The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c16.8

v1.c16.8

What evidence have we of such a migration, and, if it took place, what was its date? In all probability the migration of peoples from the primitive habitat, which we have located in the areas which we now call Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia, did not take place at a very remote period. It is indeed probable that all the facts of this migration, so far as we know them, can be explained without postulating an earlier beginning for the migrations than 2500 b.c. It must be remembered, however, that these migrations were not into unpeopled areas, that before they reached the frontiers of India, or even Mesopotamia, the Wiros must have had many hard struggles with populations already existing, who regarded their passage as they would that of some great cloud of destroying locusts which devoured their substance and left them to perish by starvation, or to survive in the misery of captives to cruel conquerors. We must suppose that success could have been achieved only by wave after wave following at no long intervals: for if their successors delayed too long, the migrants of the first advancing wave were likely to be cut off or absorbed. In historical times, we know that many tribes thus passed into Asia from Europe, among them the Phrygians, the Mysians, and Bithynians. It has been plausibly argued that the Armenian stock was the first wave of the Phrygian advance, and evidence can be adduced which makes it probable that still earlier waves of conquering tribes advancing from west to east were represented by the remote ancestors of modern Persians and modern Hindus.