And so a gap is definitely apparent: there is a lack of a scientific history of the term “Aryan” that would illuminate the entire breadth of meaning … - Maria Schetelich

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And so a gap is definitely apparent: there is a lack of a scientific history of the term “Aryan” that would illuminate the entire breadth of meaning that the term has been given since its inception, and it is the classical Indologists familiar with the field of research who are in demand here.

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About Maria Schetelich

Maria Schetelich (born in 1938) is a German Indologist.

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Additional quotes by Maria Schetelich

The poet in this hymn supplies Indra to give support to those who drive away the evil and spread the light throughout the World (i.e. to the Aryan.) This spreading of light is a frequent motif in Rgvedic hymns ... Here, too, light is the antithesis to darkness. Soma, after all, is often called ‘shining golden, white, bright, goldencoloured {suklavarna) or ‘bringer of light’... (By the way, only at this place dasyu and krsna tvac really occur together in one sentence).

This spreading of light is a frequent motif in Rgvedic hymns. The motif is worked out by the poets on two different levels, the human, and the super-human. On the human level it is the succour Indra lends to his adorants (the drya or dryavarm) in their combats against the non-vedic dasa-or dasyu tribes. On the super- human level, Indra’s (and the Aryan’s adversaries are evil-doing, demonical beings like Susna, Pipru, Vrtra, Vala, Sambara or the above-mentioned Arsasana. They also are called dasa or dasyu, their symbol is darkness, night, the depth, the lowest region of the world.

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One does more justice to the way of thinking of the poets of the Rgveda and the nature of this text if one places the term krsnä tvac in RV 1.130.8 in the context of the ideas of the "skin" or the "black skin" that are common elsewhere and thus assigns it to the vocabulary of Rgvedic mythology, especially since the equation of the Dasyu and Dasa with the non-Aryan population of northwest India can be doubted with good reason.

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