Arya and Dasa were only horizontal divisions, denoting groups of people living in their separate territories in north-western India... [dasyus were o… - George Erdosy

The traditional view, that iron was brought into the subcontinent by invading 'Aryans' (Banerjee 1965), is wrong on two counts: there is no evidence of any knowledge of iron in the earliest Vedic texts (Pleiner 1971), where ayas stands either for copper or for metals in general, and the idea that the aryas of the Rigveda were invaders has become just as questionable. Wheeler's assertion that iron only spread to India with the eastward extension of Achaemenid rule (Wheeler 1962) is even more untenable in the face of radiocarbon dates from early iron-bearing levels.

Iron Age levels have yielded dates of 2970 + 105 bp (TF-570) 1255, 1240, 1221 cal. BC and 2820 + 100 bp (TF-573) 993 cal. BC from Hallur, and 2905 + 105 bp (TF-326) 1096 cal. BC and 3130 + 105 bp (TF-324) 1420 cal. BC from Eran. They are not only earlier than any date from the Ganga valley (which dates fall between 2700-2500 bp) but are also earlier than the dates from Pirak in the northwest, with the exception of an anomalous reading of 2970 + 140 (Ly-1643) 1255, 1240, 1221 cal. BC. Since the process of diffusion from the west should produce rather the opposite pattern, a strong case can be made for an indigenous origin of ion smelting, although it could do with further support given the complexity of this industrial process which by common consent renders multiple centers of innovation unlikely.

Erdosy testifies that “the principal concern” of scholars (like Witzel) studying South Asian linguistics is to find “evidence for the external origins - and likely arrival in the 2nd millennium BC - of Indo-Aryan languages”;