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Proto-Indoaryans, Mitanni, Hurrians
Indo-European Problem
Study of the origins and dispersals of and continuity and discontinuity among Proto-Indo-European peoples has engaged a number of scholars over a hundred and fifty years. Two major methods used in the study are: archaeology and language.
Archaeological method and linguistic method have been based on a number of theoretical assumptions which result in differences in interpretations of data.
Indo-European languages have common vocabulary for semantic categories: parts of the body, family relationships and numerals. This is a very strong semantic evidence which led to the postulation of a hypothesis that the original homeland of the people speaking the Indo-European languages should have been in Central Asia with migrations westwards towards Europe and southwards towards Iran and India.
Bronze Age can be dated to ca. 1800 to 700 BC overlapping with the later Iron Age and with the earlier Neolithic/Chalcolithic Age. The chronology is not strict and is not linear in many areas of Asia. An acceptable method has to be found to relate the changes in languages to the changes in culture and technology surmised from archaeological evidence.
"No Proto-Indo-European text exists; their physical remains and material culture cannot be identified without extensive argument, and their geographical location has been the subject of a century and a half of intense yet inconclusive debate...Indo-European is fundamentally a linguistic concept...any cultural (pre)historian has certain obligations to the evidence of comparative linguistics..Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), for example, attempted to divide the languages of Europe into four major groups, each labelled after their word for 'god'. The transparent relationship of what we today call the Romance languages was recognized in the deus group (for example, Latin deus, Italian dio, Spanish dio, French dieu), and contrasted with the Germanic gott (English god, Dutch god, Swedish gud, and so on); Greek theos; and Slavic bog (such as Russian bog, Polish bog and Czech buh)...
"The Assyrian merchants of the nineteenth century BC not only record the names of Indo-European peoples in their texts but make it quite clear that there was also a great body of non-Indo-European-speaking peoples in the region...
"Further to the east, on the fringes of Anatolia and north Syria, lay another major non-Indo-European people, the Hurrians. Hurrian texts maintained in the Hittite archives, coupled with Hurrian loan words in Luwian and the Hurrians' own inscriptions and texts in north Mesopotamia which date as early as the twenty-third century BC, all speak for an additional non-Indo-European presence on the eastern borders of the Indo-Europeans of Anatolia..."(J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth, London, Thames and Hudson, 1989).
"The approaches of the historic and prehistoric archaeologists as well as the anthropologically oriented ones to the problems of culture continuity and discontinuity are strongly influenced by their concepts of the structure of the past, such as the way they conceive past developments in terms of the succession of cultures and civilizations...The past is thought of as a linear development extending from the civilizations of Egypt and Southwest Asia through the civilizations of Greece and Rome to those of the western medieval world (Bernheim 1908: 70-74)...The Latin, Greek, Hittite, Iranian and Indic peoples are placed within the framework of successive civilizations whose validity is established upon a priori historical grounds...It was only following the decipherment of Hittite that these continuities could be pushed into the middle and even the early second millennium BC. This together with the discovery of Indo-Iranian, Proto-Indic, or Mitannian Aryan names in Akkadian and Hurrian texts (Thieme, P. 1960, The 'Aryan Gods' of the Mitanni Treaties, Journal of the American Oriental Society 80: 301-317); Crossland, R.A., 1971, Immigrants from the North. In the Cambridge Ancient History, edited by I.E.S. Edwards, C.J.Gadd and N.G.L. Hammond, 3rd ed., Chapter 27, vol. I, part 2, pp. 824-876. Cambridge: University Press), led many to believe that Greek must extend back to the equally early Myceanaen period. However, it took the decipherment of Linear B by Ventris to convince the last doubters that the Mycenaeans spoke Greek... during the early and middle nineteenth century, the Thomsen succession of Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages became the basis for the development of a structure for the past...
"For the period when the Indo-Europeans are first known in Southwestern Asia, the historically oriented arcaheologist is primarily concerned with twon, temple, palace and cemetery complexes which, with the exception of the cemetery, are missing in Europe. This explains the frequent preoccupation with architecture, painting, sculpture and the significant minor arts, such as vase painting and metal work. Methods are therefore, focussed upon stylistic and iconographic analysis...
"Most archaeologists and linguists assume that the Indo-European languages formed during the Neolithic. A few, such as Kuhn (1935) and Schachermeyr (1955), who have sought an earlier origin, have been shunned by most archaeologists because of the quite different type of evidence available for the Mesolithic and Paleolithic, as well as the widely held linguistic assumptions concerning the context of the formation of Proto-Indo-European... with calibrated radiocarbon dates, it can be shown that the earlist Neolithic is separated from the latest Paleolithic by only 3,000 years in Southwestern Asia...With the Neolithic age, archaeological evidence comes from villages, burials and cemeteries rather than from campsites, rock shelters and caves...The archaeological evidence association with the Indo-Iranians is thin, forcing even archaeologists to support their theories with linguistic and historical evidence. This complex situation enables us to understand the difficulties encountered in the search for an Indo-European homeland in Southeast Europe and adjacent areas of Asia Minor (Palmer 1955), Central Europe and east (Bosch-Gimpera 1961) or on the steppes of southern Russia (Glob 1944: 202-240; Gimbutas 1965, 1970, 1978, 1980)...
