During the period of British rule in India and especially under the Governorship of Warren Hastings, a new trend emerged among linguistic scholars of England, to study the Oriental languages and their ethnology. These new Orientalist scholars like Sir William Jones, H.H. Wilson, Max Mueller and others used their studies of Sanskrit works to romanticize about the Indian past by glorifying the Aryan civilization as an extension of the Indo-European.

However, such theories that Sanskrit language was superior, soon became unacceptable to other scholars like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Sir Henry Maine - both Indian and Western. They were of the view that the efforts spent on Sanskrit studies is of no benefit to the common people, as only Brahmin students were entitled to and educated in it.

Yet, such studies flourished under the British rule only because of their objective to foster a master idea of the dark-skinned savage Indian vs. the fair-skinned civilized European. Even after the discovery of the pre-Vedic, non-Aryan, Indus Valley Civilization in the 1920s, the Aryan racial theory continued as an extension of Indo-European civilization. Latter-day scholars like Leon Poliakov have questioned such appropriations and have dwelt on the independent achievements of pre-Aryan India and of post-Aryan, Dravidian India.