Genetic Research Confirms Aryan Invasion Theory and Ancient Roots of Caste System

[Guest guest]

Below are two articles about the recent research in genetics that has

brought closer to fact the "Aryan Invasion theory" and the roots of the Caste

System to that Aryan Invasion. In addition to the two articles below, please see

below the link to the PDF version of the original research paper:

 

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER:

Genetic Evidence on the Origins of Indian Caste Populations

http://www.genome.org/cgi/reprint/11/6/994.pdf

 

More work on this research should conclusively settle the political debate

on whether "Aryans" were "Indic" people or "foreign invaders".

 

 

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Genetic Study Confirm Origin of Hindu Caste System

PRAVIDHIK JAGAT, NEPAL

http://www.pravidhik.com/news/nw/n0001.htm

 

Latest genetic research supports the anthropological and historical theory

that the Hindu caste system and the link between the Europeans invasion from

west. Those born into higher castes in India may be more related to Europeans,

while lower castes may be more similar to Asians, the research finds.

 

The original Hindu caste system is said to have started when Indo-European

nomadic groups called Aryans invaded India about 5000 years ago. They set

themselves as priests and then divided the society they encountered into a

four-part caste system -- Brahmans (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers

and warriors), Vaisyas (merchants and traders) and Sudras (workers and peasants)

who were born to serve the other three. There also are castes within castes; in

all, there are more than 1,000.

 

Lowest in the social order are the Harijans or Untouchables. They did all

the dirty work.

 

Researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and India studied

the linkage between the Europeans and high caste in India by DNA. "We've been

working in India, asking questions about the origins of the caste system and

tribal populations," says Dr. Michael Bamshad, an assistant professor at the

University of Utah's Eccles Institute of Human Genetics in Salt Lake City. "We

were also interested in the effects of social forces on biological variations."

 

Bamshad and his colleagues conducted their research by drawing blood from

eight different populations in the lower, middle and upper castes. They compared

five different types of genetic data, Bamshad says. "Two of those types are

inherited only from your mother -- called mitochondrial data -- and two of those

types are from the Y chromosome, so they come only from the father."

 

The researchers compared the data to about "750 Africans, Asians and

Europeans and then compared the affinities of the castes of different ranks with

those continental groups," Bamshad says.

 

The genetic data from the mother shows "some evidence of European

markers," Bamshad reports. The higher the caste, the "higher the frequency of

those European markers," he says.

But genes passed on from the father show a more striking pattern. "When we

looked at father markers, we see that the castes are more similar to Europeans

than Asians, again with the upper classes being closer to Europeans than the

lower classes," Bamshad says.

 

Though discrimination against the ancient caste system was declared

illegal by bothe Nepalese and Indian government, it still continues as part of

day to day life in both countries.

 

The findings, which appear in the May issue of Genome Research, support

the historical data showing that India was in part populated by people from

Turkey, the Middle East, the Caucasus or Eastern Europe, Bamshad says.

 

"And it also suggests that those who migrated from Europe often left their

descendents in the higher castes rather than the lower castes," Bamshad says.

"The evidence from the Y chromosomes shows that it was the men who married into

the upper castes, and it appears that more men than women moved into India, and

that certainly is consistent with the concept of a marauding army."

 

Bamshad's research falls under the rubric of molecular anthropology, says

Peter Underhill, senior research scientist in genetics at Stanford University.

"The main thrust of this research project is to better understand the Indian

population, where it came from, how it developed."

 

"This research, which attempts to correlate genetics with the historical

record, provides good genetic evidence, and such correlations are reassuring,"

Underhill says. "What's particularly nice about this paper is that it doesn't

emphasize one slice of the genome. It weaves in genetics from both men and

women."

 

While Bamshad's research has no direct relevance, "it would be of some

interest to medical genetic studies. It's another piece of the puzzle that might

help scientists understand certain traits within the Indian population,"

Underhill says.

 

 

 

 

 

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Indian Caste Origins: Genomic Insights and Future Outlook

Partha P. Majumder

Anthropology and Human Genetics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta

700035, India

http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/11/6/931

The main feature of Indian society, seen at its strongest in the rural areas, is

caste. A caste is a collection of people who share similar cultural and

religious values and practices. Members within a caste generally marry among

themselves; intercaste marriages are a cultural taboo. These social regulations

governing the institution of marriage have resulted in a substructuring of the

Indian gene pool. There are also elaborate social regulations of avoidance of

marriages within castes, and thus there is genomic substructuring even within a

caste.

 

The origins of the castes in India remain an enigma. Many castes are known to

have tribal origins, as evidenced from various totemic features that manifest

themselves in these caste groups (Kosambi 1964). The caste system in northern

India may have developed as a class structure from within tribes: As agriculture

spread from the Indus River valley to the Gangetic basin, knowledge and

ownership of the means of food production may have created hierarchical

divisions within tribal societies (Kosambi 1964). Karve (1961) has also argued

that "something very like castes were in India" even before Aryan speakers

entered India.

 

The Aryan world comprised three classes (varnas): priests, nobles, and

commoners. Aryans as the conquering people possibly placed their three classes

on the indigenous Indian society. The varna organization is hierarchical.