"Progress towar the solution of the problems of continuity and discontinuity , which are so important for the Indo-European problem, can only be achieved after the possibilities of diffusion, trade and migration have been weighed against those of transformation" (Klejn, 1977, A Panorama of Theoretical Archaeology, Current Anthropology, 18, 1: 1-42). (Homer L. Thomas, The Indo-Europeans--some historical and theoretical considerations, in: Skomal, Susan Nacev and Edgar C. Polome (eds.), Proto-Indo-European: the archaeology of a linguistic problem, Studies in honor of Marija Gimbutas, Washington DC, Institute for the Study of Man, 1987, pp. 145-164).
The locus of Vedic society and Harappan culture:
Sarasvati Sindhu doabVedic society as evidenced from Rigveda is part urban, but substantially pastoral, maritime, with the knowledge of the use of metals and organized in a ra_s.t.ra composed of assemblies. There are also references to warfare and an extensive elaboration of mythological constructions around the process called yajn~a. From an archaeological perspective, the ceramics found in the Sarasvati-Sindhu doab and also in the areas of the so-called Painted Grey Ware do not have any EXTERNAL parallels and all the cumulative evidence points to an indigenous evolution of pottery types. Archaeology, does not , therefore, support a theory of an invading culture. It should also be noted that the archaeological evidence of the settlement patterns seems to indicate a gradual migration away from the Sarasvati-Sindhu doab towards the Ganga-Yamuna doab and south towards the Gujarat.
"...the entire Indo-Aryan realm (except for Sinhalese) constitutes one enormous dialectical continuum...The speech of each village differs slightly from the next, without loss of mutual intelligibility, all the way from Assam to Afghanistan....Mitanni kingdom...Indo-Iranians appear in northern Syria a full half millennium becore their appearance in western Iran. How did they get there?...To call these Mitanni kings 'Indo-Iranians', however, is to beg an important question...Some have held that these linguistic fragments are specifically Indo-Aryan. Others including Burrow (1955) held they represent undifferentiated Indo-Iranian, before the split between Iranian and Indo-Aryan...An Indo-Aryan identification would demand an earlier dating of the Iranian/Indo-Aryan split; with it have also been associated speculations regarding the route taken by the Aryans to India (e.g., the Asia Minor route...), or, possibly a back migration of Aryans from India. (If the latter, the date of the Aryan settlement of India would have to be moved back far enough to allow not only for them to reach Syria by 1500 BC, but also for their language to have died out by then, leaving only the terminological residue noted...)...the philological evidence alone does not allow an Indian origin of the Aryans...there is the matter of the nature of the common vocabulary shared by Sanskrit with the rest of Indo-European, which points to a more northerly ultimate home...The native Dravidian vocabulary has not been reconstructed. Burrow and Emeneau's Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (1960) only assembles materials for it... The civilization seems to have continued peacefully in Gujarat until a comparatively late period, i.e. 800 BC (Fairservis 1975: 307), after which it dissolved into the subsequent culture, which makes that area one of prime importance in detecting any Harappan influence on Aryan language and culture." (Colin P. Masica, The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Rivers of Vedic India (after A.A. Macdonell, India's Past, Oxford, Clarendon, 1927).
Rigvedic India was an area in the Punjab, an area of the sapta-sindhu (which is called haptahindu in Vendidad, a handbook of the Parsee, the first of 16 holy ands created by Ahuramazda), bounded between the Sindhu and the Sarasvati, bounded on the north by the Hima_laya. This is the same area where Harappan culture was nurtured. India is the only land where the Rigvedic traditions of fire-worship or yajn~a, are cherished even today, in a remarkable evidence of continuity. Rigvedic language is more akin to Sanskrit and other Indian languages than it is to any other language family of Europe.
Sarasvati_ is called saptathi_ (RV. VII, 36,6) and saptasvasa_ (RV. VI.61,10). She was a mighty river which swetp away a ridge of the hills with its mighty waves (RV. VI.61,2) and moved with a thundering roar (RV. VI.61,8). To Sarasvati_ are devoted one complete hymn (RV. VI,61), parts of five hymns (RV. I,3; II,41; VII,95; 96; X,17) and several single verses in praise (RV. I,164,49; VI.52,6; VII,36,6; X.64,9 etc.). "The great king Yaya_ti Na_hus.a ruled on its banks (RV. VII.95,2) and the dynasty of his son Pu_ru continued to rule over the ancestral kingdom for generations (RV. VII.96,2). The Tr.tsus also ruled probably on the southern bank of this river and one verse clearly says that the Tr.tsu king Vadhryas'va got a son Divoda_sa by the favour of Sarasati_ (RV. VI.61,1). It was on its banks that a very large number of Vedic hymns were composed. That is why the Sarasvati_ is called the inspirer of good songs and promoter of good thoughts (RV. I.3,11). The importance of Sarasvati_ was not only political and cultural but also economic and strategic. It is called the prosperer of the five clans (RV. VI.61,12). It is described as a sure defence like a fort of iron and the slayer of the enemy (RV. VII.95,1). With such associations it is no wonder that this river is called holy (s'uci)(RV. VII.95,2), the best of mothers, the best of goddesses (RV. II.41,16) and the dearest among the dear ones (RV. VI.61,10). At the end of a long hymn the poet sums up the feelings of the A_ryas towards this river by praying to it not to let them go away from her fields to places not lovely like them. (RV. VI.61,14). ...In one verse of the Rigveda S'aryan.a_vat is associated with Sus.oma_ river and soma is said to grow there. (RV. VIII.64,11)...S'aryan.a_vat sea was situated in the northern Saptasindhu. (Bhargava, P.L., India in the Vedic Age, Lucknow, The Upper India Publishing House, 1971, pp. 62-63). The Great Epics, Maha_bha_rata and Ra_ma_yan.a show the spread of Vedic culture to the east and the south.
