"Aryan" is a term meaning "noble" which was used as a self-designation by ancient Indo-Iranian people. The word was used by the  Indic people of the Vedic period in India to refer to the noble class and geographic location known as Aryavarta where Indo-Aryan culture was based. The closely related Iranian people used the term as an ethnic label for themselves in the Avesta scriptures, and the word forms the etymological source of the country Iran. It was believed in the 19th century that it was also a self-designation used by all Proto-Indo-Europeans, a theory that has now been abandoned. Scholars point out that, even in ancient times, the idea of being an "Aryan" was religious, cultural and linguistic, not racial.