-Caveat Lector- > I believe the term comes from the now largely discredited theory that > us white folk originated in the Aryas mountains in Asia Minor. A > similar theory regarding the Caucus Mountains is where you get the > term 'Caucasian'. from Encarta Encyclopedia: <<About the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC the Indo-Iranians migrated eastward, away from the other Indo-European peoples, and settled in Iran. By about 1000 BC, the two language branches, Indo-Aryan (also called Indic) and Iranian, had probably separated, with Iranian being spoken around Iran and Afghanistan and Indo-Aryan developing in northwestern India (see Indo-Iranian Languages). The Indo-Aryan speakers must have encountered Dravidian speakers in northern India; the original Dravidians were either overrun or forced to move southward on the peninsula, where they are found today. The history of the Indo-Aryan language branch is often divided into three main stages: (1) Old Indo-Aryan, comprising Vedic and classical Sanskrit (see Sanskrit Language); (2) Middle Indo-Aryan (from about the 3rd century BC), which embraces the vernacular dialects of Sanskrit called Prakrits, including Pali; and (3) New, or Modern, Indo-Aryan (from about the 10th century AD), which comprises the modern languages of the northern and central portions of the Indian subcontinent. Vedic Sanskrit, the language used in the Vedas, the sacred Hindu scriptures, is the earliest form of Sanskrit, dating from about 1500 BC to about 200 BC. A later variety of the language, classical Sanskrit (from about 500 BC), was a language of literary and technical works. Even today, it is still widely studied in India and functions as a sacred and learned language. The Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrits existed in many regional varieties, which eventually developed literatures of their own. Pali, the language of the Buddhist canonical writings, is the oldest literary Prakrit. It remains in liturgical use in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), and Thailand. The Prakrits continued in everyday use until about the 12th century AD, but even by about the 10th century, the Modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars had begun to develop. Today, about 750 million people in India alone speak one of the Indo-Aryan languages, as do more than 100 million in Bangladesh. The number of languages is difficult to specify. Roughly 35 are of some significance, particularly Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Bihâri, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Tamil, and Telugu, each of which has at least 10 million speakers. Despite their separate names, Hindi and Urdu are actually slightly different dialects of the same language. The main differences lie in their vocabulary sources, scripts, and religious traditions. Hindi vocabulary derives mainly from Sanskrit, while Urdu contains many words of Persian and Arabic origin; Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, and Urdu in a Persian Arabic script. Hindi is spoken mainly by Hindus; Urdu is used predominantly by Muslims-in India as well as throughout Pakistan. Two major varieties of Hindi are spoken; together they have more than 400 million speakers in India alone. Western Hindi, which originated in the area around Delhi, includes literary Hindi and Urdu. Eastern Hindi is spoken mainly in central Uttar Pradesh and eastern Madhya Pradesh; its most important literary works are in the Awadhi dialect. (Hindustani is an older term, used less and less frequently since partition in 1947. It referred to the mixed Western Hindi-Urdu language that developed in the camps and marketplaces around Delhi, was spread throughout India from the 16th to 18th century, and functioned as a lingua franca among the different language groups.) Bengali is spoken in West Bengal and by almost the entire population of Bangladesh. Like Hindi, it is descended from Sanskrit. It is the language of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature (1913), and has the most extensive literature of any modern Indian language. Punjabi (Panjabi), spoken in the Punjab, a region covering parts of northeastern India and western Pakistan, was the language of the gurus, the founders of the Sikh religion. The sacred teachings of Sikhism are recorded in Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script, which was devised by a Sikh guru. In India, Punjabi is close to the Hindi language; to the west, in Pakistan, Punjabi dialects differ markedly. Bihâri is actually the name of a group of three related languages-Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Magahi-spoken mainly in northeastern India in Bihâr. Despite its large number of speakers, Bihâri is not a constitutionally recognized language of India. Even in Bihâr, Hindi is the language used for educational and official matters. Other significant Indo-Aryan languages include Sinhalese, the official language of Sri Lanka; and Romani, the language of the Roma (Gypsies), which originated in India and was spread throughout the world. The Sanskrit origin of Romani is apparent in its sounds and grammar. The origin of most scripts for the Indo-Aryan languages can ultimately be traced to Brahmi, which is of North Semitic derivation. Devanagari, a development of Brahmi, is used for Nepali, Marathi, and Kashmiri (by Hindus), as well as for Hindi, Sanskrit, and the Prakrits. Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, and Oriya all have individual writing systems derived from Devanagari. A Persian Arabic script is used for Urdu, Sindhi (also written in Devanagari), and Punjabi. "Indian Languages," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.>> It was used strictly as a linguistic term. It only acquired racial overtones from Blavatsky, from whom Hitler got his ideas. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Messenger - Talk while you surf! It's FREE. http://im.yahoo.com/ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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