[Vision2020] On the origin of Aryan

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/wong/bot135/lect20a.htm




















A few quotes from website above:

"*Amanita muscaria* or the Fly Agaric is not a well-known mushroom based on
its scientific name or common name. Yet, the picture on the left, of this
mushroom, will probably be familiar to the reader. In recent time, it is the
mushroom that has been adopted as the “prototype” mushroom in western
cultures. Its image can be seen in
Christmas<http://www.jamesarthur.net/mm_01.html>and greeting
cards <http://www.jamesarthur.net/img/cntnt/image007.gif>, children's
stories<http://www.bedtime-story.com/bedtime-story/alice-hudson-caterpillar.jpg>,
science fiction and fantasy illustrations, and in mushroom
models<http://www.themeparkinsider.com/art/parks/40.jpg>.
There has even been a great deal made of its connections with
Christmas<http://www.jamesarthur.net/mm_01.html>,
but probably too much has been made of this connection and different
interpretations of this theory is
available<http://www.washedashore.com/rants/xmas/>.
However, it is more than just a “pretty mushroom”.   It is a species that is
thought to have had tremendous impact on some of today’s cultures for at
least four thousand years and has been thought by some to be at the root of
the origin of some of today’s religions.  In 1968, Gordon Wasson put forth
the concept that this mushroom was the “plant” that was referred to as *Soma
*, in his now much cited “Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality”. Wasson
believed Soma was the mushroom that was utilized in religious ceremonies,
over 4000 years ago, before the beginning of our Christian era, by the
people who called themselves “*Aryans*”. "
----------
"The Aryans were a warrior and grain-growing people. They had a tribal
religion with a hereditary priesthood, with a full compliment of gods,
including Soma. Their homeland was somewhere in Central Asia. Approximately
4000 years ago, they split into three distinct groups. Two of these were the
Indic and Iranian. The Indics settled into what is now Afghanistan and the
Valley of the Indus. The other group settled in what is now Iran and became
the Iranian People. Both groups, orally, passed on their religious
knowledge, which was later written down and has been preserved to the
present.  Specifically, these religious works are the Rig Veda and the *
Avesta*, of the Indian Hindus and Iranian *Zorasters*, respectively. In both
religions there is reference to a plant, which is believed to have
hallucinogenic properties and was used in religious ceremonies. The Plant
was referred to as Soma in the Rig Veda and *Haoma* in the Avesta."
----------------
Perhaps Nick Gier will correct or expand on these issues, as I know very
well that Gier has explored this subject in depth, and has definite views on
the truth or falsehood of the thesis of "Soma: Divine Mushroom of
Immortality" by R. Gordon Wasson.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 3/20/10, Kenneth Marcy <kmmos1 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Recently I acquired a copy of the book _The Horse, the Wheel, and
> Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the
> Modern World,_ by David W. Anthony. The book's dust jacket has an
> author photo showing a smiling, balding, bearded, bespectacled man
> who the caption notes is a professor of anthropology at Hartwick
> College, and who has conducted extensive archaeological fieldwork i?n
> Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan.
>
> My interest in the volume was sparked by my notice of its early
> mention of Sir William Jones, a British judge in India, who wrote in
> 1786, the now-famous sentence: "The Sanskrit language, whatever be
> its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure: more perfect than the
> Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than
> either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the
> roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have
> been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could
> examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from
> some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists."
>
> Anthony goes on to ask: "If Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were relatives,
> descended from the same parent language, what was that language?
> Where had it been spoken? And by whom?"
>
> "Proto-Indo-European, the linguistic problem, became "the Proto-Indo-
> Europeans," a biological population with its own mentality and
> personality: "a slim, tall, light-complexioned, blonde race, superior
> to all other peoples, calm and firm in character, constantly
> striving, intellectually brilliant, with an almost ideal attitude
> towards the world and life in general." The name Aryan began to be
> applied to them, because the authors of the oldest religious texts in
> Sanskrit and Persian, the _Rig Veda_ and _Avesta,_ called themselves
> Aryans. These Aryans lived in Iran and eastward into Afghanistan-
