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I received a message in which the writer used the word Aryan in a way that puzzled me, because I had only thought of it in terms of the 4th. def. given by Atomica:
Ar·y·an (âr'ē-ən, ăr'-)
n.
1. Indo-Iranian. No longer in technical use.
2. A member of the people who spoke the parent language of the Indo-European languages. No longer in technical use.
3. A member of any people speaking an Indo-European language. No longer in technical use.
4. In Nazism and neo-Nazism, a non-Jewish Caucasian, especially one of Nordic type, supposed to be part of a master race.
[From Sanskrit ārya-, noble, Aryan.]
I may be the only one who was ignorant of what they had following the definitions, but I found it enlightening. Ar'y·an adj.
WORD HISTORY It is one of the ironies of history that Aryan, a word nowadays referring to the blond-haired, blue-eyed physical ideal of Nazi Germany, originally referred to a people who looked vastly different. Its history starts with the ancient Indo-Iranians, Indo-European peoples who inhabited parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Their tribal self-designation was a word reconstructed as *arya– or *ārya–. The first of these is the form found in Iranian, as ultimately in the name of Iran itself (from Middle Persian Ērān (šahr), “(Land) of the Iranians,” from the genitive plural of Ēr, “Iranian”). The variant *ārya– is found unchanged in Sanskrit, where it referred to the upper crust of ancient Indian society. These words became known to European scholars in the 18th century. The shifting of meaning that eventually led to the present-day sense started in the 1830s, when Friedrich Schlegel, a German scholar who was an important early Indo-Europeanist, 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 Swiss warrior Ariovistus who was written about by Julius Caesar. 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 something like “the honorable people.” (This theory has since been called into question.) Thus “Aryan” came to be synonymous with “Indo-European,” and in this sense entered the general scholarly consciousness of the day. Not much later, it was proposed that the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans had been in northern Europe. From this theory, it was but a small leap to think of the Aryans as having had a northern European physiotype. While these theories were playing themselves out, certain anti-Semitic scholars in Germany took to viewing the Jews in Germany as the main non-Aryan people because of their Semitic roots; a distinction thus arose in their minds between Jews and the “true Aryan” Germans, a distinction that later furnished unfortunate fodder for the racial theories of the Nazis.
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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Aryan [Sanskrit,=noble], term formerly used to designate the Indo-European race or language family or its Indo-Iranian subgroup. Originally a group of nomadic tribes, the Aryans were part of a great migratory movement that spread in successive waves from S Russia and Turkistan during the 2d millennium B.C. Throughout Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, literate urban centers fell to their warrior bands. Archaeological evidence corroborates the text of the Veda by placing the invasion of India by the Aryans at c. 1500 B.C. They colonized the Punjab region of NW India and absorbed much of the indigenous culture. The resulting Indo-Aryan period saw the flourishing of a pastoral-agricultural economy that utilized bronze objects and horse-drawn chariots. Before the discovery of the Indus valley sites in the 1920s, Hindu culture had been attributed solely to the Aryan invaders. The idealization of conquest pictured in the Vedic hymns was incorporated into Nazi racist literature, in which German descent was supposedly traced back to Aryan forebears.
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The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 1999, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/
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well, Nazi not only killed millions of people, they've killed a word too and cast a shadow on Vagner and Niecshe as Gitler's favorite composer and phylosopher
but as far as I remember we were though in school about the migration of Arians from India and that they've been ancestors of the most of European nations.
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they've killed a word too
Not to mention a beautiful and universal religious symbol. The swastika was a symbol representing many positive images to Native Americans, ancient Greeks, Western European peoples, Indians and Chinese until the Nazis desecrated it.
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The swastika was a symbol representing many positive images to Native Americans, ancient Greeks, Western European peoples, Indians and Chinese
Wow, I didn't know that, either. I wonder if it will still hold horror for people who see it say, two centuries from now.
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I won't post any links here but you could google swastika and find numerous sites right up front discussing the history of the symbol and its meaning to the many peoples who have used it. The Navajo still use it in jewelry designs but only in the orientation opposite to that used by the Nazis. Previous to WWII they had used it in both clockwise and counterclockwise versions.
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AFAIK, the "original" Arian swastika was a clockwise - something to do with the direction of movement of Sun in the sky
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Affectation of Aryan nations
TEd
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I must disagree TEd.
There is nothing like an Aryan nation. There never has been in history even. The Third Reich interpretation was one put out by a bunch of impostors and poseurs. AS such, there cannot be affectations. The Swastika as used by the Nazis was an affectation, yes, but then, they were clearly impostors who were neither Aryans nor did they have a cultural legacy of the Swasitka.
Both the words Aryan and Swastikam are from Sanskrit.
Arya (pronounced, not as Aaryaaa, but as R-YUH), is a respectful way of addressing a gentleman.
Swastikam (SWUH-STHEE-KUHM), drives from Su (SUE) which means a general feeling of well-being, prosperity and goodness and Asthi (US-THEE), which means 'let it be'. Kam is a suffix indicating an object or a noun. Swasthikam therefore means, 'let general prosperity, and well-being prevail'. It is therefore, a symbolic representation of such a blessing. In Hinduism and some of its offshoot religions like Jainism and Buddhism, the Swasthikam is a very auspicious symbol and is used everywhere in India to signify just that. To this day, before the commencement of anything, from exams to enterprise, the swasthikam is drawn on the ground or some other surface, with an erasable red coloured powder and a small prayer is made to invoke blessings and good luck.
Till the Nazi misinterpretation, this symbol evoked images and feelings of nothing but auspiciousness and prosperity in all the cultures that used it. Never in the history of this symbol, has it ever been used as a sign of superemacy or racial authority.
Though the origin of this word is Sanskrit and Indian thereof, the same symbol is seen in other cultures, like Faldage mentioned, the Navajo Indians, Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, etc. The Chinese call it Wan, and I have seen in the walls of a Chinese temple in Kuching.
DDespite the Sanskrit derivation of the word Swastika, the origin of the symbol itself is contentious. Is it Aryan or Pre-Aryan (Indus Valley Harappan)? The time period given for the Swasthikam is 3000-1500 B.C., which period involves the overlap of both groups in its latter half.
The Nazi version had the Swastika at a salnt or an angle, whereas the traditional Swasthikam is always flat; can be right or left handed though.
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I must disagree TEd.
It was one of TEd's, umm, puns.
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Incidentally, the Star of David also has a Hindu parallel. Its called the Shatkonam in Sanskrit (SHUT-KO-NNUM). The pictorial diagram of the two is the same. Shatkonam means a star pointing in six directions. It is again, a symbol of prosperity and is drawn with rice flour, by the hand in front of many houses in Southern India, to invoke good fortune and peace.
I am unaware of any common origin or connection; shall post if I find anything.
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