The 19th century saw the beginnings of modern linguistics, including the determination that the languages of much of Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia were related as the Indo-European languages. By the end of the century, a linguistic reconstruction of the proto-language existed, as well as scholarly theories of the Proto-Indo-European people themselves and elements of their society like their religion. Many of these theories are of course outdated nowadays, and some of them were associated with scientific racism and the Aryan race theories.
But can we take scholarship on the Proto-Indo-Europeans further and have it become a cultural movement? This would presumably take a form similar to Ariosophy and other early neopaganism, but lacking any link to Germanic nationalism. In fact, I could imagine it being some sort of pan-European movement, uniting Europe based on shared Indo-European heritage amongst others. This Indo-European/pan-Aryan movement would be distinct for reviving proto-Indo-European (using early reconstructions of PIE) and using it as a cultural vehicle for poems, songs, etc. There would also be a neopagan element to this movement as well, with people worshipping Dyeus and the other members of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon, who are ancestral to European pagan religions as well as Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. As with everything in this movement, it would be based on 19th century European concepts of all of these religions, so there would naturally be plenty of errors. I don't know what they'd do for the orthography
I think it would overlap with the movement for international auxiliary languages--after all, PIE is ancestral to the languages of half of humanity, and it seems better to use it than Interlingua and Esperanto which seem very Romance-language based. Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European as an auxlang seems very interesting to me, since it could totally serve the purpose even if the reconstruction used was obsolete as far as current linguistic theories go.
One major problem for this movement is the unfortunate links to racial pseudoscience via the whole Aryan thing (for instance, PIE's historic name is Indo-Aryan). This would affect the viability of the movement assuming the world of racial pseudoscience is discredited by something as major as Nazism and WWII and its related crimes. This could leave the Indo-Europeanist movement as marginal as racial neopaganism is nowadays, although even in white supremacist circles it wouldn't attract many adherents (compare how genuine neo-Ariosophists there are versus generic Odinists amongst white supremacists). Or perhaps it could survive, but as some curious remnant of the past like many international auxiliary languages are nowadays.
There's plenty of directions to take this idea in--I like the idea of fusing it with British Israelism. Maybe the original Israelites/Jews were Indo-Europeans, and the Hebrew language as we know it is a later corruption adopted from ungodly people (maybe the Canaanites). Jews wrote in this language because they were ungodly, and later Jesus came to correct the Jews in their teachings. The New Testament was originally inspired by God and written in proto-Indo-European, but translated into Greek (an Indo-European language of course) for the sake of the sinful world which had forgotten the original language. This seems like it could find a decent amount of acceptance in Britain or the United States (more crazy ideas and theology existed), and I'd find it fascinating if a major American Christian denomination became organised along these lines--very possible considering the landscape of American Christianity in the 19th century which was fertile ground for new movements and denominations to emerge. Presumably this movement would use Proto-Indo-European as a liturgic language and encourage praying to God in PIE. They would have their hymns as well as a Bible translation in PIE, and likely incorporate bits of Proto-Indo-European into their speech (the bits which their preacher says in his sermons, bits used in prayer, etc.).
But can we take scholarship on the Proto-Indo-Europeans further and have it become a cultural movement? This would presumably take a form similar to Ariosophy and other early neopaganism, but lacking any link to Germanic nationalism. In fact, I could imagine it being some sort of pan-European movement, uniting Europe based on shared Indo-European heritage amongst others. This Indo-European/pan-Aryan movement would be distinct for reviving proto-Indo-European (using early reconstructions of PIE) and using it as a cultural vehicle for poems, songs, etc. There would also be a neopagan element to this movement as well, with people worshipping Dyeus and the other members of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon, who are ancestral to European pagan religions as well as Hinduism and Zoroastrianism. As with everything in this movement, it would be based on 19th century European concepts of all of these religions, so there would naturally be plenty of errors. I don't know what they'd do for the orthography
I think it would overlap with the movement for international auxiliary languages--after all, PIE is ancestral to the languages of half of humanity, and it seems better to use it than Interlingua and Esperanto which seem very Romance-language based. Reconstructed Proto-Indo-European as an auxlang seems very interesting to me, since it could totally serve the purpose even if the reconstruction used was obsolete as far as current linguistic theories go.
One major problem for this movement is the unfortunate links to racial pseudoscience via the whole Aryan thing (for instance, PIE's historic name is Indo-Aryan). This would affect the viability of the movement assuming the world of racial pseudoscience is discredited by something as major as Nazism and WWII and its related crimes. This could leave the Indo-Europeanist movement as marginal as racial neopaganism is nowadays, although even in white supremacist circles it wouldn't attract many adherents (compare how genuine neo-Ariosophists there are versus generic Odinists amongst white supremacists). Or perhaps it could survive, but as some curious remnant of the past like many international auxiliary languages are nowadays.
There's plenty of directions to take this idea in--I like the idea of fusing it with British Israelism. Maybe the original Israelites/Jews were Indo-Europeans, and the Hebrew language as we know it is a later corruption adopted from ungodly people (maybe the Canaanites). Jews wrote in this language because they were ungodly, and later Jesus came to correct the Jews in their teachings. The New Testament was originally inspired by God and written in proto-Indo-European, but translated into Greek (an Indo-European language of course) for the sake of the sinful world which had forgotten the original language. This seems like it could find a decent amount of acceptance in Britain or the United States (more crazy ideas and theology existed), and I'd find it fascinating if a major American Christian denomination became organised along these lines--very possible considering the landscape of American Christianity in the 19th century which was fertile ground for new movements and denominations to emerge. Presumably this movement would use Proto-Indo-European as a liturgic language and encourage praying to God in PIE. They would have their hymns as well as a Bible translation in PIE, and likely incorporate bits of Proto-Indo-European into their speech (the bits which their preacher says in his sermons, bits used in prayer, etc.).