THE SHUDRAS : SHUDRAS VERSUS ARYANS 69
The other view is that of Prof. Max Muller. According to him, the word is used in three different senses. This is what he, in his lectures on the Science of Language, says :
In ar or ara, I recognise one of the oldest names of the earth, as the ploughed land, lost in Sanskrit but preserved in Greek as (era) so that Arya would have conveyed originally the meaning of landholder, cultivator of the land, while Vaishya from Vis meant householder, Ida the daughter of Manu is another name of the cultivated earth and probably a modification of Ara .
The second sense in which it was used was to convey the idea of ploughing or tilling the soil. As to this, Prof. Max Muller makes the following observations :
I can only state that the etymological signification of Arya seems to be: One who ploughs or tills. The Aryans would seem to have chosen this name for themselves as opposed to the nomadic races, the Turanians, whose original name Tura implies the swiftness of the horsemen.
In the third sense, the word was used as a general name for the Vaishyas, i.e., the general body of the people, who formed the whole mass of the people. For this, Prof. Max Muller relies on Panini (iii.
1,103) for his authority. Then, there is the fourth sense, which the word got only towards the later period, in which sense it means ‘of noble origin’.
What is however of particular importance is the opinion of Prof. Max Muller on the question of the Aryan race. This is what he says on the subject: [1]
There is no Aryan race in blood; Aryan, in scientific language is utterly inapplicable to race. It means language and nothing but language; and if we speak of Aryan race at all, we should know that it means no more than... Aryan speech.
I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. The same applies to Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, and Slavs. When I speak of them I commit myself to no anatomical characteristics. The blue-eyed and fair-haired Scandinavians may have been conquerors or conquered, they may have adopted the language of their darker lords or their subjects, or vice versa. I assert nothing beyond their language, when I call them Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts and Slavs; and in that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians. This may seem strong language, but in matters of such importance we cannot be too decided in our language. To me, an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a
1 Biography of Words, pp. 89 and 120-21.