Chart classifying Indo-Iranian languages within the Indo-European language family
TheIndo-Iranian languages, also known asIndo-Iranic languages,[4][5] constitute the largest branch of theIndo-European language family. They include over 300 languages,[6][7] spoken by around 1.7 billion speakers worldwide, predominantly inSouth Asia,West Asia and parts ofCentral Asia.
The termIndo-Iranian languages refers to the spectrum of Indo-European languages spoken in theSouthern Asian region ofEurasia, spanning from theIndian subcontinent (where the Indo-Aryan branch is spoken, also called Indic) up to theIranian Plateau (where the Iranian branch is spoken, also called Iranic). It was later discovered that theNuristani languages are also spoken in the isolated region ofNuristan, roughly situated in the intersection of these regions.
This branch is also known asAryan languages, referring to the languages spoken byAryan peoples, where the termAryan is considered as the ethnocultural self-designation of ancientIndo-Iranians. Today, the termAryan is generally avoided, owing to the perceived negative connotation associated withAryanism.
All Indo-Iranian languages can be traced back to a single hypothetical ancestral language:Proto-Indo-Iranian, which is thereconstructedproto-language to represent the latest point at which all modern-day Indo-Iranian languages were still unified.Proto-Indo-Iranian, in turn, is classified as belonging to theIndo-European language family, ultimately tracing back to theProto-Indo-European language.
The earliest knownchariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout theOld World and played an important role inancient warfare.[28][29][30][31] There is almost a general consensus among scholars that theAndronovo culture, the successor of Sintasha culture, was an Indo-Iranian culture.[32][17] Currently, only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture: Alakul and Fëdorovo cultures.[33] The Andronovo culture is considered as an "Indo-Iranic dialect continuum", with a later split between Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages.[34] However, according to Hiebert, an expansion of theBactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) into Iran and the margin of the Indus Valley is "the best candidate for an archaeological correlate of the introduction of Indo-Iranian speakers to Iran and South Asia",[35] despite the absence of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe in the Near East,[36] or south of the region betweenKopet Dag andPamir-Karakorum.[37][b]J. P. Mallory acknowledges the difficulties of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern India, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets theIndo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of theMedes,Persians or Indo-Aryans". He has developed theKulturkugel (lit.'the culture bullet') model that has the Indo-Iranians taking over cultural traits of BMAC, but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India.[39][35]
^A fourth independent branch,Dardic, was previously posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch[3]
^Sarianidi states that "direct archaeological data from Bactria andMargiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases".[38]
^Bashir, Elena (2007). "Dardic". In Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (eds.).The Indo-Aryan languages. Routledge. p. 905.ISBN978-0-415-77294-5.'Dardic' is a geographic cover term for those Northwest Indo-Aryan languages which [...] developed new characteristics different from the IA languages of the Indo-Gangetic plain. Although the Dardic and Nuristani (previously 'Kafiri') languages were formerly grouped together, Morgenstierne (1965) has established that the Dardic languages are Indo-Aryan, and that the Nuristani languages constitute a separate subgroup of Indo-Iranian.
^Leschber, Corinna. "IranicTurkishBulgarian Language Contact from a Contact semantic Point of view." Journal of Turkish Linguistics 1.1 (2007): 95-115.
^"Hindi" L1: 322 million (2011 Indian census), including perhaps 150 million speakers of other languages that reported their language as "Hindi" on the census. L2: 274 million (2016, source unknown). Urdu L1: 67 million (2011 & 2017 censuses), L2: 102 million (1999 Pakistan, source unknown, and 2001 Indian census):Ethnologue 21.Hindi atEthnologue (21st ed., 2018).Urdu atEthnologue (21st ed., 2018).
^Mallory & Adams 1997, p. 213: "Iran Alani (< *aryana) (the name of an Iranian group whose descendants are the Ossetes, one of whose subdivisions is the Iron [< *aryana-)), *aryanam (pl.) 'of the Aryans' (> MPers Iran)."
^Schmitt 1987: "The nameAryan is the self designation of the peoples of Ancient India and Ancient Iran who spoke Aryan languages, in contrast to the 'non-Aryan' peoples of those 'Aryan' countries."
^Lubotsky 2023, p. 259, "There is growing consensus among both archaeologists and linguists that the Sintashta–Petrovka culture (2100–1900 BCE) in the Southern Trans-Urals was inhabited by the speakers of Proto-Indo-Iranian".
