Editing Aryan race (section)

=== Earliest utilization of Aryan race ===
[[File:Meyers map ('Caucasian races').jpg|thumb|upright=1.0|A nineteenth-century edition of the [[Meyers Konversations-Lexikon]] shows the ''[[Caucasian race]]'' (in shades of grayish blue-green) as comprising ''Aryans'', ''[[Semitic race|Semites]]'', and ''[[Hamitic|Hamites]]''. ''Aryans'' are subdivided into ''European Aryans'' and ''Indo-Aryans'' (for those now called Indo-Iranians).<ref name="Lehner15">{{cite book|url=https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004292932/B9789004292932_005.xml|publisher=[[Brill Publishers]]|date=2015|isbn=978-9004292932|volume=4|title=Race and Racism in Modern East Asia|chapter=4 The 'Races' of East Asia in Nineteenth-Century European Encyclopedias|first=Georg|last=Lehner|doi=10.1163/9789004292932_005|pages=77–101}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.retrobibliothek.de/retrobib/seite.html?id=111177|website=The Retro Library|language=de|title=Meyers Konversationslexikon: Volume 11: Luzula – Nathanael|access-date=15 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210422170655/https://www.retrobibliothek.de/retrobib/seite.html?id=111177|archive-date=22 April 2021|url-status=live}}</ref>]]
[[Max Müller]] popularized the term Aryan in his writings on [[comparative linguistics]],<ref>{{cite web | title = Aryan | url = https://www.etymonline.com/word/Aryan | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230208041034/https://www.etymonline.com/word/Aryan | archive-date = 8 February 2023 | url-status = live | website = [[Online Etymology Dictionary|Etymonline]] | access-date = 10 May 2023}}</ref> and is often identified as the first writer to mention an Aryan race in English.{{sfn|Bryant|2001|p=33}} He began the racial interpretation of the [[Vedic]] passages based upon his editing of the ''Rigveda'' from 1849 to 1874.{{sfn|Bryant|2001|p=60}} He postulated a small Aryan clan living on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a proto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages, which later branched off in two directions: one moved towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one group invading north-western India and conquering the dark-skinned ''[[dasa]]s'' of [[Scythians|Scythian origin]] who lived there.{{sfn|Thapar|1996|pp=5–6}} The northern Aryans of Europe became energetic and combative, and they invented the idea of a nation, while the southern Aryans of Iran and India were passive and meditative and focussed on religion and philosophy.{{sfn|Thapar|1996|p=5}}

Though he occasionally used the term "Aryan race" afterward, Müller later objected to the mixing of the linguistic and racial categories,<ref name="redner19" /> and was "deeply saddened by the fact that these classifications later came to be expressed in racist terms".<ref>{{cite book|title=Mapping Channels between Ganges and Rhein: German-Indian Cross-Cultural Relations|isbn=9781847185877|date=11 July 2008|first1=Jorg|last1=Esleber|first2=Christina|last2=Kraenzle|first3=Sukanya|last3=Kulkarni|publisher=[[Cambridge Scholars Publishing]]|url=https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/9781847185877|page=62|quote=In later years, especially before his death, he was deeply saddened by the fact that these classifications later came to be expressed in racist terms}}</ref> In his 1888 lecture at [[Oxford]], he stated, "[the] science of Language and the science of Man cannot be kept too much asunder [...] it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar",<ref name="redner19">{{cite journal|journal=[[Thesis Eleven]]|publisher=[[SAGE Publications]]|volume=152|issue=1|doi=10.1177/0725513619850915|title=Dialectics of Classicism: The birth of Nazism from the spirit of Classicism|date=16 March 2019|first=Harry|last=Redner|page=22|s2cid=181387481 |url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0725513619850915}}</ref> and in his ''Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas'' (1888), he writes, "[the] ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes, and hair, is a great sinner as a linguist [...]".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-137-08450-7|publisher=[[Springer Publishing]]|editor=Jon R. Stone|year=2002|title=The Essential Max Müller On Language, Mythology, and Religion|isbn=978-1-137-08450-7|doi=10.1007/978-1-137-08450-7|page=18}}</ref>

