AHC/WI: A significantly large Surviving Old Indo-Aryans' state somewhere

Albert.Nik

Banned
Indo-Aryans were an Indo-Iranian people who split off from the Andronavo culture and ventured in two different directions getting mixed in the East(India/Vedic Aryans) and loosing language and culture in the West(Mitanni). Now in this AHC,you need to have the Indo-Aryans in their original and unmixed form( They looked Somewhat Central to Northern European as per archeology of Andronavo) to have a good amount of population and their own country/province of a significant size. You can choose any region from the lands of the erstwhile Andronavo culture to Eastern Europe or even Western Europe. Their language should be close to Sanskrit and other Aryan languages and preferably remain Pagan to the modern era too.

How would this affect various developments between the two Indo Aryan peoples take place in the Modern era and especially Colonial era? They would be linguistically and culturally close to Indians and Racially and genetically to the British and Germans,Slavs,etc. How would this unique event affect the various developments? What if these Indo-Aryans people are befriended by the European colonialists to act as a friending agent with Indians? How would Indian social structure change in this ATL? How would Hinduism look in the modern era?

Conditions:
Language: Indo-Aryan languages only.
Genetics: Mix of Indo-Iranian/or Eastern European(both R1a) and Caucasian peoples with some traces of Uralic mixture.
Appearence: European(work out yourself based on various combinations of mixes of the above).
Religion: Vedic Paganism without becoming like Classical and Modern Hinduism.
Population: Modern day 40-50 million.
Country range: Choose anything between Slovenia and Kashmir with appropriate size,resources and society to build a modernized European country.

This is an ATL experiment for an evolution of the Hindu society and not anything related to replace populations or lighten anyone.
 
The country of Lithuania is basically the answer to this question (except for the paganism). Most European countries have strong vestiges of the criterion in your post.

The "whiteness" of the Indo Aryans is questionable -- there is a huge diversity of looks among Indo-European and Indo-Aryan cultures. There are certain narratives that portray the Indo-Europeans as white-looking conquerors who intermixed with the Dravidians of India and produced the Indians of today. In reality, the Indo-European "invasion" was likely more of an ongoing migration rather than an invasion of any kind -- "Aryans" likely entered into the Indus Valley civilization as mercenaries, traders, and nomadic groups, rather than as an invading army.

On top of that the Rigveda -- the oldest and most authentically "Aryan" of the Hindu scriptures -- was clearly written within India itself. It venerates landmarks like the Saraswati River, mentions Indian fauna like elephants and tigers, and makes absolutely no mention of a migration from anywhere else. The Rigveda was likely written at least a few centuries after the Aryans entered India, meaning that it was likely written after they intermixed with the indigenous peoples. Deciphering this period in history is incredibly difficult (for many reasons), and the narrative of Aryan vs Dravidian is little more than a creative interpretation of a scripture that is already highly metaphorical. Aryan seems to be a linguistic category more than anything ethnic or racial.

This WI seems to ask how you could essentially wank a group like the Kalasha, who have "white" features but still follow an analogue of Vedic Hinduism. Focusing purely on genetics and phenotype makes this difficult, as Northern Pakistan/Afghanistan/India (where blonde-haired, "white" South Asians exist) have always been fairly diverse. That region has been invaded and settled by Greeks, Persians (not "white), Indian empires like the Mauryas (not "white"), Arabs, Turkic peoples, and Mongols...so for the Kalasha to exist and flourish independently, you would somehow need to butterfly away all of these.
 
Haven't they dropped the Aryan suffix now ? And now they just stick to Indo iranian people, anyway Indo iranians before setting foot into the subcontinent were fair skinned but not all of them had European features for they are a mix of Indo European and old central asian people and even east Asians and they were influenced by the oxus river valley civilization culturally and from their prespective the Indo Europeans were different people culturally, linguistically and even by looks .

The problem with this challenge is this
Indo iranians stuck to the kazakh uplands, kazakh steppe, forest steppe , the altai mountains, the pamir mountains, the Ferghana valley, the syr darya and the central part of kazakstan was pretty much vacant . This settlement pattern favours southern migration unless they once again revert back to practice agriculture in which case they may migrate into southern Russia and Ukraine and may be the caucasus mountains . Here the climate is much more favourable than central asia. Here one of two things may happen, one , they start to trade with the Assyrians the Babylonians etc they learn the art of advance agriculture and they settle down there for a while and later on split with one venturing into Europe and other the middle East and theymigrate into the iranian plateau and play a more dominant role in middle eastern politics with a strong Indo iranian flavour .
In alternative they migrate into iranian plateau without settling down and intermix with the the inhabitants and you get an iranian style civilization but 600 years early .

The problem is Indo iranian knew about lands in the south , they had active trade connection with the Babylonians and the ivc , some of the gold found in mesopotamian lands come from altai mountains, copper ingots found in ivc had it's origin in pamir mountains, so most probably must have heard of the lands fertility aswell and it also goes against their migration patterns considering the pontic steppes at that time was dry and cold , so it's hard for me to see an alternative migration route unless if you really want an alternative indo iranian migration I would say it would be more pausible for them to go to China and set up an Indo iranian civilization there than migrate to Europe

As for the Vedas , any holy book written will be called the Vedas but with a completely different content
 
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