Indo-Aryan words in Hurrian

[Michael Witzel]

Thanks,  Bjarte: very good, now we make some real progress (for which this
list is intended, after all) :

> some misunderstandings. The (normal) Hurrian word for seven is
>"thindi" (written $i-in-di or $i-in-ti; the th was pronounced
>interdentally, as in English)

We relied on outdated data: Friedrich 1940, also reported by Hock 1999:3 :
Mitanni shinta/shitta. So, this opinion, 60 years old, may be a red herring?
I assume that the variant shitta is not typical, or no longer maintained by
specialists?

If so, we must agree:
>and cannot have influenced satta- in
>sattavartanna. I am not convinced by any of the efforts made so far to
>explain away the satta- form.

Even then, it would be the only "Prakritic" form. B.Oguibenine is right, of
course, in assuming  an early origin for some such words, but the few that
have survived discussion so far now are under constant attack; recently I
have seen a paper (where?) that even explained away RV jyotis (for *dyotis).

>Also, there are not "many" IA names in Hurrian ... None of these IA names
>are attested in Indo-Aryan texts, as far as I  know, which might point to
>an isolated IA tribe outside the main IA area.<

That is not excatly correct: we have, just looking at Mayrhofer Etym Dict.
II 569 sqq,
names such as Artataama = Rtadhaaman, (Biridas'uva = *priitaas'va,
Priyaas'va = *priyaas'va), Tuis'eratta/Tus'ratta = TvesSaratha RV,
Indaruta/indaruda = Indrota RV, S'ativaaja ~ vaaja-saati, S'ubandu =
Subandhu RV, --by no means a complete list. Such princely names are found
all over Syria and down to Jerusalem, if I remember correctly, down to 1000
or 900 BC.

>The very few IA appellatives in Hurrian are mostly related to horses. But
>we should not assume that the Hurrians did not possess knowledge of horses
>before the IA influence....

Fine. There are many possible scenarios and you have now explained a very
probable one.
The case seems similar to that of the Dravidians, who also have separate
words for the horse but later on took over "Panjab" vocabulary for parts of
the chariot..

>There is now reason to
>believe that the Hurrians had tamed the horse by 2200 BC, more than seven
>hundred years before the assumed IA influence.

Thanks for the ref.!

>IA royal names in Mittani ... may be the
>result of an exchange of brides between leading Hurrians and an IA (royal?)
>family.

But isn't it just the case that the *male* line has IA names, while their
wives, then > mothers, consistently have Hurrite names? This looks more
like 'throne names' (or fashion), for whatever reason.

> The whole fairy
>tale of Indo-Aryan kings in Syria may boil down to something like this.
>There has been too much speculation based on theories of Aryan superiority;

Certainly. But see below:

>If Mayrhofer "assumes contact a (few) hundred years before c. 1380", this
>is not based on any known facts.

quoting from memory, from his:  Die Indo-Arier im vorderen Orient.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1966, and: Die Arier im vorderen Orient - ein
Mythos? Wien 1974.
Which discussed the sceptical approach of Annemarie Kammenhuber. He is
against "Aryan" domination and assumed influence, one way or the other,
(several) hundred year(s) before 1380 BCE.--- All from memory. Cannot check
at home.

>A hundred years, perhaps, but not a few
>hundred years. We have no indications of such early contacts now that even
>the Nuzi archives are dated to the period 1430-1330.

Again, good to know. All of this becomes important for the RV (below)
which, in my mind at least, seems to go down in age now.

>The names of Hurrian kings and princes in Syria before c. 1500 BC
>are all Hurrian, and the IA appellatives are ... a late phenomenon,
> ... no IA names among the persons belonging to the marianne class at
>Alalakh IV
>(fourteenth century)..,.. the very few IA... there mostly belong to men of
>low class.

These facts combined, don't they just point to IA influence on the higher
level (marriage as you say?) AND the low level (horse trainers, foreign
mercenaries?)

>nothing .. to suggest that IA gods were ever worshipped by the Hurrians.

I always wondered why Mitra, Varuna, Indra and Nasatya (=Ashvin) were
listed as no. 104-108 in the Hittite agreement!  Like an afterthought: "to
be sure, lets include them as well!"

However, Thieme, The 'Aryan' Gods of the Mitanni Treaties. JAOS 80, 1960,
301-17 , has shown that they are OIA, and are listed in this order.

>Are they known as oath gods
>at this early time?

Varuna is typical for oath and truth (Read RV 7.86-88)

>As for Mittani words having a pre-Rgvedic form, I would very much like to
>know which words are meant. Aika-vartanna?

The question of ai and au is up for grabs. Theoretically older than RV, but
we may even discuss this point, as there is some indication that Rgvedic
people still said: daiva for deva, etc. (Long story).

But there are other cases that I actually wanted to ask for from Subrahmanya.
Since I now have to give them below, he should point out to all of us in
INDOLOGY why these words cannot be pre-OIA/pre-Rgvedic:

The important ones include cases such as vaz'anna [vaz'hana] which in the
RV already is > vaahana (cf. Diakonoff 1971: 80 sq)., or  mazda for
[mazdha] which in RV > medha, in Priyamazdha (Bi-ir-ia-ma-as'-da), =
Priyamedha, frequent RV name, cf. Mayrhofer EWA II 358.

>These words
>may be as late as 1350. If they are pre-Rgvedic, this must be an important
>point, but it does not really tell us much about the date of the Rgveda,
>since we might well have to do with a "fringe dialect" with a development
>of its own.

Exactly. As I have written (in press), such data now tend to drag down the
RV a quite bit. The counter-argument, however, could be that the reflexes
in Mitanni could be due to some archaic dialect that survived in NW Iran...
No way to tell. Even then, the preclusion of much earlier influences, as
you detail above, now makes this option much less probable.

In short: if Mitanni has, by 1400 BC, mazda, vaz'hana, then the RV medha,
vaahana is *late*/later. Note that Possehl now wants to bring down the date
of iron as well. If this goes down from c.1200 to, say, 1000 BCE, so goes
the RV. It has no iron, yet.

As always, new evidence (and thanks for that!) opens new avenues. In case,
very old ones; the good old Max Müller with his 1200 BCE date gets
repudiated.

----------

>I am unaware of any OIA loanwords in Kassite. This sounds speculative.
>(Surya again?) Only about a hundred and fifty words are known, and Kassite
>is definitely not an IE language.

Agreed. But there are a few that can be discussed.  The old S'uriyas' and
Bhaga (Bugas')> Do you have arguments against them?
More interestingly Abiratta = Abhiratha, a perosmnal name. Maybe S'ukaniya.
--  I also would like to add: timirias' as horse color, and among the many
horse names : Akriyas' (agriya?), and finally there are a few suspious
names ending in IA -as' etc. (nominatives).

Others certainly have to be scuttled (see the very sceptical Balkan, 1954):
such as S'u/imaliya = Himalayaa (fem.!!)

What do you think about these?
----------

And Subrahmanya, thank you kindly for your indulgence: an old canard is
something like a red herring, but maybe more delectable. Unfortunately,
this particular dead horse now is 60 years old (Friedrich 1940) and may no
longer pass as food for thought. What is your linguitsic  input about the
pre-OIA forms listed above?


Regards, MW<




========================================================
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)
home page:  http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies:  http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs