Aryan (redirected from Aryan Master race)

Aryan (âr`ēən), [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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Aryan

Prehistoric people who settled in Iran and northern India. From their language, also called Aryan, the Indo-European languages of South Asia are descended. In the 19th century there arose a notion, propagated by the count de Gobineau and later by his disciple Houston Stewart Chamberlain, of an “Aryan race”: people who spoke Indo-European, especially Germanic, languages and lived in northern Europe. The “Aryan race” was considered to be superior to all other peoples. Although this notion was repudiated by numerous scholars, including Franz Boas, the notion was seized on by Adolf Hitler and made the basis of the Nazi policy of exterminating Jews, Gypsies (Roma), and other “non-Aryans.” See also racism.

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Aryan, Arian

1. (in Nazi ideology) a Caucasian of non-Jewish descent, esp of the Nordic type

2. a member of any of the peoples supposedly descended from the Indo-Europeans, esp a speaker of an Iranian or Indic language in ancient times

3. of, relating to, or characteristic of an Aryan or Aryans

4. Archaic Indo-European