Indo-Aryan words in Hurrian

[Stephen Hodge]

Bjarte Kaldhol wrote

> 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.
I don't have access right now to the reference you provide but I would
like to ask what will probably seem a naive question:  how is the
dating for the Hurrians/Mittani/Kassites fixed ?  I have no problem
with a relative chronology but how is an absolute chronology
determined -- Carbon 14 dating, AMS or even dendrochronology ?   Or is
it fixed from supposed links into Egyptian king-lists ?   If the
latter, what are your views on the hypothesis of several scholars
recently that Egyptian dates for the Middle and New Kingdoms are
erroneous and need to be moved downwards to more recent dates by
several hundred years ?  I know this sounds like the attempts to
redate the RV the other way, but at least in the case of Egypt the
evidence seems fairly compelling.  Ultimately the two questions must
have a bearing on each other vis-a-vis linguistic considerations such
as you have raised.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge


 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
>