RV. VIII,25,4 (mahanta_ mitra_varun.a_ samra_ja deva_vasura_ ) refers to Mitra and Varun.a as Deva_ (gods) and Asura_ (demons), anticipating a conflict between two sections of the people to be elaborated in the bra_hman.as and pura_n.as: one section worshipped the divinity as Deva and the other as Asura; this is evident from an anecdote in Maha_bha_rata; the king of Devas was Yaya_ti; he had married the daughters of two Asuras: S'armis.t.ha_, daughter of king Vris.aparvan who was a disciple of the priest S'ukra; and Devaya_ni, daugher of the priest Us'anas-S'ukra.
Roots of this Rigvedic India should, therefore, be sought within the Sarasvati-Sindhu doab.
Harappan Cultural Style. (ca. 3000 to 1300 BC). The conventions of building, art style, and technology were remarkably uniform in hundreds of sites. The evidence of writing was only on seals and tablets and inscriptions on copper plates and weapons. Technology had advanced in the areas of weights and measures, brickmaking, in gold, silver, bronze and copper work and in beads of varieties of stones. The underlying basis of the economy was agriculture and animal husbandry; sites are located close to sources of water, preferably in the flood plains of the major rivers, Sindhu and Sarasvati. Only very few large sites, perhaps only four or five, which may be called cities are found.
There is no archaeological or linguistic evidence to assume a dichotomy between the Vedic society and the Harappan cultural style.
his'uwa festival of the Hurrians (similar to the vis-uwa in ancient India to celebrate the solstice?)
"We are told that the chief scribes of UR.MAH.LU, already mentioned as a member of one of these (scribal) families, received orders from queen Puduhepa to search for tablets of Kizzuwatna and produced copies of the ritual for the his'uwa festival as a result...There is a great number of Hurrian gods mentioned in Hittite texts, and many of these are descriptions of cult festivals. Since most texts are fragmentary and, therefore, cannot be dated exactly, we only pick a few significant examples. The texts for the his'uwa festival have just been mentioned. Most revealing is a prayer of king Muwatalli. Already in the invocation of the main gods at the beginning of the text, Hebat occurs. The king then asks the bull S'eris' to intercede for him, and calls him 'Bull of the Weathergod of Hatti', which means that this Hurrian bull had entered the circle of the gods of the capital." (Guterbock, H.G., The Hurrian Element in the Hittite Empire, in: Hoffner, Jr., Harry A. (ed.), Perspectives on Hittite CIvilization: selected writings of Hans Gustav Guterbock, Chicago, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1997)
Proto-Indic
The earliest evidence for an Indic language is found not in India but in the Tigris-Euphrates doab, ca. 1600 BC. (Of course, the Harappan script decipherment will push the evidence of written indic words to ca. 2500 BC). Here was the empire of Mitanni, extending from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Zagros mountains, in conflict with the Hittites in the west and with the Egyptians in the southwest for the control of the Euphrates river. The language of Mitanni was Hurrian; there is, however, a clear evidence of the use of Indic vocabulary in the Mitanni documents.
ila_ni Mi-it-ra as'-s'i-il ila_ni U-ru wa.na-as's'i-el (in another text A.ru-na-as'.s'i-il) in.dar (other text: In-da.ra) ila_ni na-s'a-at-ti-ya-an-na (cf. Winckler, Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft No. 35, 1907, p. 51, s. Boghazkoi-Studien VIII, Leipzig 1923, pp. 32 f., 54 f.) All the four treaty gods are mentioned in one hymn of the Rigveda (RV. 10.125.1).
P. Thieme demonstrated that the gods of the Mitanni treaties are specifically Vedic gods, and that they cannot be Proto-Aryan. Macdonnel is more emphatic: "It is a fact, however, that this particular grouping of the gods Varun.a and Mitra, Indra and Na_satyau, with these forms of their names, can be traced only in the Veda. For this reason I agree with Jacobi, Konow and Hillebrandt in considering these gods to be Indian, Vedic deities and that there is no possible justification for any other view. We shall have to assume that, just as there were Aryan immigrations into India from the west, there must have been isolated migrations back to the west." (Macdonnel, opcit, 1927, p. 805).
References to Varun.a and Mitra in a treaty can be related to interpretations of Varun.a and Mitra as personifications of True-Speech and of Contract. Using Avestic evidence, Meillet (J As., juillet-aout 1907, 143 ff.) established the original nature of God Mitra/Mithra as the personified Contract/Treaty. Vedic mitradruh means 'belying the treaty (the contractual word). Mithra as the god of the contract is also noted in a Middle Iranian source, the Sogdian version of the Vessantara Ja_taka....RV.IX.90.5 is read thus:
matsi soma varun.am matsi mitram matsi_ndram
"Oh Soma, exhilarate (God) True-Speech (Varun.a), exhilarate (God) Contract (Mitra), exhilarate Indra...(and thereby make them fit to exercise their functions). (Paul Thieme, Remarks on the Avestan Hymn to Mithra, in: BSOAS, Vol. XXIII, Part 2, 1960, pp. 265-274).
Pura_n.as refer to the migration of Druhyus to the Mleccha, i.e. foreign countries. In Pali, milekkha means copper.
In the treaty between the Hittites and Mitanni, the Mitanni king swears by: Mi-it-ra (Indic Mitra), Aru-na (Varun.a), In-da-ra (Indra) and Na-sa-at-tiya (Nasatya or As'wins).
