Indian population originated in 3 migration waves from Africa, Iran & Asia

[prasad1]

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The modern-day Indians are not from the Indian subcontinent. There may not have been an Aryan invasion, but a slow migration of people from 3 different regions,

The Indian population originated from three separate waves of migration from Africa, Iran and Central Asia over a period of 50,000 years, scientists have found using genetic evidence from people alive in the subcontinent today.

The Indian Subcontinent harbours huge genetic diversity, in addition to its vast patchwork of languages, cultures and religions.


Researchers at the University of Huddersfield in the UK found that some genetic lineages in South Asia are very ancient.

The earliest populations were hunter-gatherers who arrived from Africa, where modern humans arose, more than 50,000 years ago.

However, further waves of settlement came from the direction of Iran, after the last Ice Age ended 10-20,000 years ago, and with the spread of early farming.

These ancient signatures are most clearly seen in the mitochondrial DNA, which tracks the female line of descent.

However, Y-chromosome variation, which tracks the male line, is very different, according to the study published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

"Here the major signatures are much more recent. Most controversially, there is a strong signal of immigration from Central Asia, less than 5,000 years ago," said Marina Silva, co-author of the study.

"This looks like a sign of the arrival of the first Indo- European speakers, who arose amongst the Bronze Age peoples of the grasslands north of the Caucasus, between the Black and Caspian Seas," Silva said.

They were male-dominated, mobile pastoralists who had domesticated the horse - and spoke what ultimately became Sanskrit, the language of classical Hinduism - which more than 200 years ago linguists showed is ultimately related to classical Greek and Latin, the study found.

Migrations from the same source also shaped the settlement of Europe and its languages, and this has been the subject of most recent research.

The origin of the Indian population is an area of huge controversy among scholars and scientists.

A problem confronting archaeogenetic research into the origins of Indian populations is that there is a dearth of sources, such as preserved skeletal remains that can provide ancient DNA samples.

In the latest study, researchers used genetic evidence from people alive in the subcontinent today.

Indian population originated in 3 migration waves from Africa, Iran & Asia

Researchers at University of Huddersfield found some genetic lineages in South Asia are very ancient

www.business-standard.com

 

[prasad1]

Despite the considerable antiquity of Indian civilization, with some sites in what is today northwest India and Pakistan dating from over five thousand years ago, the origins of today’s Indians have long been shrouded by the depths of time, a murky morass for archaeologists and historians. However, 2018 was rightly described as the golden age of Indian population genetics, because DNA evidence, modern and ancient, combined with archaeology and linguistics, has finally unraveled the origins of Indians. We now have a good idea of where Indians come from, after decades of mystery.

What has emerged is a picture of Indian origins that aptly reflects the present diversity of South Asia. Indians — their civilization, language, and religion — are the multilayered, composite product of many different sources, now mixed to produce the modern population.

Origins

Aboriginal Indians. A significant portion of Indian DNA, almost half by some accounts, is derived from the aboriginal inhabitants of India, possibly descendants from the human populations that arrived there in the first waves of migration out of Africa by 50,000 years ago; in present-day India, the tribes of the Andaman islands, with a physiological profile most similar to modern Australian aborigines and New Guineans, are the taken to be the most representative of this ancient population, which has been labeled by geneticists as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI), somewhat of a misnomer since this population is a major component of the DNA of all South Asians. AASI DNA is particularly prominent in mitochondrial DNA (passed through the female line), indicating that there was consistent selective mixing between aboriginal women and high-status males from populations from outside of India, probably buoyed by innovative technologies such as agriculture and metallurgy.

Iranian Farmers. Much of the rest of Indian DNA comes from the Middle East, with some input from the Central Asian steppe. Originally, this genetic population was labeled Ancestral North Indian (ANI), since this genetic component is more prominent in North India. However, it is also a deliberate misnomer, chosen for political reasons so as not to offend Hindu nationalists, that obscures the non-Indian origin of these people. Humanity was much more diverse in terms of languages and physical features before the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry a few thousand years ago. For example, ancient Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes. But as a result of agriculture in the Near East and China, farmers fanned out from these regions, spread their languages, and displaced or assimilated the native populations of Europe, India, and Southeast Asia. Some farmers from western Iran, one of the homelands of agriculture, migrated east to the Indus Valley in modern Pakistan by 9,000-7,000 years ago, where they remained without further expansion for a few thousand of years because, according to geneticist Razib Khan, “the West Asian agricultural toolkit [crops like wheat] was serviceable in northwestern South Asia for reasons of climate and ecology, but could not expand further east and south.”

Southeast Asian Rice Farmers. It was in India that the two waves of agriculture and population movements, fanning out from the Middle East and China respectively, met. While wheat was introduced from the west, rice was brought by Austro-Asiatic groups, today represented by the Mundas in eastern India, part of a language family that includes Vietnamese and Khmer. While Austro-Asiatic farmers seem to have originated from southern China, and displaced the original AASI-like inhabitants of Southeast Asia, by the time these rice farmers reached India around 4,000 years ago, they seemed to have become more dispersed. Most Austro-Asiatic Indian groups are in fact genetically mostly aboriginal, with some male East-Asian ancestry; other than rice and some isolated languages, the Austro-Asiatic groups seem to have made little impact on Indian genetics and culture, though the proportion of East-Asian like ancestry in some eastern Indian ethnic groups like the Bengalis is not minuscule. Due to climate, rice seems to have been adapted by all groups and spread throughout the subcontinent soon after its arrival, so the Munda did not have a particular advantage.

Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part 1

Population genetics sheds light on the origins of modern South Asians.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

This is the second part of an ongoing series, which traces the origins of India’s people and civilization. The first part can be found here: Unraveled: Where Indians Come From, Part 1.