European scholars of 19th century interpreted the Vedic passages as depicting battle between light-skinned [[Indo-Aryan migrations|Aryan migrants]] and dark-skinned indigenous tribes, but modern scholars reject this characterization of racial division as a misreading of the Sanskrit text,<ref name="west10" /> and indicate that the Rig Vedic opposition between ''ārya'' and ''dasyu'' is distinction between "disorder, chaos and dark side of human nature" contrasted with the concepts of "order, purity, goodness and light",<ref name="west10">{{cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania|first=Barbara A.|last=West|page=182|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pCiNqFj3MQsC&pg=PA182|isbn=9781438119137|year=2010|publisher=Infobase }}</ref> and "[[Black-and-white dualism#Religion and mythology|dark and light worlds]]".<ref>{{cite book|title=The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History|publisher=[[Routledge]]|date=2004|first1=Edwin |last1=Bryant|first2=Laurie|last2=Patton|isbn=978-1135791025|page=8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NDRRNGj17EMC}}</ref>{{sfn|Bryant|2001|pp=60–63}} In other contexts of the Vedic passages the dinstiction between ''ārya'' and ''dasyu'' refers to those who had adopted the [[Historical Vedic religion|Vedic religion]], speaking Vedic Sanskrit, and those who opposed it.{{sfn|Witzel|2008|p=21}}<ref>{{cite book|title=[[The History and Culture of the Indian People]]: The Vedic Age|volume=253|first1= Ramesh C.|last1=Majumdar|author-link=R. C. Majumdar|publisher=[[Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan]]|isbn=9788172764401|page=253}}</ref>

However, increasing number of Western writers of this era, especially among anthropologists and non-specialists influenced by Darwinist theories, contrasted ''Aryans'' as a "physical-genetic species" rather than an ethnolinguistic category.<ref>{{cite book|title=The occult roots of Nazism: the Ariosophists of Austria and Germany 1890–1935|first=Nicholas|last=Goodrick-Clarke|year=1985|publisher=Wellingborough Aquarian Press|author-link=Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke|url=https://ixtheo.de/Record/331828073|page=5|isbn=0850304024}}</ref>{{sfn|Arvindsson|2006|p=61}}

Encyclopedias and textbooks of historiography, ethnography, and anthropology from this era, such as [[Meyers Konversations-Lexikon]], [[Brockhaus Enzyklopädie]], [[Nordisk familjebok]], [[H. G. Wells]]'s ''[[A Short History of the World (H.G. Wells)|A Short History of the World]]'', [[John Clark Ridpath]]'s ''Great Races of Mankind'', and other works reinforced European racial constructions developed on now-pseudoscientific concepts such as [[Race (human categorization)#Early taxonomic models|racial taxonomy]], [[Social Darwinism]], and [[scientific racism]] to classify human races.<ref name="Lehner15" /><ref>{{cite journal | title = Becoming caucasian: Vicissitudes of whiteness in american politics and culture | journal = Global Studies in Culture and Power | date = 4 May 2010 | pages = 89–90 | doi = 10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962685 | url = https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962685 | vauthors = Mattew J | volume = 8 | issue = 1| s2cid = 145003887 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title = Blacks and Blackness in European Art of the Long Nineteenth Century | isbn = 9781138310315 | edition = 1 | date = 5 July 2017 | publisher = [[Routledge]] | url = https://www.routledge.com/Blacks-and-Blackness-in-European-Art-of-the-Long-Nineteenth-Century/Childs-Libby/p/book/9781138310315 | page = 21}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | title = Nordicism and Modernity | isbn = 978-3-030-61210-8 | date = 28 November 2020 | publisher = [[Palgrave Macmillan]] | chapter = Introduction: Nordicism, Myth and Modernity | doi = 10.1007/978-3-030-61210-8_1 | vauthors = Gregers F | pages = 1–13 | s2cid = 229648042 | chapter-url = https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-61210-8_1}}</ref>