Ram Shankar Tripathi (15 October 1929 - 18 February 2019) was an Indian scholar of Buddhism, editor and author of many texts focusing on Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist Tantra.
Who were the progenitors [of Vedic culture], and wherefrom do they emerge in our historical view? Questions like these have been a bewildering source of controversy. . . . Some Indian scholars . . . strongly maintain that the Aryans were autochthons of the land" (Tripathi 1967, 26);