As discussed in the first part of this series, around 5,000 years ago (3,000 BCE), India was on the verge of a major demographic transition, as new groups migrated to the subcontinent and mixed with the original inhabitants. The original inhabitants of the subcontinent, its aborigines, labeled by geneticists as Ancient Ancestral South Indians (AASI), lived throughout the subcontinent, but were soon to be partially assimilated into two demographic waves of farmers from the east and west: a larger group of Middle Eastern farmers expanding from what is now the northwestern part of the subcontinent, and a smaller group of Southeast Asian farmers from the east, whose demographic impact was minor, but whose crop — rice — transformed life in South Asia, because rice can be thrive in India’s climate much better than wheat. Soon, the final major contributor to the subcontinent’s ancient culture and demography, the steppe peoples, would arrive.
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Hindu nationalists have claimed that Indo-Europeans, often conflated with the Aryans, who were just one of many Indo-European groups, originated in India, or at least northwestern India (Punjab). However, archaeological discoveries from the Yamnaya culture of the steppe, as well as the nature of common-words shared between Indo-European languages all indicate a colder, more temperate origin for the family (for example, Vedic Sanskrit is not rich in tropical terminology).
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Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[renuka]

So everyone in India is migrant and a mix of
1) African
2) Iranian
3) Central Asian

Some have South East Asian blood too.


All our DNA would have some traces of all 3 but only the proportion would vary.

But only one question remains...
" How could the beliefs and language of the Central Asians dominate India?"

What was the belief system of the African 1st wave of migration?

What was the belief system of the Iranian wave of migration?

How could the Central Asians manage to take over all believe systems? Or did all pre existing systems combine hence we have nature worship from African migration wave ,Kula deivam practice from Iranian migration wave and Vedic yagnas from Central Asian wave?

I remember reading somewhere that the Naga tribe of India practiced Yoga philosophy and Kundalini yoga and they were almost wiped out by the migrating Central Asians after learning from them.
Not sure how true that is.

 

[VSrinivasan]

I am somewhat confused by the conclusion about the sources of immigration from the DNA commonality. One could argue against the western authors that people may have migrated from India outwards to other parts of the world too and that's why we see commonality now.

 

[prasad1]

Dravidians. While genetically, farmers from Iran contributed to most of the DNA of the northwestern subcontinent and the IVC, around 5,000 years ago, some farmer groups began to fan out, mix with the aborigine Indians in much of what is present day India, and establish agricultural communities throughout the subcontinent.

This mixture, which is around 25 percent Iranian farmer and 75 percent aboriginal Indian, spread throughout the subcontinent by 4,000 years ago, and has been labeled by scientists as Ancestral South Indian (ASI), another misnomer since ASI populations were the base populations of most of the subcontinent prior to 2,000 BCE.

Somewhere, in this process of admixture, and expanding wave of agriculture, new stone tools, social organization, and rituals, the Dravidian peoples and language family was born. Judging from the ancient Dravidian-sounding toponyms (place names) of Sindh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, it is quite likely the roots of this family lie in an eastward expansion along the coast of India into the peninsula and southern India; many of the millets and gourd-like crops cultivated by Dravidian peoples also indicate seaborne contact with tropical parts of the southern Middle East and eastern Africa, while rice was adopted from the east.

There is no evidence that Dravidian languages were spoken in the Ganges Valley and Punjab, and the native speakers of these regions may have spoken something related to the language isolate of the Hunza Valley of northern Pakistan, Burushaski. Recent linguistic analysis has found that the Dravidian language family is approximately 4,500 years old (2,500 BCE), which coincides nicely with the South Indian Neolithic period, a period after 3,000 BCE when archaeologists have noted the expansion of cattle rearing, lentil farming, and hilltop villages radiating out from the Godavari River basin in Karnataka and Telangana. While some linguists claim that Dravidian is related to the ancient Elamite language of southwest Iran, which has no known relatives, the jury is still out.

Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

The Indo-Europeans. In the Eurasian steppe, the Indo-Europeans, an ancient people, who proved to have an enormous impact on world history and whose descendent languages are highly successful, arose. There is overwhelming genetic, archaeological, and linguistic evidence that the source population of the Indo-Europeans were “ancient agro-pastoralists (herders)” originating from the western Eurasian steppe in modern Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

Work by the geneticist David Reich indicates that the Indo-European population was formed from a mixture of ancient European hunter-gatherers, ancient Siberians, and farmers from northwestern Iran. Hindu nationalists have claimed that Indo-Europeans, often conflated with the Aryans, who were just one of many Indo-European groups, originated in India, or at least northwestern India (Punjab).

However, archaeological discoveries from the Yamnaya culture of the steppe, as well as the nature of common-words shared between Indo-European languages all indicate a colder, more temperate origin for the family (for example, Vedic Sanskrit is not rich in tropical terminology). Indo-European sites were characterized by their use of the wheel and horses, which was probably the innovation that allowed their rapid spread after 3,000 BCE. Indo-Europeans spreading west into Europe displaced much of the original European population, at that time descended from the first waves of Middle Eastern farmers, who themselves had displaced the previous hunter-gatherers. As Reich points out in his book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, rapid population movements and changes, and not just cultural diffusion, were rather common in ancient history.

Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

Aryans. One group of these pastoral Indo-Europeans migrated to what is today’s Central Asian steppe (most modern Central Asians are not fully descended from these ancient peoples because Turkic and Mongolian tribes replaced them in the Middle Ages). Archaeologists refer to these people as the Andronovo culture, better known to linguists as the Indo-Iranians. Most Indo-Iranian groups referred to themselves as some variant of the term Arya, meaning noble; this is the etymology of both the modern country of Iran and the Aryans of India.

