Kusala wrote: ↑Mon Oct 04, 2021 11:10 am
Indians are anthropologically Caucasian, so European genes are more pronounced...
I think this is the mistake you are stuck on. The 'caucasian' category of people does not originate in Europe. They originate around the Caucasus mountain regions hence the name. This, and nearby regions of Iran and Anatolia are very roughly where the Yamna, Indus Valley farmers and 'European' Neolithic farmers are all thought to have originated from (with a much more ancient migration out of Africa of course). This is the current understanding which will be updated and clarified as time progresses.
From there these groups have made bidirectional migrations into both Europe and India.
These people would have been somewhat dark, and have kept the darker color in the Indian climate and lost it in Europe. There have also been social selection pressures causing this skin lightening over time. So the resemblance is due to ancient shared ancestry. They also mixed with native hunter gatherers in both regions who were much more distantly related.
We have discussed that there has been a link between the Sintashta and the Eastern Corded Ware/Fatyanova culture also.
As to 'Aryan' the term is only known to have been used by the Indo-Iranians. And even the oldest Aryan text the Rig Veda has got deep Dravidian as well as Munda influence in the language.
https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=OZ ... edir_esc=y
So it does not look like the Vedas were something simply 'brought into' India. Rather, the Vedas seem to have been composed over a period of integration in India between the ancient Indus Valley civilization and the incoming Aryans. As noted we do not find the equivalent of Vedas in other regions such as Europe although we do find some of the same gods. But we only really find an equivalent in the Avestas of Old Iran again suggesting it was a symbiosis that occured in this region.
The Sramana tradition is also thought to have originated in the Indus Valley, which was the birth of yoga and likely the source of the systems of jhana meditation that we are practicing today and which the Buddha took on as part of the path to Enlightenment.
https://www.vedicupasanapeeth.org/2700- ... ical-site/
Since the Buddha rejected the authority of the Vedas, and since he is of the Sramanic lineage it is this that is actually more significant for us on the Buddhist path when it comes to tradition.