Indo-Aryan words in Hurrian

[Bjarte Kaldhol]

Dear listmembers,

I just received Ilse Wegner's new Hurrian grammar, EINFUEHRUNG IN DIE
HURRITISCHE SPRACHE, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2000. The older grammars by
Speiser, Bush and Diakonov are very much out of date, though still useful,
especially if read together and compared.

I would like to study this updated - and badly needed! - grammar before
continuing my discussion on the list. After a cursory reading I could find
only two (Hurrianized) IA words among the many hundred discussed in this
grammar - namely mariannardi and faduranni, both found in one text, the
Mittani Letter. In genuine Hurrian texts, no IA appellatives are found
except these two, as far as I know. Most of the appellatives discussed so
often by outsiders are found in one and the same non-Hurrian text, a
treatise on hippology written in Hittite by a Hurrian, Kikkuli, about 1350
BC. A few others are found in Akkadian texts, always Hurrianized and with
Akkadian endings. This perspective should be kept in mind.

I also had a chance to reread the texts from Tell Brak, the Hurrian
Nawar/Nagar ("Pasture", not Nagara, i hope!), a city in the Mittani
heartland, perhaps not far from the lost Wa$$ukkanni. There are no IA
appellatives in these texts, as expected, and apart from the names of the
kings Tu$ratta and his brother Arda$$umara (with Sau$tattar and his father
mentioned in a seal), all names (about thirty) seem to be Hurrian. However,
one Indarutti/Intarutti has a name that might be connected to Indra, though
the structure of the name seems to be Hurrian. He is probably a common man,
since no title or class is mentioned. One of the letters is in Hurrian, but
unfortunately it is badly damaged. It appears to contain two unknown place
names: Kusam and Satayam. Have these names been discussed by Indologists?

Best wishes,
Bjarte Kaldhol