The Iranian branch of these people eventually settled in Iran and Afghanistan, and assimilated linguistically the original Iranian farmers of these regions (it should be noted that the term Iranian can be used to refer to two sets of originally different ancient peoples, one farmers from western Iran, and one herders from the steppe). Another branch of the Indo-Iranians, the Aryans, spread south before the Iranians and migrated both to ancient Syria and Iraq, where they became the ruling class of the Mittani polity.

Another group of Aryans spread southeast through the Hindu Kush range of Afghanistan into South Asia; these are the Indo-Aryans most prominently known in history. It is quite possible that originally, the Aryans and Iranians were just two related tribal configurations that went their own ways. The Indo-Aryans are believed to be responsible for many aspects of what became Indian civilization, including the Vedic religion (an ancestor of modern Hinduism), the Indo-Aryan languages (Sanskrit and its modern descendants like Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Nepali, Marathi, and Bengali), horses, and the idea of a four-fold division of society (varna) that is an aspect of modern caste.

Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[renuka]

OMG!!! There isnt a pure race in the world.
The Indo Europeans themselves are mixed ..LOL

No wonder its Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam!

 

[prasad1]

The Aryan Migration Controversy. Since much of later Indian civilization has been organized by the framework provided by the Aryans, whose prestige culture became gradually dominant through a process of subcontinental Aryanization and Sanskritization, their origins and the nature of their arrival in South Asia are the subjects of much investigation and controversy. While Hindu nationalists claim that the Aryans are indigenous to India, even many archaeologists discount anything like an Aryan migration into India, instead suggesting diffusion. Some of this was because the material culture of India during this period did not indicate an invasion or population change (Indus Valley-type tools and pottery are found throughout this period).

However, there was also a strong 20th century scholarly pushback against the 19th century view of European colonialist scholarship that held that Indian civilization was founded by “European,” and “white” Aryan invaders (although in reality, the Indo-Europeans were a steppe people who migrated to both Europe and India, and as such have little to do with Germanic fantasies). The truth, however, is more complex, and it seems that aspects of both the 19th and 20th century views are correct. While the female-line (mtDNA) and archaeological record vindicate the 20th century view, linguistic, literary, the male-line (Y-chromosome) evidence align more with 19th century perspective: many Aryans did enter India. There is absolutely no evidence in favor of an out-migration of Aryans from India.

The Aryan Migration. As DNA studies suggests, the original neolithic Iranian farmer ancestry of the people of the Indus Valley remained the primary genetic component of people from this region, but there is a significant steppe component layered onto it. This combined population has been labeled by geneticists Ancestral North Indian (ANI), a deliberate, politically-correct misnomer that obscures the non-Indic origins of these people.

ANI represents an Aryan wave overtaking and assimilating a farmer wave, creating a combined migration wave that spread into the Ganges Valley. The evidence backs this up: in the Swat Valley of northern Pakistan, samples of DNA from modern people, and remains dating from 1,200 BCE have steppe ancestry, while previous ones do not, indicating that the Aryans had arrived by then and mixed with the farmers. Meanwhile, farther east, DNA from Rakhigarhi in Haryana from around the same time does not display the Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a, now common in northern India, and thought to have originated from the European steppe, indicating that the Aryan expansion had not yet arrived there. Yet, further east, by 900 BCE, the Kuru kingdom, which inspired the Hindu epic the Mahabharata and where the Aryan hymns were codified as the Vedas and aspects of Hindu orthodoxy were established, existed in northern Uttar Pradesh, indicating that the Aryans were expanding rapidly to the east. In fact, it was probably the cultural synthesis that developed in the Kuru kingdom, which also incorporated non-Aryan tribes and rituals, that laid the basis for what is now considered the Vedic, Aryan civilization of early India; it was also around this time that Sanskrit began to develop into simplified, descendent languages in a process of second-language acquisition by new speakers.

It is likely is that as the urbanization devolved toward a rural lifestyle, many of farming communities of the Punjab invited nearby Indo-Aryan groups as protectors or these groups migrated on their own volition in order to seek alternative pastures. And there is no reason to rule out military dominance, especially as the dominant Hindu castes, even today, have the most steppe admixture relative to other castes, and it is likely that some of these early Aryan priests and warriors (kshatriyas) set themselves up as rulers upon their arrival in India.

Razib Khan notes: “Historically the boundary between pastoralists and peasants could be fluid, but when political resistance collapses pastoralists have been able to use their military prowess to swarm across the lands of agriculturalists.” The population of the Punjab was gradually assimilated into the Aryan language and culture, and its elites co-opted, while maintaining its pre-existing material and agricultural traditions. In a process known as elite dominance, it is not uncommon for smaller groups of warriors and rulers to spread their culture and language to larger settled groups, especially those bereft of leadership. The expansion of the Arabs, Turks, and Slavs all proceeded in this manner, as often more “primitive” groups offer more organizational flexibility to rural communities.

Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

Going Native. It should be noted that while the Aryans may have originated from outside of India (as did many other groups, including possibly the Dravidians), they became rapidly indigenized, so it ought not to matter if they did come from Central Asia. Generally, such processes do not take very long. Take for example Babur, the Turko-Mongol founder of the Mughal Empire in India, who was clearly uncomfortable with its climate and customs; his grandson Akbar was thoroughly Indianized.

The iconography and rituals of Hinduism incorporate indigenous influence, spirituality, and gods, and signs of belonging to a tropical climate (like offering coconuts and bananas to deities); many common Hindu and Buddhist ideas such as reincarnation and karma are are underdeveloped or nonexistent in the early Vedic religion. Sanskrit over time begins to demonstrate more Dravidian stylistic and literary influence, uses retroflex consonants (a type of consonant used extensively in India), and often acts like a left-branching language, with the subject of a sentence coming last. Regardless of their origins, the Dravidians and Aryans made India their home, and established their civilization there.

Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

Migration and Mixing. The mixture between a smaller, dominant steppe population, and a larger farmer population created the ANI genetic population that became dominant in northwest India after 1,500 BCE. Meanwhile, the ASI genetic population, a mixture of farmers and aborigines, was prevalent throughout most of the rest of India.

That there were two very distinct populations in ancient India is backed up by some some circumstantial evidence in the Vedas, the Mahabharata, as well as in the work of the Greek historian Herodotus, who notes that some Indians have “the same tint of skin, which approaches that of the Ethiopians. Their country is a long way from Persia towards the south, nor had king Darius ever any authority over them.” This is presumably an ASI population. Of an ANI population, he says: “Besides these, there are Indians of another tribe, who border on the city of Caspatyrus, and the country of Pactyica; these people dwell northward of all the rest of the Indians, and follow nearly the same mode of life as the Bactrians [in Afghanistan]. They are more warlike than any of the other tribes.”


The Iranian farmer component was a vital part of both groups, as a 2018 study by Vagheesh M. Narasimhan and others demonstrates. As there was some aboriginal admixture with the original Iranian farmers in the Indus Valley, every group in India also has some admixture from the original Indians. Older models posit an indigenous Dravidian population being overtaken by foreign Aryans, but in actuality, both groups seem to have entered India within a few hundred years of each other, and expanded in almost parallel waves. The Dravidians may seem more indigenous only because the surviving Dravidian peoples are concentrated in southern India, where they assimilated larger aboriginal populations; the large genetic imprint of Iranian-farmer DNA among elite groups in Dravidian cultures, such as the Kannadigas, Telugus, and Tamils, testifies to a Dravidian migration into South India.

The period after 2,000 BCE seems to have been a time of great change and mixing in India, as Aryans and Dravidians expanded, agriculture spread, and rice was introduced. By the time of the establishment of states along the Ganges more than a thousand years later, Dravidian and Aryan groups were mixing and influencing each other, though it probably took a long time, possibly up to just a thousand years ago, for Dravidian and Aryan cultures to spread throughout the entire subcontinent, and seep from the elite level to the masses (generally hierarchically lower groups in India seek to raise their status by adopting norms associated with the higher castes). During this process, the ANI and ASI genetic populations also mixed, inevitably, as farmers from the Indus Valley region migrated into the Ganges Valley, and then south; in some places like Bengal, the ANI mixed not only with ASI, but with Southeast Asian genetic components.

Gradually the ANI to ASI ratio in the Indian gene pool has shifted in favor of ANI because ANI has continuously been renewed by new arrivals from outside of India, according to research by the geneticist David Reich. These include groups like the Persians, Greeks, Kushans, Scythians, Hephthalites, and Tajiks, and Pathans, whereas the ASI component is limited to a population in India with no relatives elsewhere, and will inevitably be diluted by continuous admixture.

Today, everyone in India is a mixture, in some proportion, of these two groups, regardless of the language they speak, or the region they live in. (According to a DNA test I took, I have both a male ancestor from the steppe, and a female ancestor descended from the first Indians.)

Interestingly, admixture in India stopped around 1,500 years ago, during the Gupta Period, when a particularly strict understanding of hereditary caste boundaries was developed and endogamy — no marriage between the thousands of jati caste groups — became the social norm. By this time, though, every group in the subcontinent had intermixed to some extent, so that there is some aboriginal DNA among Afghans and some steppe DNA in populations from Tamil Nadu, at the southern tip of India. The social, regional, and cultural implications of India’s genetics, as well as its relation to caste, will be the focus of the next part of this series.

Where Indians Come From, Part 2: Dravidians and Aryans

Who were the people who made up ancient India and where did they come from?

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

No discussion of India’s genetic history is complete without a consideration of the phenomenon of caste, an imprecise English-language word that encompasses two distinct ideas that have historically been socially significant in the Indian context: varna, and jati. Varna, which is what most non-Indians think of as caste is the “stratification of all of society into at least four ranks”: the brahmins (priests, intellectuals), kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), vaishyas (merchants, artisans, some farmers), and shudras (laborers), below which are the untouchables or dalits. The stratification is both socioeconomic and ritual: often members of higher castes could not accept cooked food or being touched by members of lower castes (as this would cause “ritual pollution”). On the other hand, the varna system, as described in the earliest Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, was not necessarily hereditary (though most modern brahmins and kshatriyas have male-line ancestors originating from the original steppe clans that settled in the subcontinent after 1,000 BCE), and resembles in some ways the class system more prominent throughout the West. Other, non-hereditary interpretations include the varnas being idealized human callings. However, thinking of caste as only varna obscures its more prominent jati aspect, a feature that many would prefer to sweep under the rug.

Caste and Hinduism are not instricintly linked: both can function and survive without each other. Caste is in many ways basal to the social order of South Asia: there are Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist castes, and the phenomenon also exists in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. However, both varna and jati were elaborated on in ancient Hindu texts like the Manusmriti. As Hinduism and caste have been evolving together in India for so long, it is not surprising that there is some level of intertwinement between the two. But hereditary caste has almost no legal and ideological support anymore, even if it still often functions at the ground level due to custom. It was inevitable that a modern, “new” Hinduism would emerge from India’s contact with modernity and the Western Enlightenment, one shorn of caste, but containing ancient spiritual values.

