Indo-Aryan words in Hurrian

[Bjarte Kaldhol]

Dear listmembers,

I am very grateful to Michael Witzel for his clarifications, but there seem
to be 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) 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.

Also, there are not "many" IA names in Hurrian - there is just a handful of
(possible) IA names among the many thousands (5000?) of known Hurrian
names. 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.

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. The vocabulary related to horses and chariots is
Hurrian, except for some Hurrianized words for colour and the well known
words used in the late Kikkuli text (aika-vartanna, tera-vartanna,
panza-vartanna, satta-vartanna, na-vartanna, etc.). 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. See Bibliotheca
Mesopotamica, Vol. 26, URKESH AND THE HURRIANS, p. 63-74 and 145-166.

While it is true that we do not take royal names from horse trainers, the
IA royal names in Mittani (this is the preferred spelling today) may be the
result of an exchange of brides between leading Hurrians and an IA (royal?)
family somewhere outside Syria. Just as Hurrian kings sent their daughters
to Egypt, Indo-Aryan chieftains (who sold horses to the Hurrians?) might
have sent a daughter or two to a Hurrian court. A Hurrian queen of IA
descent might have wanted her sons to have familiar-sounding names, and
this tradition might have continued for a few generations. 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;
an example is what I recently found in a German Atlas der Weltgeschichte:
"Im 2. Jt. Einwanderung der Churriter aus der Gegend des Wan-Sees in das
noerdl. Mesopotamien... Ueberall bilden sie eine Oberschicht...
Ueberlegenheit im Kampf durch pferdebespannte Streitwagen... Bei der
arischen Oberschicht werden die ind. Goetter Indra, Mitra und Varuna
verehrt..." And in Cornelius' GESCHICHTE DER HETHITER, Darmstadt 1973 (!),
p. 96: "Und ueberhaupt hat die arische Fuehrung den Churritern erst den
Schwung gegeben, der sie zu einer geschichtswirksamen Nation geformt
hat..."

If Mayrhofer "assumes contact a (few) hundred years before c. 1380", this
is not based on any known facts. 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 (Diana Stein, ZA 79,
1989). The names of Hurrian kings and princes in Syria before c. 1500 BC
are all Hurrian, and the IA appellatives are all, as far as I know, from
the fourteenth century, that is, they are probably a late phenomenon,
related to horsetraining, or, in one case (maninne) to jewellery. There are
no IA names among the persons belonging to the marianne class at Alalakh IV
(fourteenth century). On the contrary, the very few IA (or rather,
quasi-IA) names found there mostly belong to men of low class. This is a
fact which has been largely ignored. There was probably no IA aristocracy
at any time in the Mittani empire, and there is nothing (no temples, for
instance!) to suggest that IA gods were ever worshipped by the Hurrians.
Tu$ratta's gods were Te$$ub and $au$ka. The mention of Midra$$el,
Uruwana$$el/Aruna$$il, Indara/Indar, and Na$attiyanna in late Hurro-Hittite
texts is therefore enigmatic. Is it absolutely certain that these gods are
Indo-Aryan? Are their names Aryan? Etymologies? Are they known as oath gods
at this early time?

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

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.

Best wishes,
Bjarte Kaldhol