^Allentoft et al. 2015, "The close affinity we observe between peoples of Corded Ware and Sintashta cultures suggests similar genetic sources of the two. [...] Although we cannot formally test whether the Sintashta derives directly from an eastward migration of Corded Ware peoples or if they share common ancestry with an earlier steppe population, the presence of European Neolithic farmer ancestry in both the Corded Ware and the Sintashta, combined with the absence of Neolithic farmer ancestry in the earlier Yamnaya, would suggest the former being more probable. [...] The enigmatic Sintashta culture near the Urals bears genetic resemblance to Corded Ware and was therefore likely to be an eastward migration into Asia. As this culture spread towards Altai it evolved into the Andronovo culture".
^Mathieson 2015, Supplementary material: "Sintashta and Andronovo populations had an affinity to more western populations from central and northern Europe like the Corded Ware and associated cultures. [...] the Srubnaya/Sintashta/Andronovo group resembled Late Neolithic/Bronze Age populations from mainland Europe.".
^Narasimhan et al. 2019, Supplementary Materials: "We observed a main cluster of 41Sintashta individuals that was genetically similar toSrubnaya,Potapovka, andAndronovo in being well modeled as a mixture ofYamnaya-related andAnatolia_N (European farmer-related) ancestry" (p.40) [...] "Additional work has documented genetic similarity of people of the Corded Ware Complex to those of both the Sintashta and Srubnaya archaeological cultures of the western Steppe" (p.243).
^Chintalapati, Patterson & Moorjani 2022, p. 13: "[T]he CWC expanded to the east to form the archaeological complexes of Sintashta, Srubnaya, Andronovo, and the BA cultures of Kazakhstan.".
^Pamjav H, Feher T, Nemeth E, Padar Z (2012). "Brief communication: new Y-chromosome binary markers improve phylogenetic resolution within haplogroup R1a1". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 149 (4): 611–615. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22167. PMID 23115110. "However, with the discovery of the Z280 and Z93 substitutions within Phase 1 1000 Genomes Project data and subsequent genotyping of these SNPs in ~200 samples, a schism between European and Asian R1a chromosomes has emerged"
^Kristiansen, Kristian; Kroonen, Guus; Willerslev, Eske (11 May 2023).The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited: Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 70–71.ISBN978-1-009-26174-6. "How exactly the emergence and expansion of the Corded Ware are linked to the emergence and expansion of the Yamnaya horizon remains unclear. However, the Y chromosome record of both groups indicates that Corded Ware cannot be derived directly from the Yamnaya or late eastern farming groups sampled thus far, and is therefore likely to constitute a parallel development in the forest steppe and temperate forest zones of Eastern Europe. Even in Central Europe, the formation of the earliest regional Corded Ware identities was the result of local and regional social practices that resulted in the typical Corded Ware rite of passage."
^Anthony 2007, p. 402, "Eight radiocarbon dates have been obtained from five Sintashta culture graves containing the impressions of spoked wheels, including three at Sintashta (SM cemetery, gr. 5, 19, 28), one at Krivoe Ozero (k. 9, gr. 1), and one at Kammeny Ambar 5 (k. 2, gr. 8). Three of these (3760 ± 120 BP, 3740 ± 50 BP, and 3700 ± 60 BP), with probability distributions that fall predominantly before 2000 BCE, suggest that the earliest chariots probably appeared in the steppes before 2000 BCE (table 15.1 [p. 376]).".
^Holm, Hans J. J. G. (2019): The Earliest Wheel Finds, their Archeology and Indo-European Terminology in Time and Space, and Early Migrations around the Caucasus. Series Minor 43. Budapest: ARCHAEOLINGUA ALAPÍTVÁNY.ISBN978-615-5766-30-5
Fussman, G.; Kellens, J.; Francfort, H. P.; Tremblay, X. (2005).Āryas, aryens et iraniens en Asie centrale. Paris: Collège de France.ISBN2-86803-072-6.
Kümmel, Martin Joachim (2018). "The morphology of Indo-Iranian". In Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias (eds.).Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. Vol. 3. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 1888–1924.doi:10.1515/9783110542431-032.S2CID135347276.
Kümmel, Martin Joachim (2020). "Substrata of Indo-Iranic and related questions". In Garnier, Romain (ed.).Loanwords and substrata: Proceedings of the colloquium held in Limoges (5th-7th June, 2018). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. pp. 237–277.ISBN978-3-85124-751-0.
Kümmel, Martin Joachim (2022). "Indo-Iranian". In Olander, Thomas (ed.).The Indo-European Language Family: A Phylogenetic Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 246–268.doi:10.1017/9781108758666.014.ISBN978-1-108-75866-6.
Sims-Williams, Nicholas, ed. (2002).Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-726285-6.
Kümmel, Martin. "Substrata of Indo-Iranic and related questions." Loanwords and substrata: Proceedings of the Colloquium held in Limoges (5th–7 June 2018). 2020.
