Aryan
Aryan is an English word derived from the Sanskrit ārya (meaning "noble" or "distinguished") used by the ancient Indo-Iranian tribes to refer to themselves. In Theosophical literature this term is used to designate the fifth Root-Race.
General definition
The Sanskrit word ārya is the self-designation used by the Vedic Indic people who migrated into the Indian subcontinent around 1500 BCE. This term has a cognate in the Iranian word arya, which is also a self-designation, connected to the source of the country-name "Iran," from a phrase meaning "Kingdom of the Aryans."[1]
After the misuse of this word in Nazism, present-day academia prefers the terms "Indo-Iranian" and "Indo-European" to "Aryan." The latter is now mostly limited to its appearance in the term "Indo-Aryan," to represent speakers of North, West and Central Indian languages.
Theosophical usage
During the 19th century it was proposed that the term Aryan was not only the Indo-Iranian tribal self-designation, but also the self-designation used by the ancestors of all Indo-Europeans (a theory no longer accepted.) H. P. Blavatsky protested about this interpretation at the time:
Ârya (Sk.) Lit., “the holy”; originally the title of Rishis, those who had mastered the “Âryasatyâni” (q.v.) and entered the Âryanimârga path to Nirvâna or Moksha, the great “four-fold” path. But now the name has become the epithet of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birth-right, have made Aryans of all Europeans.[2]
However, Blavatsky followed the usage of academics of her time and reluctantly denominated the fifth Root-Race as "Aryan."
Notes
- ↑ Ancient History Encyclopedia. Published on 06 April 2018 by Cristian Violatti at https://www.ancient.eu/Aryan
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (Krotona, CA: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 32.