A Hittite text on horse-training and chariotry, written by Kikkuli (a Mitanni) uses Indic numerals to indicate the number of turns made by a chariot on a track: aika (India eka 'one'), tera (tri 'three'), panza (panca 'five'), satta (sapta 'seven') and na (nava 'nine').
Opening instructions from the Hittite text on horse-training by Kikkuli the Mitanni. In order to describe Kikkuli's profession, the text employs the Indic word assussanni (Skt. asvasani-). 'Thus (speaks) Kikkuli, the assussanni (the horse-trainer), from the land of Mitanni: When he lets the horses onto the meadow in the autumn, he harnesses them. He lets them trot 3 mails, but he lets them gallop over 7 fields. But on the way back he has them gallop over 10 fields. Then he unharnesses them, provides for them, and they are watered. He brings them into the stable. Then he gives them mixed together 1 handful of wheat, 2 handfuls of barley and 1 handful of hay. They eat this up. As soon as they have finished their fodder, he binds them close to the post.' Archaeological evidence for the horse. Gorgan region southeast of the Caspian shows the first appearance of a domesticated horse about 3000-2250 BC. Surkotada in the Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India has yielded bones of the horse, dated to mid-third millennium BC. Tal-i Iblis in south-central Iran (3500 BC) and Selenkahiyeh in Syria (2400-2000 BC) also attest the presence of the horse. There is a cylinder seal depicting a horse-drawn vehicle excavated from Hissar IIIB. Linked with the evidence of the Mitanni horse-trainer, Kikkuli's horsemanship manual, the migratory route for the Indics would appear to have been through Hissar to Mesopotamia. There is a possibility that the spoked wheel for the chariot was an indigenous development within Mesopotamia, as an evolution from the two-wheeled onager-drawn cart into a spoked-wheel chariot drawn by horses prior to ca. 1600 BC. The incorporation of the indic elements in Mitanni should have taken place centuries prior to 1600 BC.
Horse. "A terracotta figure found by Mackay in his excavations at Mohenjo-daro was identified by him as that of the horse. This identification has been accepted by many but not all. However, in recent years a lot of new light has been thrown on the issue. Lothal has yielded not only a terracotta figure of the horse but also the second right upper molar of that animal. To recall what Bholanath of the Zoological Survey of India has stated, the tooth 'resembles closely with that of the modern horse and has pli-caballian (a minute fold near the base of the spur or protocone) which is a well distinguished character of the cheek of the horse' (in S.R. Rao 1985: 641). Surkotada has yielded quite a few bones of the horse, which have been identified as such not only by A.K. Sharma but also by Sandor Bokonyi, an internationally recognized authority on the anatomy of the horse. To repeat one of his significant observations; 'The occurrence of true horse (equus caballus L.) was evidenced by the enamel pattern of the upper and lower cheek and teeth and by the size and form of incisors and phalanges (toe bones). Since no wild horses lived in India in post-Pleistocene times, the domestic nature of the Surkotada horses in undoubtful.' Horse remains have been identified at Kalibangan too; and Bholanath also states that an earlier collection from Harappa examined by him did contain remains of the true horse. However, no horse-bones have so far been reported from the current excavations at the site. Finally, attention must be drawn to the discovery of terracotta figurines of the horse by Jarrige and his colleagues (in press) in the Harappan levels at Nausharo in Pakistan." (B.B. Lal, 1997, The Earliest Civilization of South Asia, New Dehli, Aryan Books International, pp. 285-286). It is a debatable issue if the appearance of the horse and the chariot can be treated as an ethnic marker for the Indic speaking peoples.
Another Hurrian text from Yorgan Tepe uses Indic words to describe the colour of the horses, for example, babru (Indic babhru 'brown'), parita (palita 'grey') and pinkara (pingala 'reddish'). The Mitanni charioteer is called marya (Indic-Vedic marya 'warrior, young man'). Added to these are a series of names of the noblemen or aristocracy of Mitanni which are clearly Indic. The conclusions are: "an element of Indic-speaking chariot warriors superimposed themselves on a native Hurrian-speaking population to form a ruling dynasty that endured for several centuries...there are also possible (though disputed) Indic traces in the names of a few gods revered by the Kassites (Surias and Marytas: i.e. Su_rya and Maruts)...By the thirteenth century the Mitanni kingdom collapses which sees an end to the Indic presence in Southwestern Asia..." (J.P. Mallory, opcit, 1989, p. 38).
"We cannot reconstruct Proto-Aryan religious terms--and much less Proto-Aryan religious ideas--by simply and naively projecting Rigvedic data into Proto-Aryan times. A reconstruction can be attempted only by a careful confrontation of Vedic and Avestan terminology'. (P. Thieme, 'The 'Aryan' gods of the Mitanni treaties', JAOS, 80, 1960, 301-317). The same conclusion was argued by Sten Konow (The Aryan gods of the Mitani people, Christiania, 1921).
