- published: 22 Aug 2015
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The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or subrace of the larger Caucasian race. Belief in the existence of an Aryan race is sometimes referred to as "Aryanism".
While originally meant simply as a neutral ethno-linguistic classification, it was later used for ideologically motivated racism in Nazi and neo-Nazi doctrine and hence also in other currents[clarification needed] such as occultism and white supremacism.
The term Aryan originates from the Sanskrit word ārya, in origin an ethnic self-designation, in Classical Sanskrit meaning "honourable, respectable, noble".
In the 18th century, the most ancient known Indo-European languages were those of the Indo-Iranians' ancestors. The word Aryan was therefore adopted to refer not only to the Indo-Iranian people, but also to native Indo-European speakers as a whole, including the Greeks, Latins, and Germans. It was soon recognised that Armenians, Balts, Celts, Albanians and Slavs also belonged to the same group. It was argued that all of these languages originated from a common root—now known as Proto-Indo-European—spoken by an ancient people. The ethnic group composed of the Proto-Indo-Europeans and their modern descendants was termed the "Aryans".
Aryan /ˈɛərjən/ is an English language loanword derived from the Sanskrit ārya ('Noble'). In present-day academia, the terms "Indo-Iranian" and "Indo-European" have, according to many, made most uses of the term 'Aryan' minimal, and 'Aryan' is now mostly limited to its appearance in the term "Indo-Aryan" to represent (speakers of) North, West and Central Indian languages.
Western notions of an "Aryan race" rose to prominence in late-19th and early-20th century racialist thought, an idea most notably embraced by Nazi ideology (see master race). The Nazis believed that the "Nordic peoples" (who were also referred to as the "Germanic peoples") represent an ideal and "pure race" that was the purest representation of the original racial stock of those who were then called the Proto-Aryans. The Nazis declared that the Nordics were the true Aryans because they claimed that they were more "pure" (less racially mixed with non-native Indo-European peoples) than other people of what were then called the Aryan peoples (now generally called the Indo-European peoples).