Initially, the system had names for two ranks, Brahma (Brahmin) and Kshatra

(Kshatriya), Brahmin being of a socially higher rank than Kshatriya. The third

rank was made up of Vis, that is, all the subjects. To this society, a fourth

rank was added: Shudra, who had no rights to Aryan ritual. In southern India,

the menial workers, the so-called "untouchables", were placed in a new varna,

Panchama (meaning fifth). It is conceivable that the Aryan speakers had greater

contact, including genetic admixture, with the Brahmins, who were professionally

the torchbearers and promoters of Aryan rituals. The Aryan contact should have

been progressively less as one descended the varna ladder. The genetic

expectation, therefore, is that the proportions of those genes (or genomic

features, such as haplotypes or haplogroups) that "characterized" the Aryan

speakers should progressively decline from the highest varna to the lowest and a

reverse trend should be observed with respect to those genes that

"characterized" the indigenous Indians.

 

Although some previous studies have sought to test this expectation, the

observed trends were equivocal. The primary reason was the lack of data on a

large uniform set of markers from populations of India and central/west Asia

(the region from which the Aryans speakers who entered India originated). The

study by Bamshad et al. (2001), who have also sought to test the above

expectation, is clearly a landmark. Using a very large battery of genomic

markers and DNA sequences, spanning autosomal, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosomal

genomic regions, they have shown that the observed trend of genetic admixture

estimated from castes belonging to different varnas is congruent with

expectations. This trend was observed in each of the three data subsets. The

only exception was in respect of mtDNA restriction site haplotypes, which was

also noted in a recent study conducted by us (Roychoudhury et al. 2000).

However, after combining these haplotype data with DNA sequence data, Bamshad

and colleagues were able to capture the expected trend. Thus, this study not

only provides a wonderful genomic view of the castes and of their origins, but

also underscores the need for careful statistical analysis of genomic data for

drawing appropriate inferences.

 

The use of "upper", "middle", and "lower" to designate caste hierarchy is much

more recent than the use of varna. Whereas varnas are traditionally defined,

different anthropologists have used different definitions of upper, middle, and

lower castes, in terms of the castes that they included in each of these

clusters. Sometimes these differences in definitions have stemmed from

socio-cultural similarities or differences as noted or perceived by different

anthropologists, and sometimes ranked caste-cluster compositions were altered

for convenience, such as pooling to adjust for small sample sizes. As noted

earlier, in studies such as Bamshad et al.'s, the most appropriate

classification is by varna. As the reader will note, the authors have analyzed

their data using different compositions of hierarchical caste-clusters and have

obtained homologous results. However, it needs to be emphasized that traditional

varna system is the only unequivocally accepted hierarchical system. In studies

pertaining to the origins of castes, one is liable to draw incorrect inferences

by including castes belonging to different varnas in the same ranked cluster.

 

Bamshad et al. have chosen to study caste populations drawn from a restricted

geographical region of India. They have rightly emphasized the need to replicate

their findings. This is absolutely essential because, as Karve (1961) has noted,

"it is not generally realized that the caste society in a sense was a very

elastic society." Indeed, a caste bearing the same name may have very different

origins in different geographical regions. There are examples in which a tribe

dispersed over a large geographical region, took up different occupations in

different sub-regions, and "fitted" itself into the caste hierarchy on different

rungs. Karve's work has also indicated that each of the different Brahmin castes

(Chitpavan, Sarasvat, etc.) in Maharashtra probably has a different origin.

Thus, the origin of caste populations may not be uniform over the entire India

geographical space, and it is crucial to undertake studies to replicate Bamshad

et al.'s findings. Finally, I would also like to suggest that in future studies

bearing on the origins of the Indian castes, it would be a good idea to include

tribal populations inhabiting the same region along with the caste populations.

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES

 

E-MAIL ppm; FAX 91-33-577 3049.

 

 

Article and publication are at www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.192401.

 

REFERENCES

 

 

a.. Bamshad, M., Kivisild, T., Watkins, W.S., Dixon, M.E., Ricker, C.E., Rao,

B.B., Naidu, J.M., Prasad, B.V.R., Reddy, P.G., Rasanayagam, A. 2001. Genome

Res. 11: 994-1004[Abstract/Free Full Text].

b.. Karve, I. 1961. Hindu Society - An Interpretation. Deshmukh Prakashan,

Poona.

c.. Kosambi, D.D. 1964. The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in

Historical Outline, 1991 Reprint. Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.

d.. Roychoudhury, S., Roy, S., Dey, B., Chakraborty, M., Roy, M., Roy, B.,

Ramesh, A., Prabhakaran, N., Usha Rani, M.V., Vishwanathan, H. 2000. Curr. Sci.

79: 1182-1192.

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Whatever may be the merits of Bamshad study in terms of genetic

science,which can be left to the geneticists, the newspaper quoted

and Khalid Azam have made needless melodrama out of catch phrases

like "EuropeansIndo-europeans" and so on. Indo-european is a

linguistic term and there was no historical group/tribe

called "Indo-european" which entered India at any point.

After "invading", they set themselves as priests is beyond the

bounds of credibility. As if the "natives" were merely waiting for

these wannabe priests to divide them into castes.