Aryans, Jews, Brahmins:

This book gives an account of the construction of the Aryan myth and its uses in India and Europe from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century. The myth concerns a race that inhabits a utopian past and gives rise first to Brahmin Indian culture and then to European culture. In India, the Aryan was used to build a national identity under colonialism. In Europe, it offered an origin story to rival the Biblical one and could diminish the West's Jewish heritage. Figueira shows that the history of the myth is a history of reading, interpretation and imaginative construction.