The concept of jati is what most Indians mean on a daily level when they refer to caste. It closely resembles the sociological definition of caste, as defined by geneticist David Reich: “a group that interacts economically with people outside of it (through specialized economic roles), but segregates itself socially through endogamy (which prevents people from marrying outsiders).” While it has no legal validity in India today, and is opposed by both nationalists and liberals who see it as detrimental to a united, strong society, it has historically been the most important social reality for Indians, for at least the past 1,500 years.

There are thousands of jati groups or “castes”: anywhere between 4,600 and 40,000. “Each is assigned a particular rank in the varna system, but strong and complicated endogamy rules prevent people from most jatis from mixing with each other, even if they are of the same varna level… in the past, whole jati groups have changed their varna ranks [by raising their ritual status].”

More than anything, endogamy, and the eating (vegetarianism is usually associated with brahmins and vaishyas, meat with kshatriyas and shudras, no rice, offal and beef with dalits), clothing, and other lifestyle customs associated with a particular jati were the most important aspects at the social level, not varna (some British censuses tried to fix all jatis in varna rankings). Most Indians reading this will not need academic literature to understand this at the visceral level, until recently, extreme familial paranoia and irrationality enforced this system surprisingly well.

The caste-system is in any case, extremely complex, and functions differently throughout India. For example, kshatriyas (and rajputs) and vaishyas are rare in South India, because most male-line descendents of these groups remained in north and west India, and the small brahmin population in South India is the result of a later series of migrations around 1,500 years ago, as developing states in that region needed brahmins for ritual and administrative purposes. Thus, technically, many of the elite, high-ranking ruling castes in South India are shudras, but for all practical purposes function as kshatriyas (and tend to have more Iranian farmer DNA than other castes in their respective regions), so as to make the traditional idea of varna pointless in the south.

Where Did Indians Come From, Part 3: What Is Caste?

The caste-system is extremely complex and functions differently throughout India.

thediplomat.com

 

[renuka]

I have a question...so that means India was empty?
That all humans came to it from outside?

 

[prasad1]

According to Reich, one hypothesis for why the system developed in this manner was suggested by the anthropologist Irawati Karve:

Thousands of years ago, Indian peoples live[d] in effectively endogamous tribal groups that did not mix, much like tribal groups in other parts of the world today. Political elites then ensconced themselves at the top of the social system (as priests, kings, and merchants), creating a stratified system in which the tribal groups were incorporated into society in the form of laboring groups that remained at the bottom of society as Shudras and Dalits. The tribal organization was thus fused with the system of social stratification to form early jatis, and eventually the jati structure percolated up to the higher ranks of society, so that today there are many jatis of higher as well as of lower castes. These ancient tribal groups have preserved their distinctiveness through the caste system and endogamy rules.

Where Did Indians Come From, Part 3: What Is Caste?

The caste-system is extremely complex and functions differently throughout India.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

I have a question...so that means India was empty?
That all humans came to it from outside?

Every place was "empty" until it is occupied by humans. The local indigenous people who were few either got annihilated or got assimilated. We see this phenomenon in the Americas which was colonized in the last 700 years.

 

[prasad1]

Aryan society incorporating and assimilating new groups as it spread throughout India, though there must have been a greater openness to mixing, incorporating new elites, and taking spouses from other groups in ancient times than in medieval times, as genetic evidence shows that mixing between castes and the groups that formed modern Indians’ ancestry took place between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. That the different castes were originally distinct tribes is backed up by the traditional obsession with the need to remain separate, not only in terms of not intermarrying, but by eating apart, eating different things, and maintaining all sorts of minute, distinct customs.

It was probably around 2,000 to 1,500 years ago that texts like the Manusmriti were written and enforced, probably more through social pressure than political coercion; after all, if by this time, upper-caste groups had adopted this structure by the time, it must have become a socially desirable norm that all groups would wish to emulate. It can be assumed that by the Gupta Era, around 400 CE, a time known for its “orthodoxy,” the jati system had spread to all segments of Indian society, at which time mixing stopped. While the system in many ways does disadvantage lower castes, it also allowed every group to preserve its bloodline and tribal boundaries, and many of the non-upper castes must have feared losing status to castes below them, which is why they put up with it, even if it meant not being at the top. However, until recently, scrupulosity in observing the caste restrictions has been most associated with brahmins, who probably combined their status at the top of the varna system with the idea of jati to develop a strongly distinct and insular role at the top of India’s social hierarchy. It was also probably brahmins who gave this synthesis its intellectual shape and rationalization.

Caste is therefore a historical phenomenon in Indian society. Yet, a very popular theory, with advocates both among the post-colonial left and Hindu-nationalist right, holds that caste was relatively fluid until the British Raj. Those who hold this view argue that the British constructed the rigid caste system that we see today (though not the caste groups themselves), to dominate and divide Indians; their evidence consists of the various caste surveys conducted during the Raj. But this theory can hardly explain the deep, visceral passion Indians had for their castes, which the British could hardly have caused over the course of two to three generations, especially when their policy was to avoid interfering with the customs of their Hindu and Muslim subjects to starve off the revolt.

In fact, it was the British period that began the erosion of caste, as India was increasingly plugged into a global, capitalist civilization that was both ideologically and economically opposed to hereditary jati. In modern India, most of the clothing and eating distinctions of the castes are being rapidly erased; only the avoidance of intermarriage remains, but that too may rapidly change in urban areas. But because castes are so entrenched in the Indian mind, and in its social organization, it may take decades, if not centuries, for the system, especially its hereditary aspect, to dissipate altogether, particularly in rural areas. That there are caste quotas in India’s political system can hardly be helpful in hastening its demise.

