For a long time the question of who exactly the Vedic people (sometimes referred to as Aryans) were hung in the air. The popular view was that Aryans invaded India and settled in different parts of it, sometimes by displacing the natives and sometimes assimilating with them. This changed by the turn of the twenty first century. A study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in South Asia from 2008 had found no evidence of any change in the Indian gene pool that spoke of a new group migrating into the region for over 12,000 years.
Had there been no migration of Vedic people into India at all? The question of when did Aryans invade India changed to whether or not.
No more Aryan Invasion Theory
Everyone took a step back. Historians had in any case been wondering if the old Aryan Invasion Theory was the best model to explain the entry of the Vedic people into the north-west of the subcontinent after the Harappan Civilisation had collapsed. Was it just a bias, this thinking that the strong always invaded and overran the weak, that had brought this perception that there had been an invasion?
After this research, the word ‘invasion’ was amended to ‘migration’, and historians tried to imagine it instead as smaller groups coming in over a protracted stretch of time, rather than a single full-blown invasion. But they did insist that people had actually ‘come’, the same people who had produced the Rig Veda.
The Out-of-India Theory
This was a moment of triumph for some historians. The evidence that there had been no invasion at all, and, in fact, no migration at all, because, according to them, the Vedic people had been indigenous to India all along. What they proposed instead was an Out of India Theory, which claimed that the similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, and indeed, almost all the modern languages of Europe all the way to Iceland, were better explained as a migration that had had its source in India. What a delight to imagine that the Vedic people were none other than the Indus Valley Civilisation, with its wondrous cities and mysterious seals, which looked to be a pictographic writing system!
However, there were obvious differences between the Harappan people and the Vedic people. The Harappan people had intelligently planned cities, plough agriculture, central granaries, craft production, an advanced system of civic drainage and homes with indoor plumbing. The Vedic people were pre-urban, and essentially pastoral. The Harappan people had very visual pictographic seals; the Vedic people had the magnificent Rig Veda which was passed on orally. The Rig Veda did not mention cities, except as ruins which they feared, believing them to be haunted, venturing there only to pick up pieces of broken pottery for their ceremonies.
The Evolving Picture
Mitochondrial DNA study had ignored one important factor. Since this DNA is transmitted only from mother to daughter, it told us nothing about menfolk. The female line of descent in India was smooth. But, what about the male line?
In 2017, a study investigated the male line of descent in India by looking at Y-DNA evidence based on Y-chromosomes that are transmitted from father to son. Here, the signs of another strand to the migration theory emerged. This study suggested a large influx into the region, dating back to the Bronze Age, at around the time when the Harappan Civilisation had just fallen apart. The time of this genetic influx matched the time set by historians as the point at which verses of the Rig Veda first appeared, around 1500 BCE. This came after a larger migration of Indo-European people westward into Europe, all tracing back to the same Pontic-Caspian region of Central Asia. The Aryans had truly existed, but, like most explorers anywhere in history, they had almost all been male!
Note: This question ‘Did Aryans Invade/Migrate?’ is still hotly contested in India, especially between the left-wing and right-wing historians. While the above views are based on recent research, the picture is still unfolding in the light of new evidence.
Reference books:
Kalampedia 