The term Arya in different Iranian languages is assumed to derive from an unattested
Sanskrit: आर्य, ārya) is found as a self designation of the people of the Vedas. On the other hand, no general ethnonym is found among the Iranicsteppe nomads, but a derivation of Arya appears as a self designation of the Alans, which attest to the continued presence of the term in the steppe regions as well.[10]
Indo-Iranian migrations
during the Old Avestan period (c. 1500-1000 BCE)
The
Eurasian steppe during the Middle Bronze Age.[11] They are connected with the Andronovo and Sintashtaarcheological cultures.[12] Already during the Late Bronze Age, the Indo-Iranian unity began to split and during antiquity a number of culturally distinct Indo-Iranian subgroups had emerged.[13] There is no generally accepted terminology in modern scholarship that fully captures this situation, but those Indo-Iranian tribes that migrated into India are generally referred to as Indo-Aryans.[14] However, subgroupings for the individual Iranophone groups vary in the literature. A common demarcation is based on the cultural and religious differences that developed between the groups which maintained their mobile, pastoral lifestyle in the Eurasian steppe and those groups which moved southward into Greater Iran and underwent a process of sedentarization and cultural change. The former are sometimes referred to as Iranic, i.e., speaking an Iranian language, while the term Iranian may be reserved for groups associated with Iran in a historical and cultural sense.[15] The latter are sometimes further subdivided into Eastern and Western Iranians based on linguistic criteria.[13]
Medes makes a time frame after the 5th century BCE for most of the texts unlikely.[20][21][22] Most scholars, therefore, assume that the bulk of the Old Avestan material reflects the end of the second millenium BCE and the Young Avestan portion reflects the first half of the first millenium BCE.[23][24][25]
The Old Avestan portion of the text, assumed to be authored by
genetive
plural (airiianąm) or as an adjective (airiianəm).
Geographical horizon of the Aryas of the Avesta vis-a-vis other Indo-Iranian groups during the Young Avestan period (c. 900-500 BCE).
In the Avesta, the ethnonym Arya qualifies a number of toponyms, most prominently
Thraetaona, who divided the world among his three sons: The oldest son Tur (Turya) was given the north and east, the second son Sarm (Sairima) was given the west, and the youngest son Iraj (Arya) was given the south.[33]
The Avesta also conveys a clear
Erekhsha (Ǝrəxša), described as the "most swift-arrowed of the Aryas" (xšviwi išvatəmō airiianąm), manages to shoot an arrow as far as the Oxus river, which from then on marks the border between Iran and Turan.[35]Kavi Xosrau, described as the "hero of the Aryas" (arša airiianąm), eventually manages to kill Franrasyan in a fight at the "white forest of the Aryas" (vīspe.aire.razuraya).[36] These stories and its characters occur prominently in many later Iranian texts like the Bahman-nameh, the Borzu Nama, the Darab-nama, and the Kush Nama. However, their most significant impact comes from forming the core the Iranian national epic, the Shahnameh, thus becoming a crucial element of Iranian identity.[37]
During the Achaemenid period, the first epigraphically attested references to the ethnonym Arya appear. By the late 6th–early 5th century BCE, the Achaemenid kings Darius the Great and his son Xerxes I produced a number of inscriptions in which they use the term. In those inscriptions, Arya has linguistic, ethnic and religious connotations.[38]
In the trilingual (
Old Persian, Akkadian, and Elamite) Behistun inscription, authored by Darius during his reign (522 – 486 BCE), Old Persian is called Arya, indicating it to be an umbrella term for Iranian languages.[39] Furthermore the Elamite version of the inscription portrays the Zoroastrian supreme god Ahura Mazda as the "god of the Aryas" (ura-masda naap harriia-naum).[40] In addition to this linguistic and religious use, Arya also appears on some inscriptions by Darius and Xerxes, where they describe themselves as "an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, and an Arya, of Arya lineage". This expression has been interpreted as outward going circles of kinship, beginning with the inner clan (Achaemenids), then the tribe (Persians) and finally the outmost nation (Arya).[41] However, Arya in this phrase has also been interpreted as expressing a connection to the cultural and religious traditions of the Aryas of the Avesta.[42]
