Madhuvidya

Author(s): S D Laddu, T N Dharmadhikari, Madhvi Kolhatkar, Pratibha Pingle
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 579

ašua 'horse' and technical terms like uartana 'circular course (in which a horse moves when under training).
The question raised by this unmistakable Aryan evidence in Asia Minor is from where did the people speaking the language akin to the Indo-Iranina reach there. Did they go there sometime during their migration before or after the Indo-Iranian broke into Iranian and Indian, that is did they go there as Ur-Aryans, or as Iranians or as Indians?
At one time it was felt that some of the speakers of the Indo-Iranian language separated from the others who later became proto-Indo-Aryans and went to Asia Minor from south Russia along the Caspian sea. Some of them remained there to establish the Mitanni kingdom in south but others went to Iran. This theory is, however, not acceptable because the Aryan remains in Asia Minor are more akin to Indian than to Iranian or to Proto-Indo-Iranian, e.g. we have s and nothin satta, the word for seven'(Sk.saptá: Av. hapta), in našatya'the name of the deity'(Sk.násatya, Av.nānhaiya), and the word for 'one'is aika with -k-as in Sk.eka, as against Av.aiva which has -v-. This should force us to admit that those who established the Mitanni kingdom were not Iranians but Indians who may have gone to the Near East from India. Between these two extreme theories, a compromise theory is proposed because the Aryan evidence from Mitanni is not exactly identical with Sanskrit either, but occaisonally shows an older stage of development as witnessed in the word for 'one' aika which shows a diphthong ai as opposed to the monophthong e in Sk. eka. According to the compromise theory the speakers of the Mitanni Aryans went to the near east after the proto - Aryans separated from the IndoIranians but before the forefathers of the Indo-Aryans came to India. T. Burrow chooses to call this stage of separation as proto-Indo-Aryan.
Thus we do not imagine the relationship of the Near Eastern Aryan, Old Iranian and Old Indo-Aryan as something like -
(1) Proto-Aryans
non-Old Indo-Aryan
Old Indo-Aryan
(in India)
Near Eastern
Aryan
Old Iranian
(in Iran)
Madhu Vidyā/554