Genetically, the jati system is clearly observable, and fascinating, because the mixture between various groups in South Asia stopped almost totally around 1,500 years ago, preserving the distinct hereditary backgrounds of different castes, before all the original ancestral groups in the subcontinent (farmer, steppe, and aboriginal) were fully homogenized. The various different geographic origins of India’s founding groups show up in the genetic structures of today’s castes, with a strong correlation between the proportion of Iranian farmers and Aryan steppe ancestry in a caste and its socioeconomic position in the caste hierarchy within a certain region. Genetically, India’s population structure is much more complex than China’s, or Europe’s. Reich writes that it is “composed of a large number of small populations.”

Where Did Indians Come From, Part 3: What Is Caste?

The caste-system is extremely complex and functions differently throughout India.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

The farmer/steppe (ANI) to farmer/aboriginal (ASI) ratio of the castes is relative in each particular region, in a gradient from northwest to south India, so a a lower-caste individual in Punjab may be more ANI genetically than a high-caste individual from Tamil Nadu. The Meghwal, an “untouchable” caste from Rajasthan are 60.3 percent ANI, while the Velama, a high caste associated with administration and rule from Andhra Pradesh, are 54.3 percent ANI.


Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. (Source: NIH)

Because of this hereditary, genetic factor, the concept of caste is intermediate between the sociological ideas of class and race. While class refers to the division of a society based on social and economic status, race refers to groups of people who share similar physical traits and origins. In a sense, castes, which do not have distinct languages or religions, functioned as subcultures or ethnicities belonging to the same “race” (as previously explained, every group in India is descended from the same ancestral peoples, albeit in different proportions). The 20th-century dalit activist and politician B.R. Ambedkar noted that caste “is not nearly a division of labor. It is a division of laborers…a hierarchy in which the divisions of laborers are graded above one above the other.” It is important to study because while caste is manifested in a certain way in South Asia, all the elements that comprise it can be found in other societies.

Where Did Indians Come From, Part 3: What Is Caste?

The caste-system is extremely complex and functions differently throughout India.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

Indian genetic history is heterogeneous, multifaceted, complex, and unique relative to the population structures of other regions, such as East Asia (characterized by a tendency toward ethnic homogeneity). Due to the times and distances involved, and the highly divergent origins of India’s ancestral peoples much has been brought to light only because of recent DNA studies, which combined with what is known about India’s social structure and history, now provide a coherent narrative about distinct aspects of India’s ethnography and sociology: caste, religion, language groups, and agricultural practices.

The simplest way to think of Indian populations is as a cline, a continuum with a large number of gradations from one extreme to the other. There is some correlation between language, caste, geography, and genetics, but not a complete one. Generally speaking, higher-caste groups, and people from northwestern India are likelier to have more steppe and Iranian farmer ancestry than lower-caste groups, and people from southern and eastern India. But the geographic correlation is not total, and is relative to each region. Indians are thus not a single “race,” but a mixed population deriving from several ancestral ones. This is more evident among Indians than people from other part of the world where mixing has occurred because the mixing in India occurred between groups with very different physical features, and in different proportions among castes and regions. India’s groups were never fully homogenized to form a new, uniform “race.”


Source: Reich, David et al. 2009. “Reconstructing Indian Population History.” Nature 461: 489–494.

While it is tempting to think of Indian ethnic groups utilizing classical European terminology—as groups sharing a common language and territory—in the Indian context, it makes more sense to think of its thousands of separate castes as individual ethnicities, because they share common descent and customs. The geneticist Razib Khan noted to me that “India is interesting because you have different ethnicities speaking the same language,” whereas in other regions with environmental or social stratification such as Southeast Asia, “language and religion mark distinction.”

Where did Indians Come From, Part 4: How Unique is Indian Society?

The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent is truly amazing.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

The process by which these castes are grouped together in a hierarchy and converge linguistically and religiously is known as Sanskritization because Sanskritic language culture is associated with the elites: it does not necessarily mean the adoption of Sanskrit by a population; many groups speaking a variety of languages from divergent linguistic families have “Sanskritized,” or become refined, perfected.

Sanskritization is a process of social change and cultural assimilation that was particularly prevalent as a form of acculturation in ancient and medieval India whereby groups, particularly new or lower castes in a society emulate the rituals and practices of upper castes, or whereby local elites transform their social structures so as to emulate the classical varna and jati system that was first established in northern India. Sanskritization has been described as similar to the social phenomenon known in the West as passing, in which individuals try to pass off as socially higher than they may be. While Sanskritization of unassimilated tribes and groups occurred mostly in ancient India, the process is still continuing in parts of Nepal and Northeast India that recently came under Hindu influence.

The relatively recent Sanskritization of Manipur, now a state in northeast India bordering Myanmar is an illuminating example of Sanskritization. In the early 18th century, the king of this formerly tribal entity, linguistically and ethnically more similar to the Burmese than to Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Indians, invited preachers from the Vaishnava sect of Hinduism from nearby Bengal to his kingdom. This “brought about a unification of Manipuri social life with the mainstream Hindu society based on caste distinction. The system of…worship of the Vedic deities and Aryan religion rituals entered Manipuri social life as the people embraced Vaishnavism in the leadership of the king.” It is evident that the process of Sanskritization was usually elite-driven:

​

Sooner or later, power has to be translated into authority, and it was precisely in this situation that Sanskritization was important. He who became chief or king had to become a kshatriya, whatever his origins. In those areas where a bardic caste existed the chief was provided with a genealogy linking him to a well-known kshatriya lineage and even to the sun or the moon. The indispensability of Brahmins is pointedly seen in the fact that in areas where there was no established Brahmin caste the chief had…to import them from outside, offering them gifts of land and other inducements….

Indian culture, as well as some Indian DNA has also entered Southeast Asia as a result of similar, elite-driven processes, as the arrival of traders and Brahmins in places like Cambodia and Indonesia led to the adoption of some aspects of Indian cultures by nobles and chiefs in those areas, though not the formal establishment of a caste system.

