Aryan-Nordic" (
arisch-nordisch) or "Nordic-Atlantean" (
nordisch-atlantisch, cf. Blavatsky above) civilization. In Rosenberg's view, the "racial threat" was "Jewish-
SemiticIn linguistics and ethnology, Semitic was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages....
race" (
jüdisch-semitisch Rasse). Where Germany's homogeneous people were a "
master raceThe master race was a concept in Nazi ideology, which holds that the Teutonics , one of the branches of what in the late 19th and early 20th century was called the Aryan race, represent an ideal and "pure race"...
" capable of, or with an interest in, creating and maintaining culture, other "races" were merely capable of conversion, or destruction of culture.
Rosenberg – one of the principal architects of Nazi ideological creed – argued for a new "religion of the blood," based on the supposed innate promptings of the Nordic soul to defend its "noble" character against racial and cultural degeneration. Under Rosenberg, the theories of Arthur de Gobineau, Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Blavatsky,
Houston Stewart ChamberlainHouston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-born author of books on political philosophy, natural science and his posthumous father-in-law Richard Wagner...
,
Madison GrantMadison Grant was an American lawyer, historian, and anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...
, and those of Hitler ("the exact opposite of the Aryan is the Jew") all culminated in
Nazi Germany's race policiesThe racial policy of Nazi Germany is the set of policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race," and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy...
and the "
AryanizationAryanisation in Nazism which literally means to make Aryan. It was principally used to refer to the expulsion of non-Aryans from Nazi Germany, Austria and the territories it controlled. It was based on the ideology of an Aryan master race and generally was to the benefit of Nazi supporters and...
" decrees of the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s. In its "apalling medical model", the annihilation of the "racially inferior"
UntermenschUntermensch is a term from Nazi racial ideology used to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Ukrainians and anyone else who was not an "Aryan" according to the contemporary Nazi race...
en was sanctified as the excision of a diseased organ in an otherwise healthy body.
By the end of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the word "Aryan" had lost its Romantic or idealist connotations and was associated with Nazi racism instead.
By then, the term "
Indo-IranianIndo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Dardic, Iranian, and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages.-Origin:...
" and "
Indo-EuropeanIndo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan, a 19th century term for Indo-European speakers.* Proto-Indo-European language, the reconstructed common ancestor of all Indo-European languages....
" had made most uses of the term "Aryan" superfluous, and "Aryan" now survives only in the term "
Indo-AryanIndo-Aryan refers to:* Indo-Aryan languages* Indo-Aryan migration, a supposition that holds that the Indo-Aryans migrated to India.* Indigenous Aryans, a theory that holds that the Indo-Aryans are native to India....
" to indicate (speakers of) North Indian languages. Indo-Aryan and Aryan may not however be equated; such an equation is not supported by the historical evidence.
The use of the term to designate speakers of all Indo-European languages is now considered an "aberration to be avoided." Notions of an elite "Aryan race" only survive in nationalist contexts, to include
White nationalismWhite nationalism is a political ideology which advocates a racial definition of national identity for white people, in opposition to multiculturalism, along with a separate all-white nation-state. The contemporary White Nationalist Movement in the United States is a reaction to the decline in...
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Indian nationalismIndian nationalism refers to the many underlying forces that molded the Indian independence movement, and strongly continue to influence the politics of India, as well as being the heart of many contrasting ideologies that have caused ethnic and religious conflict in Indian society...
and
Iranian nationalismIranian Nationalism is the term given to describe a political movement that has been in existence in the Iran for thousands of years to maintain Iranian identity by keeping Iranian culture and Iranian languages and oppose cultural assimilation in the long history of Iran .-History:First recorded...
. Echoes of "the 19th century prejudice about 'northern' Aryans who were confronted on Indian soil with black barbarians [...] can still be heard in some modern studies." In a socio-political context, the idea of a white, European Aryan race is still entertained by certain circles, usually representing white supremacists who call for the stemming of migrations of Muslims from Turkey, the Middle East and Africa into Europe.