more on Hurrite/IA

[Michael Witzel]

continued:

MW:
>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!"


Yaroslav Vassilkov:
>> ....a typological parallel : The basic idea is obvious - the "national"
>>gods of all the
participants in the raid had to be mentioned in order to give nobody a
pretext for breaking  the treaty. Could not the appearance of OIA names
(among Hurrian ones) in Near Eastern treaties be due to similar reasons?<<

Agreed. NB the oath of those fighting for Ludwig/Louis?, grandson? of
Charlemagne was read out to all and sworn before battle both in Old French
and Old High German... just to make sure that all were bound to it...

>> oath gods
>Varuna is typical for oath and truth.
>And was not Mitra too connected with agreement, oath, ordalia and so on?

Certainly, though not at the *universal* level as Varuna, but on a tribal
level, and that can of course be reconstructed for IIr. (Mitra/Mithra).
cf. latest,  Brereton, J. P.  1981. The Rgvedic Adityas. New Haven.

(IIr., just like Aryaman/Airiiaman, and Bhaga / Baga > O.Slav. bog-).

===============================================================


Finally,

Subrahmanya:
who puts a lot of new questions, but doesn't answer the one why there can
be about pre-Rgvedic words in Mitanni, which he started out with.

We may agree with  Rajesh Kocchar:
>>"You should accept good knowledge from anybody,even a "lowly" person.
>>Just as nobody will not pick up gold even if it were lying in an impure
>>place."
The moral is:While reading other people's posting.look for a nugget of
wisdom,not for impurity.<<

However, just occasionally we should expect, instead of spit and run, some
answers. So, what to do with clearly wrong statements and just more and
more  questions such as :

> Our image of OIA is just from the vedas.
>The first snap shot of any colloqial indic form is from 400 BC.

Long before 400 BCE, the Brahmana texts (and AV 15) are in the *colloquial*
speech of the educated Brahmins (different from the "dialect" of the gods
the same Brahmins use inthe same Brahman texts when they make the gods
speak --not just in Mantras!--, but also that of women, and others).

>Its some what an artificial assumption that till 400 BC
>only vedic or classical sanskrit was spoken and no sound changes occured.

Nobody says that. RV jyotis, if maintained, or Panini's word for 'drink'
(mayira?, cannot remember) are the proof. (see B. Oguibenine's post).

>If sapta->satta or v->b is a common sound change why should it be restricted
to just MIA

who says so? Even in India, v > b is typical only for the more eastern
languages, while the more western ones keep v, from Kashmiri to Marathi.


>such changes could have happened many tim>es eg it does seem to be happening
>in mitanni.

?? which language does not change?

> Is this change so natural?

?? There is no 'natural sound change'. Differs per language, timeframe,
region etc etc,

> mordern indian languages are full of geminates

This confuses the development from OIA > MIA with that from MIA  > NIA

> or stops like in satta showing a tendency to preserve the meter of a word
Meter? ok. We know about prosodic changes in MIA, see Pischel's Pkt gramar
etc etc

>What about mordern kurdish dialects armenian turkish etc
>were such stops in hurrian due to sumerian/akkadian influence. What about
>elamite?
>arabic does have such stops but not as much as tamil or panjabi I think.

Why not Hattic, Hittite, Homeric or Eskimo? :-)




========================================================
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