Andite Expansion in the Orient

79:4.1The sec­ond And­ite pen­e­tra­tion of In­dia was the Aryan in­va­sion dur­ing a pe­riod of al­most five hun­dred years in the mid­dle of the third mil­len­nium be­fore Christ. This mi­gra­tion marked the ter­mi­nal ex­o­dus of the And­ites from their home­lands in Tur­kes­tan.

79:4.2The early Aryan cen­ters were scat­tered over the north­ern half of In­dia, no­tably in the north­west. These in­vaders never com­pleted the con­quest of the coun­try and sub­se­quently met their un­do­ing in this ne­glect since their lesser num­bers made them vul­ner­a­ble to ab­sorp­tion by the Dra­vid­i­ans of the south, who sub­se­quently over­ran the en­tire penin­sula ex­cept the Hi­malayan prov­inces.

79:4.3The Aryans made very lit­tle racial im­pres­sion on In­dia ex­cept in the north­ern prov­inces. In the Dec­can their in­flu­ence was cul­tural and re­li­gious more than racial. The greater per­sis­tence of the so-called Aryan blood in north­ern In­dia is not only due to their pres­ence in these re­gions in greater num­bers but also be­cause they were re­in­forced by later con­querors, traders, and mis­sion­ar­ies. Right on down to the first cen­tury be­fore Christ there was a con­tin­u­ous in­fil­tra­tion of Aryan blood into the Pun­jab, the last in­flux be­ing at­ten­dant upon the cam­paigns of the Hel­lenis­tic peo­ples.

79:4.4On the Gangetic plain Aryan and Dra­vid­ian even­tu­ally min­gled to pro­duce a high cul­ture, and this cen­ter was later re­in­forced by con­tri­bu­tions from the north­east, com­ing from China.

79:4.5In In­dia many types of so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions flour­ished from time to time, from the semidemo­cratic sys­tems of the Aryans to despotic and monar­chial forms of gov­ern­ment. But the most char­ac­ter­is­tic fea­ture of so­ci­ety was the per­sis­tence of the great so­cial castes that were in­sti­tuted by the Aryans in an ef­fort to per­pet­u­ate racial iden­tity. This elab­o­rate caste sys­tem has been pre­served on down to the pres­ent time.

79:4.6Of the four great castes, all but the first were es­tab­lished in the fu­tile ef­fort to pre­vent racial amal­ga­ma­tion of the Aryan con­querors with their in­fe­rior sub­jects. But the pre­mier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brah­mans of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ are the lin­eal cul­tural de­scen­dants of the priests of the sec­ond gar­den, al­beit their teach­ings dif­fer greatly from those of their il­lus­tri­ous pre­de­ces­sors.

79:4.7When the Aryans en­tered In­dia, they brought with them their con­cepts of De­ity as they had been pre­served in the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the re­li­gion of the sec­ond gar­den. But the Brah­man priests were never able to with­stand the pa­gan mo­men­tum built up by the sud­den con­tact with the in­fe­rior re­li­gions of the Dec­can af­ter the racial oblit­er­a­tion of the Aryans. Thus the vast ma­jor­ity of the pop­u­la­tion fell into the bond­age of the en­slav­ing su­per­sti­tions of in­fe­rior re­li­gions; and so it was that In­dia failed to pro­duce the high civ­i­liza­tion which had been fore­shad­owed in ear­lier times.

79:4.8The spir­i­tual awak­en­ing of the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ did not per­sist in In­dia, hav­ing died out even be­fore the Mo­hammedan in­va­sion. But some­day a greater Gau­tama may arise to lead all In­dia in the search for the liv­ing God, and then the world will ob­serve the fruition of the cul­tural po­ten­tial­i­ties of a ver­sa­tile peo­ple so long co­matose un­der the be­numb­ing in­flu­ence of an un­pro­gress­ing spir­i­tual vi­sion.

79:4.9Cul­ture does rest on a bi­o­logic foun­da­tion, but caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan cul­ture, for re­li­gion, true re­li­gion, is the in­dis­pens­able source of that higher en­ergy which drives men to es­tab­lish a su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion based on hu­man broth­er­hood.