Where did Indians Come From, Part 4: How Unique is Indian Society?

The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent is truly amazing.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

How Unique is Indian Society?

Is India just different due to a fluke of history, or does its social structure share similarities with other societies? Writing in A Brief History of the Human Race, historian Michael Cook notes that in India “familiar elements have been put together in a formal system that shapes the society from top to bottom….the rather isolating geography of the subcontinent lends itself to the evolution, spread, and preservation of cultural idiosyncrasies not shared by the rest of Eurasia.” But as Cook argues of the caste system, “none of the underlying ideas is peculiar to India.”

We are used to societies containing a variety of groups that vary in prestige. Such groups may be linked to birth (you can hardly choose to become a Gypsy if you are not one already) and to occupation (a Boston Brahmin does not make a living cleaning toilets). They also make a different to marriage (you are more likely to encourage your daughter to marry a member of a high-ranking rather than a low-ranking group). Though it is impolite, it is not unknown for people in many societies to speak of other groups as dirty. So at this level we could hardly claim that the elements of the Indian caste system are beyond our understanding.

Speaking to me, Razib Khan points out that “it is important to note that caste systems develop everywhere. For example, in the post-Roman era, there was a division between the Saxons and Celtic British. But, they are not strongly religio-ideological. Over time they break down. The weird thing about India is the persistence and deep time depth.” Similar phenomenon did not occur in other civilizations for a variety of reasons. For example, in China, “the Han had an assimilative ideology. Not just integrative [as was the case in India and its castes]. This is explicit in old Confucian sayings. Barbarians can become civilized.” India’s integrative ideology is highly primed for the preservation of caste distinctions, local gods and manifestations of deities, and heterogeneity in general.

On the other hand, intermixing between castes in India has parallels in other parts of the world, especially in areas where extremely distinct groups quickly came into contact. According to Khan, admixture in India between castes “was 1 percent or less for 1,500 years…basically Jim Crow levels of cultural separation.” Similar to the one-drop rule adopted by many states in the American south, anyone with admixture between upper and lower castes was generally assigned to the lower castes to prevent the mixture of lower caste genetic material into the higher castes.

Similar phenomenon can be observed in Latin America, particularly countries like Mexico that large populations of mixed Native Americans and Europeans (mestizos): there is a similar gradation in Mexico, with social status and proportion of European ancestry relative to native ancestry being correlated. Yet, as Khan points out, Mexico could not fully become India because of the shorter time scales involved and because there is no ideological justification for such watertight castes there: “everyone [was] Catholic.” It does not take long for a population to homogenize: in the United States, the “current rate of [racial] intermarriage is now 10 percent (more if you count unmarried couples) per generation. Within 300 years, that will eliminate difference.” For there to be so much difference between Indian castes indicates how successfully intermarriage between jatis was prevented for thousands of years. As geneticist David Reich writes, there were likely many “Romeos and Juliets over thousands of years of Indian history whose loves across ethnic lines have been quashed by caste.”

Where did Indians Come From, Part 4: How Unique is Indian Society?

The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent is truly amazing.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

On Why Caste Emerged in India

While the processes by which caste came about are now fairly well understood, the question still remains as to why such an airtight system emerged in India, and evolved in a way with local thinking so as to acquire ideological backing. It is fairly well-established that the system hardened particularly during the Gupta (320-550 CE) period, but the Gupta period was not necessarily the cause of the hardening of caste throughout all of India (it hardly expanded beyond the Ganges valley). Rather, social phenomenon that became increasingly common in the period were reflected by the Gupta Empire’s philosophy and social structure. Many phenomenon impacted India around this time: Buddhism began to decline, and trade with Rome and China dried up with the fall of the Western Roman and Han empires. This may have led to a greater ruralization in India as agriculture and self-sufficiency grew in importance relative to trade.

But according to Razib Khan, the biggest factor in the changes India experienced during this period was that classical India’s expansion boom ran its course and the frontier between cultivable land that could be brought under the purview of Indic civilization, and hilly and forested areas became clearly defined. Although India was known for its large population even in ancient times, it, like many regions in antiquity, was still relatively “empty, and did not become “filled up” until well into the first millennium CE.

The following is a lightly-edited exchange between us on this topic:

Razib Khan: I suspect that the [reason] endogamy [between castes] became noted [during the Gupta era] is [because] the boundary between Sanskritized and non-Sanskritized population [the adivasis (tribals or “scheduled tribes”)] stabilized due to ecological considerations. The social system of the Indian lowlands was not applicable to the uplands, so when all the “virgin territory” was assimilated into the cultural complex, it ran up against ecological limits (people in the hills were not good candidates for the stratified Hindu system).
Akhilesh Pillalamarri: Are you suggesting that because the adivasis were not assimilated into the system, the pace of Sanskritization slowed, and the upper-caste people in the agricultural caste societies began to notice that some of the lower orders among them looked like and exhibited cultural similarities to the adivasis, and thus ought not be intermarried with?
Razib Khan: Yes. Though I think the instinct toward separation is older…probably an old feature that goes back to the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC)…The groups were culturally very different and so intermarriage was mitigated.
Akhilesh Pillalamarri: If it goes back to the IVC, your assertion would be (to simplify a bit) that jati was IVC or proto-Dravidian, and the Aryan varna system eventually got layered onto that? (See Part 3 of this series for further clarification on jati and varna.)
Razib Khan: Yes. To be clear, I’m not sure. But the caste differences in south are not just Brahmin versus non-Brahmin. And other Indo-European groups don’t have jati. [Iran had a three-way conventional Indo-European caste system similar to the Aryan varna system.] So it’s plausible [jati caste] was an IVC innovation….Perhaps if I had to guess, the IVC is a West Asian culture pushing into subtropics. This shock/adaptation might have resulted in the segmented system you see in India. Speculation.

