The word Aryan is derived from the Sanskrit root ārya meaning “noble.” The name was first used to identify a race given to the worship of the gods by the Hindu priests (brāhmaṇas in Sanskrit, often written “brahmins”). The word is also used to denote a racial type, although this has rather gone out of favor since its use by Nazi Germany to distinguish Germans from Semitic and African peoples. It is sometimes used to denote a family of languages including Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, etc., but those are more commonly called “Indo-European.”

In theosophical literature, the Aryan race refers to the Fifth Root Race in contrast to the Fourth, which is the Atlantean, and the third, the Lemurian. There are seven sub-races under the Fifth Root Race. Helena P. BLAVATSKY identifies the names of a few sub-races: the first subrace as the Hindus, the third as the one that became the European stock, the fourth the Mongolo-Turanians and the fifth the Indo-Europeans. The Semitic tribe, she wrote, is the result of the commingling of the last two.

The Mahatma Letters speak of the Aryan Asiatics as the highest sub-race from a spiritual point of view, while from an intellectual point of view, the highest is the fifth — the Europeans/Americans. The Americans are said to be the germs of the future sixth subrace, while the preparation for the seventh sub-race will only begin 25,000 years hence.

Charles W. LEADBEATER identifies the subraces in the following order: the Indians, the Arabs, the Parsis, the Romance nations and the Teutons. C. Jinarājadāsa, in his First Principles of Theosophy, identifies the first five subraces as the Hindus, the Semites, the Persians, the Celts, and the Romans. 

See ROOT RACES; BRAHMIN.

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