> Pakistan-India. The term _Aryan_ should be confined only to this
> Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. But the Vedas were a
> newly-discovered source of mystical fascination in the nineteenth
> century, and in Victorian parlors the name Aryan soon spread beyond
> its proper linguistic and geographic confines. Madison Grant's _The
> Passing of the Great Race_ (1916), a best-seller in the U.S., was a
> virulent warning against the thinning of superior American "Aryan"
> blood, (by which he meant the British-Scots-Irish-German settlers of
> the original thirteen colonies) through interbreeding with
> immigrant "inferior races," which for him included Poles, Czechs, and
> Italians as well as Jews -- all of whom spoke Indo-European languages
> (Yiddish is a Germanic language in its basic grammar and morphology).
>
> "The gap through which the word Aryan escaped from Iran and the Indian
> subcontinent was provided by the _Rig Veda_ itself: some scholars
> found passages in the _Rig Veda_ that seemed to describe the Vedic
> Aryans as invaders who had conquered their way into the Punjab. But
> from where? A feverish search for the "Aryan homeland" began. Sir
> William Jones placed it in Iran. The Himalayan Mountains were a
> popular choice in the early nineteenth century, but other locations
> soon became the subject of animated debates. Amateurs and experts
> alike joined the search, many hoping to prove that their own nation
> had given birth to the Aryans. In the second decade of the twentieth
> century the German scholar Gustav Kossinna attempted to demonstrate
> on archaeological grounds that the Aryan homeland lay in northern
> Europe -- in fact, in Germany. Kossinna illustrated the prehistoric
> migrations of the "Indo-Germanic" Aryans with neat black arrows that
> swept east, west, and south from his presumed Aryan homeland. Armies
> followed the pen of the prehistorian less than thirty years later.
>
> "The problem of Indo-European origins was politicized almost from the
> beginning. It became enmeshed in nationalist and chauvinist causes,
> nurtured by the murderous fantasy of Aryan racial superiority, and
> was actually pursued in archaeological excavations by the Nazi SS.
> Today the Indo-European past continues to be manipulated by causes
> and cults. In the books of the Goddess movement (Marija Gimbutas's
> _Civilization of the Goddess,_ Riane Eisler's _The Chalice and the
> Blade_) the ancient "Indo-Europeans" are cast in archaeological
> dramas not as blonde heroes but as patriarchal, warlike invaders who
> destroyed a utopian prehistoric world of feminine peace and beauty.
> In Russia some modern nationalist political groups and neo-Pagan
> movements claim a direct linkage between themselves, as Slavs, and
> the ancient "Aryans." In the United States white supremacist groups
> refer to themselves as Aryans. There actually were Aryans in
> history -- the composers of the _Rig Veda_ and the _Avesta_ -- but
> they were Bronze Age tribal people who lived in Iran, Afghanistan,
> and the northern Indian subcontinent. It is highly doubtful that they
> were blonde or blue-eyed, and they had no connection with the
> competing racial fantasies of modern bigots."
>
> "The mistakes that led an obscure linguistic mystery to erupt into
> racial genocide were distressingly simple and therefore can be
> avoided by anyone who cares to avoid them. They were the equation of
> race with language, and the assignment of superiority to some
> language-and-race groups. Prominent linguists have always pleaded
> against both these ideas. While Martin Heidegger argued that some
> languages -- German and Greek -- were unique vessels for a superior
> kind of thought, the linguistic anthropologist Franz Boas protested
> that no language could be said to be superior to any other on the
> basis of objective criteria. As early as 1872 the great linguist Max
> Müller observed that the notion of an Aryan skull was not just
> unscientific but anti-scientific; languages are not white-skinned or
> long-headed. But then how can the Sanskrit language be connected with
> a skull type? And how did the Aryans themselves define "Aryan"?
> According to their own texts, they conceived of "Aryan-ness" as a
> religious-linguistic category. Some Sanskrit-speaking chiefs, and
> even poets in the _Rig Veda,_ had names such as Balbūtha and Brbu
> that were foreign to the Sanskrit language. These people were of
> non-Aryan origin and yet were leaders among the Aryans. So even the
> Aryans of the _Rig Veda_ were not genetically "pure" -- whatever that
> means. The _Rig Veda_ was a ritual canon, not a racial manifesto. If
> you sacrificed in the right way to the right gods, which required
> performing the great traditional prayers in the traditional language,
> you were an Aryan; otherwise you were not. The _Rig Veda_ made the
> ritual and linguistic barrier clear, but it did not require or even
> contemplate racial purity." [from pages 9-11] [references omitted]
>
>
> Ken
>
>
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