During the Acheamenid period, we also get the first outside perspective on the ethnonym. In his Histories, Herodotus provides a number of information on the Medes. Herodotus reports that, in the past, the Medes used to be called Arioi, i.e., Aryas. He also names the Arizantoi as one of the six tribes composing the Medes. This is interpreted as *arya-zantu ('of Arya lineage').[43]
Behistun inscription by Darius the Great several centuries earlier.[39] Likewise, Strabo quotes in his Geographika (Strab. 15.2.8) Erasthothenes, who observed that the people of Persia, Media, Sogdia and Bactria
Sassanian period saw a pronounced resurgence of Iranian culture and religion and its close interaction with political power under the influential Zoroastrian high priest Kartir on one side and a number of Sassanian kings on the other side.[46] Arya appears in Middle Persian as 𐭠𐭩𐭫 (er) and in Parthian as 𐭀𐭓𐭉 (ary), most prominently in Shapur I's inscription at the Ka'ba-ye Zartosht.[47] In this inscription and on a number of coins by Bahram II, Arya appears jointly with the term Mazdayasna, indicating a close connection between the political and religious sphere.[48]
The Sassanian period also saw the emergence of Arya as a political term in the form of Eran (
case ending -ān.[52] However, Middle Persian saw the gradual loss of case endings and their replacement with particles. As a result, Eran became increasingly interpreted as a proper toponym
, i.e., expressions like Shahan Shah Eran and Shahan Shah Eran Shar became King of Kings of Eran and King of Kings of the Dominion of Eran, respectively.
back formation from ایران (irân, Iran).[55] Persian irâni, therefore, replaced the Pre-Islamic Arya and its derivatives as the ethnonym of the Iranian peoples and became the origin of English Iranian
The modern period in the history of Iran saw the rise of
Sassanian period
that the ethnonym Arya was used.
References
Citations
^Bailey 1987, "ARYA, an ethnic epithet in the Achaemenid inscriptions and in the Zoroastrian Avestan tradition. ".
^Gnoli 2006, p. 504: "The inscriptions of Darius I [...] and Xerxes, in which the different provinces of the empire are listed, make it clear that, between the end of the 6th century and the middle of the 5th century B.C.E., the Persians were already aware of belonging to the ariya "Iranian" nation".
^Gnoli 1987, Chapter V. The Sassanians and the Birth of Iran.
^Bailey 1987, "Over against the Arya lands stand those which are anairya- "non-Arya" (as in anairyǡ diŋhāvō, Yt. 19.68); this dichotomy was continued later in Persian tradition.".
^Witzel 2000, p.48:"The Vīdẽvdåδ list obviously was composed or redacted by someone who regarded Afghanistan and the lands surrounding it as the home of all Aryans (airiia), that is of all (eastern) Iranians".
^Skjaervø 1995, pp. 160-161: "There is therefore no reason to believe that the texts contained in the younger Avesta belong to even the same century".
^Gnoli 2011a, "It seems likely that this geographical part of the Avesta was intended to show the extent of the territory that had been acquired in a period that can not be well defined but that must at any rate have been between Zoroaster’s reforms and the beginning of the Achaemenian empire. The likely dating is therefore between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C.".
^Skjaervø 1995, p. 166: "The fact that the oldest Young Avestan texts apparently contain no reference to western Iran, including Media, would seem to indicate that they were composed in eastern Iran before the Median domination reached the area.".
^Boyce 1996, p. 191: "Had it been otherwise, and had Zoroastrianism been carried in its infancy to the Medes and Persians, these imperial people must inevitable have found mention in its religious works.".
^Grenet 2005, p. 44: "It is difficult to imagine that the text was composed anywhere other than in South Afghanistan and later than the middle of the 6th century BC".
^Vogelsang 2000, p. 62: "All of the above observations would indicate a date for the composition of the Videvdat list which would antedate, for a considerable time, the arrival in Eastern Iran of the Persian Acheamenids (ca. 550 B.C.)".