"It is now generally agreed by most authorities on the subject that the Aryan linguistic vestiges in the Near East are to be connected specifically with Indo-Aryan, and not with Iranian, and also that they do not represent a third, independent Aryan group, and are not to be ascribed to the hypothetically reconstructed Proto-Aryan. This conclusion is incorporated in the title of M. Mayrhofer's bibliography of the subject, Die Indo-Arier im alten Vorderasien (Wiesbaden, 1966), and it can now be taken as the commonly accepted view. It is based on the fact that where there is divergence between Iranian and Indo-Aryan, and where such elements appear in the Near Eastern record, the latter always agrees with Indo-Aryan. Such items are aika 'one' and s'uriyas' 'sun' and the colour-names parita-nnu and pinkara-nnu which correspond to Sanskrit palita- 'grey' and pingala 'reddish'
"...the name of the capital of the Mitanni state, Was's'ukanni...we should see in the first member a noun vasu 'wealth', and not an adjective vasu- meaning 'good' as in Iranian (Av. vohu-). In this case the second element is obviously khani- 'mine', the whole meaning 'mine of wealth (i.e. precious metals)', and this explanation provides the motive which attracted those Proto-Indoaryans to this region. It was an age when prospecting for metals, precious or otherwise, was being actively pursued, and the Aryans were as much interested in this activity as anybody else. It is understandable that when it came to their knowledge that a new and large deposit of such materials has been found, it would stimulate them to attempt to get control of that territory...
"...the division of Proto-Aryan into two branches, Indo-Aryan and Iranian, must have taken place before those languages were established in their eventual homes, and not merely be due to developments which took place within each of the two groups after the Indo-Aryans had settled in India and the Iranians in Iran. This conclusion could only be shown to be wrong if it could be shown that the Vedic Indians, having migrated all the way to the Punjab from their earlier home, had then retraced their steps and undertaken yet another migration in the direction of the Near East. Konow was prepared to believe this, but there is no evidence for it, and it seems that a theory involving such complication can be safely ignored...A further conclusion from this is that the date of the Proto-Aryan period must be pushed back further than has often been thought, and probably it cannot be brought down below 2000 BC, at the latest.
"...The identification of the Aryan traces in the Near East as Proto-Indoaryan has, in Thieme's words, 'considerable historical implications'...
"...Sarasvati_ is in the first place the Proto-Indoaryan name of the river in Iran, which after the migration was transferred to the river in India. The Iranian name (haraxvaiti_) is a loan word from Proto-Indoaryan, with a substitution of h- for s-, occurring also in hindu-..Another case is the river name sarayu_, which was transferred from Iran (haraiva-/haro_yu_) to a river in North-West India, and then again from there to a tributary of the Ganges in eastern India...
"...Of the four divine names mentioned in the Mitanni treaty...Varun.a would remain exclusively Vedic...There is, however, no reason to believe that Indra and Na_satya ever belonged to the Iranian religious tradition...They are gods which were being worshipped by the Proto-Indoaryans in eastern Iran when Iranians gook over the country...The geographical horizon of the Avesta is almost exclusively eastern Iranian...but eventually the defences of the Proto-Indoaryans to the west were overcome, and this was followed by massive Iranian immigration into central and western Iran...
"The usually accepted date of Zoroaster is based on a tradition dating from Sasanian times which places him 258 years before Alexander...very influential scholars have adopted it, notably A. Meillet in 1925 and W.B. Henning in 1951 (A. Meillet, Trois conferences sur les Ga_tha_s de l'Avesta, Paris, 1925; W.B. Henning, Zoroaster)...The conclusion that the old Yas'ts and in particular the Fravardin Yas't are to be dated before the migration of the Iranians to central and western Iran provides a basis for calculating the date of Zoroaster, since we can begin from the earliest mention of the Medes and Persians in the Assyrian annals, which occurs in the second half of the ninth century BC (Parsua 844 BC, Madai 836 BC)...If we take the hundred years between Zoroaster and Sae_na and add them to the period represented by the four generations from Sae_na to Utayutay, we arrive at a period of 200 years at the very minimum between Zoroaster and the composition of the Yast. Adding this to the date 900 BC suggested above as the time of the movement west of the Iranians, we obtain 1100 BC as the lowest possible date for the founding of the Zoroastrian religion...We may conclude the Iranian conquest of eastern Iran was an event that took place not later than the fourteenth century BC and it thus coincided with the period when the Proto-Indoaryans had their furthest extension westwards. At this time large numbers of Indo-Aryans had migrated into India, and as a result of these two migrations the position of the Proto-Indoaryans in their original base in eastern Iran must have been considerably weakened, thus providing the Iranians with an opportunity to move in and take over.
"...Since the Proto-intoaryans must have been in north-western Iran in order to reach the Mitanni country, it will not be unreasonable to suggest an Indo-Aryan etymology for this name (Lake Urmiya), if one is available. Such an etymology is available if we compare Skt. u_rmi- 'wave' and u_rmya- 'undulating, wavy' which would provide a suitable descriptive name for the lake. This is a case where the phonology of Indo-Aryan and Iranian have diverged quite widely (cf. Av. varemi- 'wave') and it is interesting that the name of this lake, if the above etymology is correct, should go so clearly with Indo-Aryan." (T. Burrow, The Proto-Indoaryans, JRAS, 1973, No.2)
Hurrian
In Mundarica, hor means a 'man'. In Tamil, kor-r-am means 'victory, power, sovereignty'.
