Evidence for the OIT Beyond the Mitanni?
Shrikant G. Talageri
I have been sent (obviously not by the writer himself) the copy of an article, "Evidence of Indo-Aryan dialect in 10 Minoan Linear A inscriptions and Minoan Indo-Aryan etymologies of 16 Greek words" written by a western linguistic scholar Geoffrey Caveney, who is engaged in deciphering the Linear A inscriptions in Crete, dating from "the 17 th century BCE (i.e., between 1700 and 1600 BCE)":
https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/ejvs/article/view/19770
The scholar is also the author of the following articles, roughly on the same subject, found on academia.edu.:
https://www.academia.edu/83578817/Minoan_Indo_Aryan_etymologies_of_17_Greek_words
Now let me state at the very outset that I have no pretensions to any specialized knowledge or skills in the subject of deciphering or decoding unknown scripts and alphabets, which is why I have never even dreamt of making any attempts to try my hand at the very vital (but almost impossible?) task of trying to decipher the Harappan script. And likewise, I do not claim any expertise in the task of trying to judge or evaluate the validity of attempts by other scholars to attempt such decipherments and decoding. Hence whatever I am writing in this article is my analysis of what these papers show if they are indeed right in deciphering the language of the Minoan Linear A inscriptions as Indo-Aryan, without committing myself to any judgment as to whether or not the articles are actually right in their conclusions. Needless to say, I would be very happy indeed if they are right, for obvious reasons, but I am not myself making that claim; and will await the reactions of other scholars, more experienced (or claiming to be more experienced) in this particular field than I am, before moving further ahead myself.
This preliminary assessment is divided into two parts:
A. The Mitanni Evidence.
B. The Minoan Linear A Evidence?
A. The Mitanni Evidence.
As the first paper above points out, the Mitanni inscriptions already show that Indo-Aryans had migrated to West Asia at some point of time by at least the early first half of the second millennium BCE (or even earlier), and as I have repeatedly shown, these were Vedic Indo-Aryans of the post-Old-Rigveda period (i.e. from the period and area of composition of the New Rigveda). To copy-paste from my latest article "FINAL VERSION OF THE CHRONOLOGICAL GULF BETWEEN THE OLD RIGVEDA AND THE NEW RIGVEDA":
The first and most important point is that the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda clearly represent two different eras. The New Rigveda, as we saw, shares a vast common cultural heritage with two different textual streams found outside India: the Avesta and the Mitanni inscriptions. Name types, as I elaborated in TALAGERI 2008:4-5, constitute a very basic indicator of the chronological era and heritage and ethos of any culture, and these three distinct data-bases (the New Rigveda, the Avesta and the Mitanni inscriptions) from three distinct areas (northwestern India, Afghanistan-Central Asia, and West Asia respectively), share a very large common heritage of name types which covers the names of the composers of 300 of the 686 hymns in the New Rigveda, most of the most prominent names in the Avesta, and most of the Indo-Aryan Mitanni king names in the carbon-dated records of West Asia (and Egypt) going back beyond 1500 BCE.
The Old Rigveda (geographically located to the east of the New Rigveda) stands completely aloof from this common heritage (found not only in the composer names in the New Rigveda, but also in multiple references within the hymns of the New Rigveda, and which continues in post-Rigvedic texts), and very clearly represents a very much earlier, and eastern, era and phase of the Rigveda. Exactly how much earlier can only be gauged from the fact that this heritage must have developed in full in the area of the New Rigveda (stretching out from westernmost U.P. within North India to Afghanistan) before being taken out by emigrants all the way into West Asia, where, centuries after their arrival there, it was represented in the names of the Mitanni kings recorded from 1500 BCE and in the proto-Mitanni-influenced Kassites in 1750 BCE!
[The Mitanni heritage, recorded after 1500 BCE, is described by Mallory as "little more than the residue of a dead language in Hurrian, and that the symbiosis that produced the Mitanni may have taken place centuries earlier" (MALLORY 1989:42), and by Witzel as as the "remnants" of Indo-Aryan in the Hurrite language of the Mitanni (WITZEL 2005:361)].
An extremely significant aspect of the New Rigveda is the spurt in trade and commerce, evidenced by countless references to different trades, occupations and professions, and the root word √vaṇij. One single word which puts the whole picture in a nutshell is the word maṇi (bead, ornament):
i) It is found just twice in the New Rigveda, 78 times in the Atharvaveda, and countless times throughout the subsequent Vedic and Sanskrit literature; and is an extremely common and popular word in all modern Indo-Aryan languages, and in all non-IE languages influenced by Sanskrit.
ii) It is found in the Avesta, and is the only known common Sanskrit word recorded in the Mitanni records (outside the well-known list of personal names, Gods, numbers and horce-racing-related words).
iii) Bead-making was one of the most prolific of industries in the Mature-Harappan=New-Rigvedic civilization, and the evidence of trade-relations between the Mature Harappan civilization and the Babylonian civilization is also prolific.
iv) And the New Rigveda records two Babylonian words (manā, a unit of measure, and bekanāṭa, money-lender) connected with trade and commerce.