^Skjaervø 2009, p. 43: "Young Avestan must have been quite close to Old Persian, which suggests it was spoken in the first half of the first millennium BC.".
^Boyce 1996, p. 144: "Another local name which is evidently traditional, and is also used at times with mythical connections, is Airyanem Vaejah, in Pahlavi Eranvej.".
^Bailey 1987, p. 65: "In the Scythian field there are two names to be mentioned. The Sarmatai are in the Avesta Sairima-, and there are also the Sauromatai. The etyma of these two names are somewhat complex. The Sarmatai survived in the Zor. Pahl. slm *salm (the -l- is marked for -l-, not -r-, Bundashin TD 2, 106.15).".
^Bailey 1959, p. 109: "A people called by the ethnic name Iran. daha-, now found in Old Persian daha placed before saka in an inscription of Xerxes (Persopolis h 26) has long been known. The Akkadian form is da-a-an for *daha-. The Avestan *daha- attested in the fem. dahi;- is an epithet of lands. Yasht 13.143-4 has the list airyanam ... tūiryanam ... sairimanam ... saininam ... dahinam ... From this we get : Arya-, Turiya-, Sarima-, Saini-, Daha-, as names of peoples known to the early litany of Yasht 13.".
^Boyce 1996, p. 104: "In the Farvadin Yasht, 143-4, five divisions are recognized among the Iranians, namely the Airya (a term which the Avestan people appear to use of themselves), Tuirya, Sairima, Sainu and Dahi".
^Daniel 2012, p. 52: "They also included tales of the Kayanian kings, culminating in the reign of Kavi Vishtaspa (Goshtasp) and the warfare between the Iranians and their natural enemies, the Turanians (probably nomadic peoples to the north of Iran, later identified with the Turks).".
^Kuzmina 2007, p. 174 "In Iranian texts, the idea about the kinship of all Iranian-speaking languages is reflected in a legend of how the ancestor of the Iranians divided the land between three sons: Sairima, the forefather of Sauromatians (who dwelt in the historic period from the Don to the Urals), Tur, from whom the Turians originated (the northern part of Central Asia was called Turan), and the younger son Iraj, the ancestor of the Iranian population (Christensen 1934).".
^Daniel 2012, p. 47: "[The Avestan] stories were so rich, detailed, coherent, and meaningful that they came to be accepted as records of actual events - so much so that they almost totally supplanted in collective memory the genuine history of ancient Iran.".
^Stausberg 2011, p. 321: "Seine Abstammung bestimmt er in drei Graden, Kreisen oder Stufen: Er bezeichnet sich als Achaimeniden, Perser, Sohn eines Persers, und als Arier, aus arischem Geschlecht".
^Stausberg 2011, p. 325: "Der Titel, und damit die Person des Königs, stellt somit eine Verbindung zwischen Königreich und Religion her, die für das Sasanidenreich zumindest in ideologischer Hinsicht kennzeichnend war".
^MacKenzie 2011, "This formulation, following his title "king of kings of the Aryans," makes it seem very likely that ērānšahr properly denoted the empire, while ērān was still understood, in agreement with its etymology (< OIr. *aryānām), as the (oblique) plural of the gentilic ēr (Parth. ary < Old Ir. arya-) "Aryan," i.e., "of the Iranians." ".
^Stausberg 2011, p. 327: "Während das Land Iran in frühislamischer Zeit als al-‘ajam und al-furs firmierte, der sasanidische Landesname ērānšāhr also, vielleicht aufgrund seiner religiösen Implikationen, keine Verwendung mehr fand [...]".
^MacKenzie 2011, "Nevertheless, the fact that Ērān was also generally understood geographically is shown by the formation of the adjective ērānag “Iranian,” which is first attested in the Bundahišn and contemporary works.".
Grenet, Frantz (2005). "An Archaeologist's Approach to Avestan Geography". In Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh; Stewart, Sarah (eds.). Birth of the Persian Empire Volume I. I.B.Tauris.
. All of the above observations would indicate a date for the composition of the Videvdat list which would antedate, for a considerable time, the arrival in Eastern Iran of the Persian Acheamenids (ca. 550 B.C.)
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