Asked by 42 year old Female
Very beautiful question and one very close to my heart.
Sri Aurobindo himself described the word Arya means noblest, shrestha, the best and highest. When asked by some readers as to why he chose to use the name Arya for the monthly journal he started in 1914, he wrote the following.
‘What is the significance of the name, “Arya”?
The question has been put from more than one point of view. To most European readers the name figuring on our cover1 is likely to be a hieroglyph which attracts or repels according to the temperament. Indians know the word, but it has lost for them the significance which it bore to their forefathers. Western Philology has converted it into a racial term, an unknown ethnological quantity on which different speculations fix different values. Now, even among the philologists, some are beginning to recognise that the word in its original use expressed not a difference of race, but a difference of culture. For in the Veda the Aryan peoples are those who had accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of ideality, of aspiration. The Aryan gods were the supraphysical powers who assisted the mortal in his struggle towards the nature of the godhead. All the highest aspirations of the early human race, its noblest religious temper, its most idealistic velleities of thought are summed up in this single vocable.
In later times, the word Arya expressed a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness for knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana and the Kshatriya. Everything that departed from this ideal, everything that tended towards the ignoble, mean, obscure, rude, cruel or false, was termed un-Aryan. There is no word in human speech that has a nobler history.’
In recent times this noblest of all words was deliberately corrupted first, by the British, then by the Nazi Germany under Hitler, and now by certain politicians in India for vested interests. This word which stood for a highly cultured, refined and noble humanity that always stood by dharma or the law of Truth was deliberately and mischievously turned into a racial term to mean certain warrior tribes that invaded India long back. This theory called as the Aryan invasion theory to justify all aggression and invasion of India as well as create a North-South divide was refuted by Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo on philologocal, psychologocal, cultural and spiritual grounds. Now, modern research in genetics and history as well as satellite images have finally completely debunked this theory though politics continues to thrive upon it.
What Sri Aurobindo means therefore is that it is not enough to read the Gita, Vedas and the Puranas. These things are important but much more important is to live it. It means that it is not enough to simply believe in Sanatan Dharma but to let our actions be moulded and guided by it. It means that it is not enough to go to temples and engage in ritual worships and celebrate festivals but to change and mould our character according to the high and noble ideals of our Aryan forefathers. It means, as stated above cultivating, living by and expressing ‘a particular ethical and social ideal, an ideal of well-governed life, candour, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness for knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments.’
All this and even more is meant by the living the Aryan ideal and recovering it in thought and life.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
