Indo-Aryan migration

Political debate

The debate over such an invasion, and the proposed influx of elements of Vedic religion from Central Asia is still politically charged and hotly debated in India. Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) organizations, especially, remain opposed to the concept, for political and religious reasons, while many Indian Marxists and a fraction of the Dalit Movement support the theory in opposition to the Hindu nationalists.. Outside India, the question does not have such political connotations and is discussed in the larger framework of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European expansion.

Linguistics

Linguists have several rules of thumb they use to gauge the place of origin of a family. One is that the area of highest linguistic diversity of a language family is usually fairly close to the area of its origin; thus, for example, while the modern nation with the highest number of speakers of Germanic languages is the United States, the highest diversity of longstanding Germanic languages is found in northern Europe. By this criterion, India seems to be an exceedingly unlikely candidate for the origin of the Indo-European languages — it has only one Indo-European subfamily, Indo-Aryan, not counting recent introductions of European languages — and eastern Europe appears much more promising; conversely, the highest diversity in Dravidian is found among its Northern branches. However, extinctions of unrecorded languages may affect this measure. Most linguists believe Indo-European to have originated somewhere around the Black Sea: a favorite candidate is the Kurgan hypothesis.

The early formation of political states also affects the distribution of languages. The Punjab was in historical times settled by Iranians, Greeks, Kushans (replacing Greeks and their language), and Hephthalites, yet Indo-Aryan languages dominate, probably due to the dominance of later Indian empires and states. Hence in regions where Persian and Indian empires dominated many languages died out. This process can be seen in the elimination of Saka and Tocharian languages through the influence of Persians, Buddhism (spreading Prakrit language), and Turks.