Ebook: About the Mitanni-Aryan Gods

The Journal of Indo-European Studies. — Spring/Summer 2010. — Volume 38, Number 1 & 2 — pp. 26-40.A number of Indo-Aryan sounding words have been identified in the cuneiform documents of the Mitanni kingdom (1500-1200 BCE). In addition to nouns and adjectives with parallels in Sanskrit this Hurrian-speaking kingdom had kings with Indo-Aryan names and two documents even list the main gods of the Indian pantheon. The article analyzes and tries to explain the phonetic differences between the Indian and the Mitanni Aryan gods. The ending -ssil which has not received a satisfactory explanation so far is accounted for as a Hurrian attempt at rendering the Indo-Aryan dual with Hurrian lexical material: -sini-lla ‘the two of them’. An Indo-Aryan etymology is proposed for the word Mitanni itself on the basis of Sanskrit mith ‘to unite’.