It should be noted that the sharp distinction between settled, agricultural peoples, and their tribal or nomadic neighbors is a common theme in human history. Generally, people who sow and plow the land develop a sense of refinement and civilization in opposition to their neighbors. One of the world’s oldest stories is the Sumerian tale that debates the merits of growing grain versus herding sheep. In Chinese and Persian histories, there is tension between settled populations and nomadic neighbors. In India, this sentiment went in the direction of associating the produce of the earth (vegetarianism) with not only civilization but ritual purity.

Where did Indians Come From, Part 4: How Unique is Indian Society?

The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent is truly amazing.

thediplomat.com

 

[prasad1]

I do not agree with this conclusion, it sounds like a wish.

Conclusion

Despite the persistence of caste, it is clearly on its way out gradually. Modernity, global capitalism, and the laws that come with being a liberal democracy have opened the doors to intercaste and interracial marriages in countries throughout the world, including India. Even through inter-caste marriages are still rare, they are growing, and this growth is enough to lead to the eradication of differences between castes over the next few hundreds of years. Intermarriage and the “confusion of castes” (to use traditionalist terminology) will make caste meaningless as a biological unit in the future.

The true diversity and multiplicity of origins of India’s people was not appreciated fully until recently, and the revolution brought on by genetics, a method derived from objective science, not ideology or bias, though there will likely be controversy over the origin of the Aryans for a long time, owing to the investment the Hindu-right has in the notion that modern Hindu Indians are completely indigenous to the subcontinent (justifying the other-ing of non-Hindus). After all, historical records, literature, and archeology created in India only record certain things such as war, pottery, and poetry that occurred in India, so could be used to support the idea that there was no migration into India after its initial settling. But the science proves otherwise.

While it is important to remember that caste is not the end-all of Indian history and society, as India’s historical civilization developed, kingdoms rose and fell, and religion and trade flourished, brimming beneath the surface was an enormous churn of various peoples mixing in different proportions. The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent, home to a quarter of the world’s population, whose people descended from ancient Indians, Middle Easterners, Central Asians, and Southeast Asians, is truly amazing. Even if the system that resulted from this mix led to much personal suffering and misery, it also created a civilization that was open to difference, heterogeneity, interesting ecological management techniques (as different castes utilized only certain resources in certain manners), and the preservation of unique customs. India would not be what it is today without its previous history of integration, rather than total assimilation, of new peoples into into its society.

Where did Indians Come From, Part 4: How Unique is Indian Society?

The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent is truly amazing.

thediplomat.com

 

[Mohan Parasuram]

The process by which these castes are grouped together in a hierarchy and converge linguistically and religiously is known as Sanskritization because Sanskritic language culture is associated with the elites: it does not necessarily mean the adoption of Sanskrit by a population; many groups speaking a variety of languages from divergent linguistic families have “Sanskritized,” or become refined, perfected.

Sanskritization is a process of social change and cultural assimilation that was particularly prevalent as a form of acculturation in ancient and medieval India whereby groups, particularly new or lower castes in a society emulate the rituals and practices of upper castes, or whereby local elites transform their social structures so as to emulate the classical varna and jati system that was first established in northern India. Sanskritization has been described as similar to the social phenomenon known in the West as passing, in which individuals try to pass off as socially higher than they may be. While Sanskritization of unassimilated tribes and groups occurred mostly in ancient India, the process is still continuing in parts of Nepal and Northeast India that recently came under Hindu influence.

The relatively recent Sanskritization of Manipur, now a state in northeast India bordering Myanmar is an illuminating example of Sanskritization. In the early 18th century, the king of this formerly tribal entity, linguistically and ethnically more similar to the Burmese than to Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Indians, invited preachers from the Vaishnava sect of Hinduism from nearby Bengal to his kingdom. This “brought about a unification of Manipuri social life with the mainstream Hindu society based on caste distinction. The system of…worship of the Vedic deities and Aryan religion rituals entered Manipuri social life as the people embraced Vaishnavism in the leadership of the king.” It is evident that the process of Sanskritization was usually elite-driven:

​

Indian culture, as well as some Indian DNA has also entered Southeast Asia as a result of similar, elite-driven processes, as the arrival of traders and Brahmins in places like Cambodia and Indonesia led to the adoption of some aspects of Indian cultures by nobles and chiefs in those areas, though not the formal establishment of a caste system.

Where did Indians Come From, Part 4: How Unique is Indian Society?

The human diversity of the Indian subcontinent is truly amazing.

thediplomat.com

It is not convincing that migrants developed such a great civilisation. Indians were the masters in mathametics astronomy medicines architects and in many other fields. They were great seafarers. Ship building industry flourished and many other areas indians were the masters. The great epics of India and their culture show indians were not only masters it was a great civilisation which had its influence all over the globe.
J
Take submerged kumarikandom or the gypsies who migrated from India.
It is a matter of migration from India not otherwise

 

[prasad1]

It is not convincing that migrants developed such a great civilisation. Indians were the masters in mathametics astronomy medicines architects and in many other fields. They were great seafarers. Ship building industry flourished and many other areas indians were the masters. The great epics of India and their culture show indians were not only masters it was a great civilisation which had its influence all over the globe.
J
Take submerged kumarikandom or the gypsies who migrated from India.
It is a matter of migration from India not otherwise

I suppose you have proof that these ancient brilliant inhabitants would have let some artifacts that can be carbon dated?

It is your faith then I have no argument with it as faith is beyond reason.