The volume deals with the history of the concept of Aryans in East and West, with the linguistic, textual and archaeological evidence in South Asia and beyond.
The terms Aryan and Non-Aryan, corresponding to Sanskrit arya and anarya, can readily be shown that among the literary traditions indigenous to South Asia have always evoked strong responses, both positive and negative, as they continue to do even today; but it can also be shown that while they designate a boundary that is in some sense an ethnic one in the Veda, in other literatures the distinction has a religious or moral character.
There have been reconsiderations and reinterpretations of the terms within and outside of the academy. There is on the one hand the established view of a migration of Aryans into South Asia; on the other hand there are new voices calling the whole endeavour fanciful, motivated by colonialism, Orientalism, nationalism, or something else. What is startling is that the criticism of the status quo comes from completely different directions.
• Preface (by Johannes BronkhorstMadhav Deshpande) vii Hans Heinrich Hock Out of India? The linguistic evidence 1
• Nicholas J. Allen Hinduism as Indo-European: Cultural comparativism and political sensitivities 19
• Johannes Bronkhorst Is there an inner conflict of tradition? 33
• Edwin F. Bryant Linguistic substrata and the indigenous Aryan debate 59
• Sarah L. Caldwell Whose goddess? Kali as cultural champion in Kerala 85
• Madhav M. Deshpande What to do with the Anaryas? Dharmic discourses of inclusion and exclusion 107
• LUIS Gomez Noble lineage and august demeanor: Religious and social meanings of Aryan virtue 129
• Hans Heinrich Hock Through a glass darkly: Modern ""racial"" interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric evidence on arya and dasa I dasyu in Vedic society 145
• Asko Parpola The iconography and cult of Kutticcattan 175
• Shereen F. Ratnagar Does archaeology hold the answers? 207
• Jim G. SchafferDiane A. Lichtenstein Migration, philology and South Asian archaeology 239
• Pashaura Singh Revisiting the Arya-Samaj movement 261 Thomas R. Trautmann Constructing the racial theory of Indian civilization 277
• Gernot L. Windfuhr A note on Aryaman's social and cosmic setting 295
• Michael Witzel Aryan and non-Aryan names in Vedic India. Data for the linguistic situation, c. 1900-500 BC. 337
• Participants and their actresses 405
