Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse Indo-European ethnolinguistic group of peoples who speak Indo-Aryan languages. The Indo-Aryan languages belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Today, there are over one billion native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, most of them native to South Asia, where they form the majority.

History

The Indo-European languages were introduced into northern India by Indo-Aryans. The Indo-Aryan migration theory explains the introduction of the Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent by proposing a migration from Sintashta culture through Bactria-Margiana Culture and into northern Indian subcontinent (modern day India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan). These migrations started approximately 1,800 BCE, after the invention of the war chariot, and also brought Indo-Aryan languages into the Levant and possibly Inner Asia. It was part of the diffusion of Indo-European languages from the proto-Indo-European homeland at the Pontic steppe, a large area of grasslands in far Eastern Europe, which started in the 5th to 4th millennia BCE, and the Indo-European migrations out of the Eurasian steppes, which started approximately 2,000 BCE.