Indo-Aryan words in Hurrian

[rohan.oberoi at CORNELL.EDU]

Bjarte Kaldhol wrote:

>As a student of Hurrian, I joined this list to see if I could find
>colleagues interested in recent research into the problem of the
>Hurrianized words of Indo-Aryan (?) origin found in cuneiform sources
>from mainly the fourteenth century BC. It is curious that some of
>these words, for instance sattavartanna (or rather -vardanna), appear
>to contain Middle Indian assimilations. How can satta- instead of
>sapta- be explained? In Hurrian, the sequence -pt- was perfectly
>possible. Either, we must accept a Middle Indian dialect in the
>fourteenth century, or we must assume that these words passed into
>Hurrian indirectly, through another language.

I believe H.H. Hock addressed the "Middle Indian" postulate about
"satta" in his article "Out of India: The Linguistic Evidence", in the
volume "Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia, Evidence, Interpretation
and Ideology, Ed. Johannes Bronkhorst and Madhav M. Deshpande, Harvard
Oriental Series, Opera Minora, Volume 3, 1999.

Unfortunately, my copy is packed for a move right now, but I'm sure
someone on the list has one.  If I recall correctly, he gave reasons
why "satta" rather than "sapta":

1.  Could be produced by analogy with the Hurrian word for 7.
2.  Might well be an artifact of the writing system.
3.  Manifests a very common sound change, not one unique to OIA->MIA.

I believe he gave a few more arguments for rejecting the MIA
explanation.  But I'm quoting this from memory and I am not a
linguist, nor do I have a very good memory.  If I can turn up my copy
from one of the boxes on top, I'll let you know.

Ha det saa bra,
Rohan.