"The major Semitic languages, other than Akkadian, derive their usual word for 'free' from the root |h.rr. Vullers, in his article 'Uber die Rassenfarben in der arabischen Literatur' (Centenario della nascita di Michele Amari I, Palermo, 1910, 84-95), connected this with |h.rr, 'hot, buring', and with |h.wr, 'white'. The underlying concept, Vullers argued, has to do with fire and light...Vullers imagined the ancient history of the Near East to have been similar to that of India where the (presumably) dark-skinned original population was subjugated by Aryan invaders from the North. There is, however, no evidence for such a state of affairs in the lands inhabited by Semitic speaking peoples. Nonetheless, and despite the blatant racism underlying Vuller's whole line of argumentation, one cannot rule out some sort of semantic connection between the concepts 'white/bright/light' and 'free/noble'... The other occurrences of |h.rr in Achaemenian Aramaic are the h.ry yhwdy (or yhwd), the 'freemen/nobles of the Jews/Judaea', in two documents from Elephantine (A. Cowley, Aramaic papyri of the fifth century BC, Oxford, 1923, no. 30: 19, 31:18)...Persian wuzurga_n ud a_za_da_n, 'magnates and nobles', corresponds to Syriac rawrba_ne_ w-h.e_re_, but h.e_re_, 'nobles' occurs by itself in entirely non-Persian contexts, see for example the bnay h.e_re_ of Nagra_n (South Arabia) who are mentioned repeatedly in the Book of the Himyarites. (A. Moberg, The book of the Himyarites, Lund, 1924). Hebrew h.o_ri_m occurs 13 times in the Old Testament...In all of these instances the English Authorised Bible has 'nobles' and in most cases we clearly have to do with dignitaries of some sort (e.g. the 'nobles and rulers', ha-h.o_ri_m we-ham-mega_ni_m, in Neh. 2,4,4,5,7)...For Arabic h.urr the dictionaries give (1) 'free'; (2) 'liberal, generous, frank, etc.'; (3) 'noble'.. Ancient South Arabian has h.r, plural, 'h.rr, feminine plural, 'h.rrt, 'freeman/woman'...then the special development represented by Geez h.ar(r)a_wi_, 'soldier', and h.ar(r)a_, 'troops', which do not seem to have left any traces in the modern Ethiopic languages." (Francois de Blois, 'Freemen' and 'Nobles' in Iranian and Semitic Languages, JRAS, 1985, No. 1).
Enumerating gods and goddesses in treaties
"There was a tendency to enumerate a maximum of gods and goddesses able to safeguard the implementation of oaths...An interesting example is the list of deities in the treaty between Suppiluliumas, king of the Hittites, and S'attiwazza, king of Mitanni: from the Hittite side the gods of the empire are invoked...Most of them are Hattic but some are Indo-European (thus, along with the Hattic Sun-goddess of Arinna the Hittito-Luwian Sun-god is also mentioned), or Hurrian (thus, the Thunderer-god has been identified with the Hurrian Tes's'ob...and by the Hurrian mountain-gods 'south and north' (Nanni and Hazzi); moreover included in the list are seventeen Thunderer-gods, differentiated either according to the sphere of life which each of them patronizes or according to their places of worship...From the Mitannian side the deities are divided into three groups: (a) the gods of Kizzuwadna, (b) the gods, presumably of Harra_n (anyway, Semitic gods), (c) Mitanian gods proper...Group (c) includes also a mention of certain Indo-Iranian gods (probably protectors of the dynasty): there is a Hurrian sentence wedged into the Akkadian text: 'the Mithraic gods, the Varunian (?!) gods (the original has 'Urwanian (or 'Arunian') gods'; Urwana- and Aruna- are hard to explain from the Hurrian), Indra, the gods Na_satya'. Further, it includes a number of Akkadian gods firmly rooted in most Hurrian pantheons." (Diakonoff, I.M., Evidence on the Ethnic Division of the Hurrians, in: M.A. Morrison and D.I. Owen (Eds.), Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1981pp. 77-89).
The oldest cuneiform spelling is Ma-i-ta-ni, used by S'uttarna I (S. Smith in Antiquaries Journal XIX 42); later the name is written variously as Mi-i-it-ta-a-an-ni, Mi-i-it-ta-an-ni, Mi-i-ta-a-an-(ni), Mi-i-ta-an-ni; the Egyptian form Mitn is found in inscriptions of Thutmose III (1490-1436). The state of Mitanni was populated mostly by Hurrians and was ruled by kings whose names indicate that they had Indo-Aryan origin. The nobility, marianni, were also Hurrians. Tus'ratta called himself 'the Hurrian king'. Bogazkoy documents refer to the people of Mittanni as Hurrian. In the first half of the first millennium BC, Hurrians are restricted to the area between northern Mesopotamia and Lake Van.
In the ancient Near East, the custom was to name (first-born?) children after their grandparents. This custom is also well-known in ancient India. In Tamil language, pe_ran- (lit. the one having the same name) means a grandson. (Ignace J. Gelb, 1944, Hurrians and Subarians, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization No. 22, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, p. 79).
Hurrians are only one among several ethno-linguistic groups present in significant numbers in Mesopotamia in early second millennium BC. In Hurrian, huradi means a soldier; in the neo-Assyrian period, a verb hara_du 'to keep watch' was perhaps derived from it. Many persons with Hurrian names are listed as having occupations: scribes, chariot-builders, leather-workers, farmers (is's'akku_), fisherman, weavers, and musicians (naru_). For over a century (c. 1350-1225 BC), Hurrians formed a notable minority within the population of Babylonia, particularly in the south central area around Nippur. (J.A. Brinkman, Hurrians in Babylonia in the Late Second Millennium BC), in: M.A. Morrison and D.I. Owen (Eds.), Studies on the Civilization and Culture of Nuzi and the Hurrians, Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Indiana, 1981).
