Indo-Aryan migration is a necessary corollary of any model of Indo-European origins that locates the original Indo-European homeland outside the Indian subcontinent.
The Indo-Aryans derive from an earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian stage, usually identified with the Bronze Age Andronovo culture at the Caspian Sea, and Indo-Aryan migration to India is consequently assumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India.
The linguistic center of gravity principle states that a language family's most likely point of origin is in the area of its greatest diversity. Take, for example, the Germanic languages—of which English is one. North America may have more speakers of Germanic languages, but almost all of them are exclusively or primarily speakers of English. Northern Europe, where the Germanic languages are known to have originated, has in significant numbers speakers not only of English but also German, Dutch/Flemish, and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian.
By this criterion, India, home to only a single branch of the Indo-European language family (i.e. Indo-Aryan), is an exceedingly unlikely candidate for the Indo-European homeland; Central-Eastern Europe, on the other hand, is home to the Italic, Venetic, Illyrian, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Thracian, and Greek branches of Indo-European.
Both mainstream Urheimat solutions locate the Indo-European homeland in the vicinity of the Black Sea.
Dialectical variation
It has long been recognized that a binary tree model cannot capture all linguistic alignments; certain areal features cut across language groups and are better explained through a model treating linguistic change like waves rippling out through a pond. This is true of the Indo-European languages as well. Various features originated and spread while Proto-Indo-European was still a dialect continuum. These features sometimes cut across sub-families: for instance, the instrumental, dative, and ablative plurals in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic feature endings beginning with -m-, rather than the usual -*bh-, e.g. Old Church Slavic instrumental plural synŭ-mi 'with sons', despite the fact that the Germanic languages are centum languages, while Baltic and Slavic are satem languages.
There is a close relationship between the dialectical relationship of the Indo-European languages and the actual geographical arrangement of the languages in their earliest attested forms that makes an Indian origin for the family unlikely. Given the geographic barriers separating the subcontinent from the rest of Eurasia, such as the Hindu Kush mountains and the existence of the various Indo-European sub-families, an Indian Urheimat would require several successive staggered migrations (cf. Out of India theory). However, this would destroy the close arrangement between archaic shared linguistic features and geographical arrangement noted above. This arrangement is better explained by a radial expansion of the Indo-Europeans, a corollary of which is the migration of Indo-Aryan speakers into the subcontinent. In addition, there is a series of successive innovations, from Proto-Indo-European, to Satem, Indo-Iranian, and Vedic Sanskrit that makes the latter a late descendant that in some respects has even younger features than the closely related Iranian (such as the sede perfect, vs. Avesta hazde).
The Indo-Aryans derive from an earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian stage, usually identified with the Bronze Age Andronovo culture at the Caspian Sea, and Indo-Aryan migration to India is consequently assumed to have taken place in the Middle to Late Bronze Age, contemporary to the Late Harappan phase in India.
The linguistic center of gravity principle states that a language family's most likely point of origin is in the area of its greatest diversity. Take, for example, the Germanic languages—of which English is one. North America may have more speakers of Germanic languages, but almost all of them are exclusively or primarily speakers of English. Northern Europe, where the Germanic languages are known to have originated, has in significant numbers speakers not only of English but also German, Dutch/Flemish, and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian.
By this criterion, India, home to only a single branch of the Indo-European language family (i.e. Indo-Aryan), is an exceedingly unlikely candidate for the Indo-European homeland; Central-Eastern Europe, on the other hand, is home to the Italic, Venetic, Illyrian, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Thracian, and Greek branches of Indo-European.
Both mainstream Urheimat solutions locate the Indo-European homeland in the vicinity of the Black Sea.
Dialectical variation
It has long been recognized that a binary tree model cannot capture all linguistic alignments; certain areal features cut across language groups and are better explained through a model treating linguistic change like waves rippling out through a pond. This is true of the Indo-European languages as well. Various features originated and spread while Proto-Indo-European was still a dialect continuum. These features sometimes cut across sub-families: for instance, the instrumental, dative, and ablative plurals in Germanic, Baltic and Slavic feature endings beginning with -m-, rather than the usual -*bh-, e.g. Old Church Slavic instrumental plural synŭ-mi 'with sons', despite the fact that the Germanic languages are centum languages, while Baltic and Slavic are satem languages.
There is a close relationship between the dialectical relationship of the Indo-European languages and the actual geographical arrangement of the languages in their earliest attested forms that makes an Indian origin for the family unlikely. Given the geographic barriers separating the subcontinent from the rest of Eurasia, such as the Hindu Kush mountains and the existence of the various Indo-European sub-families, an Indian Urheimat would require several successive staggered migrations (cf. Out of India theory). However, this would destroy the close arrangement between archaic shared linguistic features and geographical arrangement noted above. This arrangement is better explained by a radial expansion of the Indo-Europeans, a corollary of which is the migration of Indo-Aryan speakers into the subcontinent. In addition, there is a series of successive innovations, from Proto-Indo-European, to Satem, Indo-Iranian, and Vedic Sanskrit that makes the latter a late descendant that in some respects has even younger features than the closely related Iranian (such as the sede perfect, vs. Avesta hazde).
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