The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v1.c8.52

v1.c8.52

The language of the Veda is essentially akin to Iranian as seen in the Avesta, and more remotely to the other tongues which make up the Indo-European family. From this fact, and from the picture of strife against peoples of dark colour in the Rigveda,³ has been deduced the theory that the Vedic Indians formed a body of invading tribes which broke into India from the north-west and carried with them a distinctive culture and religion, which they developed in a special manner under the influence of the new climatic conditions in which they found themselves in Northern India, and of intermixture of blood through marriage with the aboriginal population. Of the latter fact there are probably clear traces already in the language of the Rigveda, which contains in the cerebral letters a series in the main unknown to other cognate languages and most plausibly⁴ to be ascribed to the deterioration of sounds in the mouths of generations of mixed blood. Moreover, all analogy is distinctly in favour of an early process of admixture. Complete destruction by invaders of pre-existing peoples is a comparatively rare phenomenon and connotes a bloodthirsty spirit among the invaders which is not suggested by anything in the Rigveda.