B. The Minoan Linear A Evidence?
The evidence from the Minoan Linear A inscriptions quoted by Caveney goes beyond the Mitanni evidence in three ways:
1. Geographically it is further to the west, in Crete, between Europe proper and Asia proper, while the Mitanni evidence is mainly restricted to Syria-Iraq (though extending into Palestine and Egypt).
2. Chronologically, the carbon-dated recorded inscriptions go back earlier, right into the seventeenth century BCE, while the Mitanni evidence is mainly from 1500 BCE onwards.
3. It consists (as per the author) of actual inscriptions in a form of Indo-Aryan, while the Mitanni evidence is based on Indo-Aryan words embedded into non-IE texts and in the names of the Mitanni kings in various king lists.
As this is only a tentative and preliminary assessment of the Minoan Linear A evidence presented by the author, and a very short one, I will only make the following points: if the author's analysis is correct, this produces much stronger (and earlier) evidence of the emigration of Indo-Aryan groups westwards from the area of the New Rigveda (westernmost Uttar Pradesh to Afghanistan), and provides even stronger evidence for the OIT.
To begin with, the author himself tells us at the beginning of the first article above: "Please note: This hypothesis does not claim that the Indo-Aryan Mitanni rulers themselves migrated farther west to Crete. Rather, the Indo-Aryans who migrated to Crete would have represented an earlier wave of westward Indo-Aryan migration, preceding the arrival of the Mitanni rulers". So: he practically classifies these Cretan/Minoan Indo-Aryans as being much earlier migrants in comparison with the Mitanni.
Secondly, he tells us: "The most critical prefatory point to emphasize, before presenting the interpretation and analysis of the 10 Linear A inscriptions themselves, is the following: It is unavoidable and inevitable that certain words and morphemes (meaningful parts of words) in the Linear A inscriptions must be compared with certain Sanskrit words and morphemes, not all of which can be found attested in the Rigveda, the oldest Sanskrit text and the only one that is chronologically approximately comparable with the Linear A inscriptions (i.e., in the middle of the 2 nd millennium BCE) [….] indeed the Linear A readings, using the same basic phonetic values and manner of representation of the language by the script as Linear B, are very similar to these later attested Sanskrit forms and words." So: he practically testifies that the Cretan/Minoan Indo-Aryan data contains words not necessarily found in the Rigveda but possibly found in later levels of the Vedic/Sanskrit literature. \
All this very strongly strengthens the OIT hypothesis based on the Mitanni data.
First and foremost, Caveney repeatedly identifies the word ara in the Minoan inscriptions as a word for "spokes" and by extension "spoked-wheels" and even "wheels". Now it is known that, apart from the names of the Mitanni kings and the four Indo-Aryan (Rigvedic) deities in a treaty, the Indo-Aryan data recorded in the Mitanni database is extremely restricted in range, and mainly concerned with words for words associated with horse-chariot-racing: "The loans cover the semantic fields of horses, their colors, horse racing, and chariots, some important ‘Vedic’ gods, and a large array of personal names adopted by the ruling class” (WITZEL 2005:361). However, there are no technical terms for the parts of the chariot (although logically the Mitanni must have had those names) and very obviously they must have had the word ara. for spokes, It is missing simply because the very limited Mitanni data provides us with only one very significant word, mani (Vedic maṇi). So the Minoan data, if correctly deciphered, provides this very important piece of missing Mitanni data.
The word ara, as any reader of my books and blogs will be aware, is found only in the New Rigveda and is completely missing in the Old Rigveda.
One other word deciphered by Caveney, the verb "kshinut[a]i" (was killed) from a root √kṣi is also found in a similar form only in the New Rigveda: in the "notoriously late" (as per Witzel) Redacted Hymn VI.75 and in the latest book X: specifically in VI.75.7 (kṣiṇanti), X.27.4, 13 (kṣiṇāti, kṣiṇām, respectively).
Another word khara is also found only in the New Rigveda: X. 106.7.
A suffix "-gu “[at end of compound]" is found only in the New Rigveda. Even here, the suffix in the Rigveda indicates "cow", so his identification of the suffix as meaning "‘fit for’ (M-W p. 356)" may be even later.
The word vidyā identified by Caveney is found only in the New Rigveda in X. 71.11. And ācāra is post-Rigvedic. And so is ṛiddhi.
Two other words/names identified by Caveney, amava and kubera, are found from the Atharvaveda onwards. And so is the word meya. And the word stambha.
The word ni-datta identified by Caveney is post-Rigvedic with the prefix ni-, and datta by itself is a Middle Word not found in the three Oldest Books 6,3,7.
