The People That Never Were

The People That Never Were: Linguistic Scholarship and the Invention of the Aryans takes the reader through the history of the concept Aryan, beginning with colonial scholarship in India around 1800, and ending in the first decades of the twentieth century. The book shows how Aryan emerged as a free...

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主要作者: Hutton, Christopher M.
格式: Online
語言:英语
出版: Oxford University Press 2025
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在線閱讀:ONIX_20250915T142936_9780190212988_3
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author Hutton, Christopher M.
author_browse Hutton, Christopher M.
author_facet Hutton, Christopher M.
author_sort Hutton, Christopher M.
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description The People That Never Were: Linguistic Scholarship and the Invention of the Aryans takes the reader through the history of the concept Aryan, beginning with colonial scholarship in India around 1800, and ending in the first decades of the twentieth century. The book shows how Aryan emerged as a free-standing explanatory device, and a key to historical narratives of superiority and inferiority. History came to be understood as consisting of peoples or races with assigned characteristics and world views. The book takes apart the arguments for the existence of an Aryan race or people in ancient times, focussing in particular on the role of philologists in offering distorted readings of ancient Sanscrit texts. It shows that Aryan came into English around 1840, promoted primarily by F. Max Müller, whose own conceptual confusions subsequently were projected back onto ancient India and at the same time read into contemporary Europe. The conclusion looks at the academic debate today, notably in relation to scholarly authority and to the insider/outsider dichotomy that seemingly pits Western Indology against Hindu nationalism. It suggests that historical linguistics no less than race theory is based on a series of profound conceptual errors. Myths about Aryan perpetuated by scholars over two centuries have distorted our understanding of British colonialism in India as well as of Nazi ideology.
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spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-1665592025-09-16T05:09:12Z The People That Never Were Hutton, Christopher M. history of ideas, colonial scholarship, postcolonialism, Nazism, race theory, comparative linguistics, philology, Indian history thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics::CFF Historical and comparative linguistics thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas The People That Never Were: Linguistic Scholarship and the Invention of the Aryans takes the reader through the history of the concept Aryan, beginning with colonial scholarship in India around 1800, and ending in the first decades of the twentieth century. The book shows how Aryan emerged as a free-standing explanatory device, and a key to historical narratives of superiority and inferiority. History came to be understood as consisting of peoples or races with assigned characteristics and world views. The book takes apart the arguments for the existence of an Aryan race or people in ancient times, focussing in particular on the role of philologists in offering distorted readings of ancient Sanscrit texts. It shows that Aryan came into English around 1840, promoted primarily by F. Max Müller, whose own conceptual confusions subsequently were projected back onto ancient India and at the same time read into contemporary Europe. The conclusion looks at the academic debate today, notably in relation to scholarly authority and to the insider/outsider dichotomy that seemingly pits Western Indology against Hindu nationalism. It suggests that historical linguistics no less than race theory is based on a series of profound conceptual errors. Myths about Aryan perpetuated by scholars over two centuries have distorted our understanding of British colonialism in India as well as of Nazi ideology. 2025-09-16T05:09:11Z 2025-09-16T05:09:11Z 2025-09-15T12:34:15Z 2025 book ONIX_20250915T142936_9780190212988_3 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/106009 9780190212988 9780190213008 9780190212995) 9780190213015 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/166559 eng Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics open access image/jpeg Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/106009/1/9780190212988.pdf Oxford University Press 10.1093/oso/9780190212988.001.0001 10.1093/oso/9780190212988.001.0001 db4e319f-ca9f-449a-bcf2-37d7c6f885b1 9780190212988 9780190213008 9780190212995) 9780190213015 296 New York, NY open access
spellingShingle history of ideas, colonial scholarship, postcolonialism, Nazism, race theory, comparative linguistics, philology, Indian history
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics::CFF Historical and comparative linguistics
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas
Hutton, Christopher M.
The People That Never Were
title The People That Never Were
title_full The People That Never Were
title_fullStr The People That Never Were
title_full_unstemmed The People That Never Were
title_short The People That Never Were
title_sort people that never were
topic history of ideas, colonial scholarship, postcolonialism, Nazism, race theory, comparative linguistics, philology, Indian history
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics::CFF Historical and comparative linguistics
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas
topic_facet history of ideas, colonial scholarship, postcolonialism, Nazism, race theory, comparative linguistics, philology, Indian history
thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CF Linguistics::CFF Historical and comparative linguistics
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBC Cultural and media studies::JBCC Cultural studies::JBCC9 History of ideas
url ONIX_20250915T142936_9780190212988_3
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