THEORY OF ARYAN RACE AND INDIA 5 (> . Prominent among these identities was Aryan, used both for the language and the race, as current in the mid-nineteenth century.8 Aryan was derived form the Old Iranian an/a used in the Zoroastrian text, the Avesta, and was a cognate of the Sanskrit arya. Gobineau, who attempted to identify the races of Europe as Aryan and non-Aryan with an intrusion of the Semitic, as§ociated the Aryans with the sons of Noah but emphasised the superiority of jtf^ white race and was fearful about the bastardisation of this race;9 The study of craniology which became important at this time began to question the wider identity of the Aryan. It was discovered that the speakers of Indo-European languages were represented by diverse skull types. This was in part responsible for a new turn to the theory in the suggestion that the European Aryans were distinct from the Asian Aryans.10 The former were said to be indigenous to Europe while the latter had their homeland in Asia. If the European Aryans were indigenous to northern Europe then the Nordic blonde was the prototype Aryan.,Such theories liberated the origins of European civilisation from being embedded in Biblical history. They also had the approval of rationalist groups opposedto the Church, and supportive of Enlightenment thinking. The application of these ideas to Indian origins was strengthened by Max Mueller's work on Sanskrit and Vedic studies and in particular his editing of the Rigveda during the years from 1849 to 1874. He ascribed the importance ^of this study to his belief that the Kigveda was the most ancient literature of the world, providing evidence of the roots of Indo-Aryan and the key to Hinduism. Together with the Avesta it formed the earliest stratum of Indo-European. . Max Mueller maintained that there was an original Aryan homeland in central Asia. He postulated a small Aryan clan on a high elevation in central Asia, speaking a language which was not yet Sanskrit or Greek, a kind of projto-language ancestral to later Indo-European languages. Prom here and ovef the course of some centuries, it branched off in two directions; one came towards Europe and the other migrated to Iran, eventually splitting again with one segment invading north-western India.11 The common origin of ifie Aryans was for him unquestioned. .'^'Tfie northern Aryans who are said to have migrated to Europe are x^idribed by Max Mueller as active and combative and they developed the •i||a'of a nation, while the southern Aryans who migrated to Iran and to India were passive and meditative, concerned with religion and philosophy. Tihis description is still quoted for the inhabitants of India and has even come to be a cliche in the minds of many. The Aryans, according to Max N^ueller were fair-complexioned Indo-European speakers who conquered the dark-skinned dasas of India. The arya-varna and the 'dasa-varna of the Rigveda were understood as two conflicting groups differentiated particularly by skin colour, but also by language and religious practice, which doubtless underlined the racial