ABSTRACT

The “Aryan question” is concerned with the immigration of a population speaking an archaic Indo-European (IE) language, Vedic Sanskrit, who celebrate their gods and chieftains in the poems of the oldest Indian literature, the Ṛgveda, and who subsequently spread their language, religion, ritual, and social organization throughout the subcontinent. Who were the “Aryans”? What was their spiritual and material culture and their outlook on life? Did they ever enter the Indian subcontinent from the outside? Or did these people develop indigenously in the Greater Panjab?