The word mīh, which he identifies with a Sanskrit word "to urinate" is perhaps a Middle Word (or a hidden New Word? See my earlier referred article on the "Chronological Gulf") for "mist": mihas.
Some other words identified by him are certainly later (post-Rigvedic or even later) words: tarala (wave), kiṣk (to kill), arpya (gerund form of √arp, to give), tala (base). kilkin is "a rather obscure Sanskrit word for “horse” (see M-W p. 284)". pala (straw) is definitely post-Vedic, as also perhaps the root √murv, "murv ‘to bind, tie’ (M-W 824)".
I will stop here. I will not touch upon any more of the words identified by Caveney, because it would be grammatically a tricky proposition to identify some of them as Rigvedic, New Rigvedic or post-Rigvedic, or because I will leave deeper analysis to other Indologists.
As I said, if Caveney's identification of Indo-Aryan words in the Minoan Linear A inscriptions is broadly or generally correct, it is a big blow to the AIT and a strong confirmation of the OIT.
If his identifications are wrong, it does not have any negative effect on the validity of the OIT. The crystal clear, unambiguous and utterly clinching evidence of the Mitanni records (and the Avesta) already present an irrefutable case for the OIT. As I have just shown in my recent article, "FINAL VERSION OF THE CHRONOLOGICAL GULF BETWEEN THE OLD RIGVEDA AND THE NEW RIGVEDA", there is a huge chronological gulf between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda. To repeat the summary of the evidence in that article, the New Words and Other New Elements listed in that article are found as follows:
1. Old Rigveda Books 2,3,4,6,7: 0/280 Hymns, 0/2368 verses, 0 words. +0 C + 0 M.
2. Redacted Hymns in Old Books 2,3,4,6,7: 61/62 Hymns, 470/873 verses, 724 words. +1 C + 6 M.
3. New Rigveda Books 1,5,8,9,10: 684/686 Hymns, 4258/7311 verses, 6837 words. +300 C + 96 M.
The common Rigvedic-Avestan-Mitanni data falls within the New Rigveda, and therefore the Old Rigveda (geographically stretching, in the three Oldest Books 6, 3 and 7, from westernmost Uttar Pradesh in the east to the Sarasvati river in Haryana and expanding, during the course of those three Oldest Books, only to as far west as the asiknī river in the Punjab) represents an era chronologically far earlier than this common (New-)Rigvedic-(proto-)Avestan-(proto-)Mitanni era.
So, while we can expect massive criticism or stonewalling of the above research from the entrenched western academics in this matter of the Indo-Aryan elements in the Minoan Linear A inscriptions, we can calmly await further developments. Heads, the OIT wins even more resoundingly. Tails, the OIT has nothing to lose.
Namaste Talageri ji
ReplyDeleteI would like to humbly disagree on the point that spokes & spoked wheel vehicles are not found in the old books.
Verse 2.39.4 reads "Bear us across (the sea of life), like two vessels, or (over difficult plural ces), like the poles of a car, the axles, the spokes, the fellies...." This is an old, non-redacted hymns.
Besides, verse 6.26.4 goes "You have brought to Vṛṣabha a great war-chariot; you have protected him warring for ten days...." Chariots became fit for warfare only after the invention of spoked wheels. It's a bit to much to assume imo that older regular wheels without spokes could also be used for chariot warfare.
Therefore, I think we have enough evidence to conclude that spoke wheels were known since the period of old books.
Thanks!
Namaste sir, this is amazing if true. I saw sharbarah is found in greek mythology as well. does this strengthen our claim even more that vedic language and religion formed much earlier? Also pls take a look at southern arc paper published recently by western geneticists which has weird claim that anatolian came from iran but non anatolian IE IIR dialects came from steppes, like are they serious? Plus I saw mention of a place in sumerian literature from 2700 bce where a king " lord of aratta" is mentioned and name is Suhgirana/suhkeshdana and description is that they imported Lapis lazuli from there and to reach there they had to cross susa and anshan, which is brings us close to afghanistan the only place from where lapis lazuli was mined. that name is purely indo aryan sounduing name sir. how did this flew under the radar of people?
ReplyDeletecerberus in greek sharbarah in Vedas?
DeleteMind blowing post sir🙏🙏🙏
ReplyDeleteWrt to OIT, I have read in your book that it was Sudas' westward conquest which triggered the out of India migrations of speakers of Last Dialects (of PIE).
ReplyDeleteTradition says that Mandhata drove Druhyus to the west of Indus and after that Druhyus eventually migrated out of India and established kingdoms in Central Asia - as they had no chance of expanding into India and hence tried their luck outside India. You have already linked Druhyus with original speakers of European dialects. Hence would it be outrageous to propose that Mandhata was the one who triggered westward movement of European dialects speakers?
congratulations sir. Indian DNA also found from same place and similar time in minoan region.
ReplyDelete