Aryan names found in Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine are attributed to Mitanni influence: s'uvardata (*svarda_ta 'given by heaven'; s'atuara (*satvata = satvan 'powerful, victorious: a warrior), artamanya (r.tamanya 'thinking on th elaw'), biridas'va (vr.ddha_s'va 'possessing large horses') biryawa_za (vi_ryava_ja 'having the prize of valour'), indarota (indrota (RV) 'helped by Indra), s'ubandu (subandhu). In the Kassite documents there is a list of names of gods with Babylonian equivalents: s'urias' (rendered s'amas') equated with Sanskrit 'su_rya. Maruttas' the war god (rendered En-urta) is compared with Sanskrit marut. Among the kings of the Kassite dynasty (ca. 1750-1170, apparently originating in the mountainous regions of western Iran) is a king names abirattas' (abhi-ratha 'facing chariots (in batle)'. (T. Burrow, The Sanskrit Language, London, Faber and Faber, 1955).
Mitanni glyptic art tradition has parallels only in Mesopotamian and Harappan
The second millennium cylinder seals of Mitanni, both from east and west of the Mitanni empire, i.e. from Nuzi and Alalakh, show glyptic art motifs of Babylonia, either directly or through what is called Syrian glyptic.
The art on cylinder seals of the Mitanni is an appropriation of the conventions of their adopted homeland, Mesopotamia, from the late third to the late second millennium BC. and paralleled in the cylinder seals of the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization. In Mitanni, the lion is the main opponent in the contest motifs of all periods. Leopard becomes an opponent in the late period in Mesopotamia. The lion's original victim in the conflict between the wild and the domesticated is the bull. It is the bull which the hero is called upon to protect. Later, the bull also becomes an opponent.
Cylinder seal impressions: (a) Nuzi (D. Stein); (b) Ugarit (Schaeffer-Forrer 1983); (c) Alalakh (Collon 1982); (d) Alalakh (Collon 1982); (e) Nuzi (D. Stein); (f) Nuzi (D.Stein); (g) Ugarit (Schaeffer-Forrer 1983); (h) Alalakh (Collon 1982). The styles are: juxtaposed antelope, humans and trees framed by geometric patters. The styles have prehistoric roots in Mesopotamia and glyphs such as an antelope with its head turned, jointed animal heads are also seen in Harappan inscription motifs.
Cylinder seal impression of Idrimi of Alalakh (Collon 1975); Legend: Idrimi, servant of IM; the seal was used by Idrimi's son, Niqmepa. Secondary scenes of opposing animals and dimunitive motifs with wings are on superimposed registers divided by a spiral (guilloche) pattern. Cylinder seal impression of Ithia, son of Kipi-tes's'up (Drawn by D. Stein); Legend: Ithia, king of Arrapha, son of Kipi-tes's'up; this is noted as early eastern court style: full-scale figures interspersed with filler motifs. Cylinder seal of Tehes'-atal, the scribe (British Museum); Legend: Zabazuna, strong king: Tehes'-atal, the scribe, is your servant). The seal is modelled on Ur III presentation scenes of the 'Arad-zu' type, in which a worshipper stands before the seated king. On this seal, the king is seated on a throne rather tan the usual padded stool, one of the worshippers is not bareheaded and neither raises his right hand, as on the metropolitan prototypes. (Diana L. Stein, 'Art and Architecture', in: Gernot Wilhelm, 1989, The Hurrians, trans. by Jennifer Barnes, Warminster, Aris and Phillips Ltd.). Lapis lazuli Cylinder seal of Zardamu, King of Karahar (British Museum); Karhar is on upper Diya_la near the Zagros foothills; Legend: Zardamu, Sun-God of his land; beloved of Nergal, his god; Annunitum, his mother; S'ul-pae, his...; [of DN], his...; En-sig-nun, who walks on his right; ...of S'amas', his? Tammuz; strong king, king of Karahar and king of the Four Parts, spouse of Is'tar. The iconography harks back to the famous victory stele of Naram-suen in the Louvre. "In the tradition set by this Akkadian king and revived by the rulers of the Ur III Dynasty, Zardamu describes himself as divine king of the Four Quarters of the Earth (Sollberger 1980) and depicts himself in ascending posture, trampling on his fallen enemy. Cylinder seal impression of S'uttarna, son of Kirta (Collon, 1975); Tell Atchana (Alalakh IV), Turkey. Impressions on tablets AT 13,14. Legend: Suttarna, son of Kirta, King of Maittani; two lions are defeated by a central single human-headed lion-demon in bird costume; worn and recut, the seal is used as a dynastic emblem by Saus'tatar in mid second millennium BC; two tablets found in Alalakh which record judicial decisions taken by Saushtatar are authenticated with the 'dynastic seal', which bears the legend' S'uttarna, son of Kirta, king of Maitani'. The seal reflects the style of Post Akkadian and Ur III periods (Collon 1975). "The contest scene, first introduced as a frieze of overlapping figures during the Early Dynastic period, is epitomized at the height of the Akkadian period as a symmetrically composed conflict between balanced pairs of protagonists. Long associated with kingship, this theme developed into the three-figured struggle depicted on the seal of S'uttarna, in which an animal victim is pitted against two human assailants (Collon 1982: 111). The seal was used as a dynastic seal by Saushtatar of Mitanni in about 1450 BC; it was probably originally cut in the late 3rd millennium BC but was subsequently recut along the lines of the original design and a new inscription was added. Antakya and BM; Collon, 1975, No. 230.
