Prehistoric people who settled in Iran and northern India. From thier language, also called Aryan, the indo-European languages of South Asia are descended.The term Aryan originates from the Indo Iranian term Arya mentioned in the ancient texts of Hinduism, the Rigveda and the Gathas of Zoroaster in Zoroastrianism.The`Aryan race`is a concept in European culture that was influential in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The Aryan races are to be divided into two great divisions, the Northern or European Aryans, and the Southern or Asiatic Aryans. The Southern or Asiatic Aryans may be further divided into three principal branches: Armenians, Iranian ethnic groups, and Indians.

The Aryans are related with the ancient Hindu texts known as the Vedas .Of the four Vedas the Rig Veda is the oldest and most important from the historians point of view .It has a collection of 1028 hymns addressed to various gods and intended to be chanted at sacrifices .Those who composed and sang the hymns were priests and sages of a people or group of peoples who called themselves Aryah (anglicized as Aryans) and who entered India when the Indus cities were already half deserted.

There is little archaeological evidence of the Aryans in the first phase of their migration in India. The ancestors of the Indian Aryans had remained for a long time on the borders of the subcontinent, which is now Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia. Some time after the Aryan`s migration into India, another branch, the ancestors of the Medes and the Persians, left their homeland for what is now Iran and gave their name to that land (the name Iran comes from Airyanam vaejo, "Realm of the Aryans"). Other set of Aryans made their presence felt elsewhere in the Middle East. Their culture was not very advanced.

They were illiterate and did not live in cities. But they were technologically superior over their earlier inhabitants of the Indus valley, which is described, in great details in the Rig-veda. They were also advanced in metallurgy. Their entry into India took place not as a concerted invasion but in successive waves over several centuries in the earlier half of the second millennium B.C.E. It was when they had settled in the Punjab that their seers (rsi) began to compose the many hymns that were later collected in the Rig-veda.