Towards the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, a new material for seals arrived. This was sintered quartz, also known as composition (or, less accurately, as faience, frit or paste). This composition is often used in the beads and seals of the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization. This opaque material, which was easy to cut and could be fired and glazed, made it possible to mass-produce seals. BM 89315; haematite; Frankfort, 1939, Pl. XXXIa. This is an Old Babylonian seal depicting the king with a mace between two suppliant goddesses, to which Mitannian figures have been added, together with a two-register scene based on Syrian iconography (Collon, 1987, Fig. 268).
Cylinder seal impression: Nuzi (Drawn by D. Stein); Alalakh (Collon, 1982). Hunting scenes with the motifs scattered freely in the field. Cylinder seal impression: Ugarit (Schaeffer-Forrer 1983)--contest, hunting scenes; Alalakh (Collon 1982)--a register of animals in a row above a row of worshippers; two antelopes in opposition, a standing lion; Nuzi--person seated on a throne in front of a standing lion, a row of animals on top register, antelope? (Drawn by D. Stein) 
Cylinder seal impression of Ithi-tes's'up, son of Kipi-tes's'up; Nuzi, Iraq. Impression on property decree. Legend: Ithi-Teshub, son of Kip-Teshub, king of Arrapha (Kirkuk), rolls out this seal on (a tablet concerning) a legal decision about fields and houses. For evermore let no-one break (the tablet). 5.1 cm.; (D. Stein; Collon, 1987, Fig. 269). The second seal of Ithi-Tes's'up displays many demons and deities which typify the late court style at Nuzi. Divided here on two levels, the demonic figures composed of lion, fish, bird, scorpion, snake and hina elements, have been interpreted as creatures of the netherworld (Porada 1979). The design is comparable to the design on Saushtatar's seal. Nuzi lay in the territory of Arappha.
A similar design appears on the seal found near Khorsabad (Dur Sharrukin), Iraq. BM 89819 (Badger Coll. 1853); pink and white jasper; Wiseman, 1959, Pl. 51; Collon, 1987, Fig. 270.
(a) Cylinder seal impression of Pai-tes's'up (D. Stein); (b) Cylinder seal impression of an administrator (D.Stein); (c) Cylinder seal impression of Zuja, son of Tarmi-Tes's'up (D.Stein). These are in the ancient tradition of Early Dynastic and Akkadian designs (a) figural bands; (b) heraldic groups of predator and prey; (c) antithetic pairs flanking the winged disk-standard (this is a new Mitannian feature). Tes's'up is the Storm God who stands on a lion-dragon mount and holds a triple-pronged lightning fork. Cylinder seal impression of Niqmepa or Ilimilimma (Collon 1975); Legend: ...(?), Niqmepa. The heraldic composition of Saus'tatar's seal occurs at Alalakh on this seal of Niqmepa or his son, Ilimilimma. Urkesh, norther Mesopotamian city; bronze lion protome; New York, Meropolitan Museum of Art; two bronze lion protomes protected the foundation tablets of the temple dedicated to Nerigal by the Hurrian king, Tis'ata, end of third millennium BC; inspiration seems to be from the Mesopotamian tradition of lion representation, particularly in Akkadian art.
"Although hurlili constitutes a linguistic definition, and is basically a self-descriptive term, that corresponded to one in the Mitanni letter itself (hurwohe, hurrohe 'Hurrian'), several scholars went along with Ungnad's suggestion and called the language 'Subarian' after the place name Subartu found in Babylonian (Ungnad 1915, 1923, 1936: 133ff.). Since the language is already attested in proper names in the Ur III period (Hommel 1913) and earlier (Thureau-Dangin 1912), but the name Hurrian itself only since the Old Hittite period, Ungnad wanted to keep the word 'Hurrian' for the 'Subarian' of the Bogazkoy texts, even though he himself discovered that there was no essential difference between 'Hurrian' in this sense and 'Subarian' of the Mitanni letter...The excavations in Hattus'a, Mari, Ugarit, and Emar yielded new Hurrian texts...and the roster of Hurrian proper names rose into the thousands as a result of material uncovered in Nuzi, Kurruhanni, Alalakh, Ugarit, and many other places...One particularly extreme position was adopted by Ungnad (1936), who considered them to be the oldest ethnic substratum of Mesopotamia and of prime importance in post-neolithic culture..A new approach to the subject was postulated by I.J.Gelb, who proposed a clear-cut distinction between Hurrians and Subarians. In his view, the latter had been the linguistic and ethnic substratum of northern Mesopotamia since earliest times, while the former were merely late arrivals, a view shared by Speiser... (Gelb 1944)...Undue importance has long been attached to the historical significance, still controversial today, of the groups speaking Indo-Aryan, the origin of a whole range of names and appellatives which appear from the 15th century BC onwards in texts from the Hurrian Mitanni kingdom and its political and cultural spheres of influence. Investigations into this specialist area within Hurrian studies have been charted by M. Mayrhofer (1966, 1974) in the form of an analytical Bibliography... the question of a possible prehistoric migration, perhaps from the other side of the Caspian Sea (Kammenhuber 1977, 1978: 214), must remain a matter for speculation until new sources come to light...Hurrians may be presumed to have been in the Near East from early times on the basis of the old Sumerian craft-word ta/ibira, 'copper worker', for which convincing proof of a Hurrian source can be adduced (Otten 1984, Wilhelm 1988). Atal-s'en describes himself as the son of one S'atar-mat, otherwise unknown, whose name is also Hurrian. The rule of Atal-s'en cannot be dated with certainty, but probably belongs to the end of the Gutian period (ca. 2090-2048 BC), or into the first decades of t
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