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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'.
As Thieme (1960:301a) once assessed:
"The discovery of [Indo-]1 'Aryan' looking names of Mitanni2 princes on cuneiform documents in Akkadian from the second half of the second millenium B.C. (Chiefly tablets from Bogazköy and El-Amarna), several doubtlessly [Indo-] Aryan words in Kikkuli's treatise in Hittite on horse training3 (numerals: aika-4 'one', tera-5 'three', panza- 'five', satta-6 'seven', na[ua]-7 'nine' ; appellatives: uarttana-8 'circuit, course [in which horses move when being trained],' asua9 'horse'), and finally, a series of names of [Indo]-Aryan divinities on a Mitanni- Hatti and a Hatti-Mitanni treaty (14th century B.C.) poses a number of problems that have been repeatedly discussed, since the beginning of the [XXth] century."
It can be added that some other adjectives have been found in a document in Yurgan Tepe, as described in Mayrhofer (1966:17): babru and pabru-nni (cf. Skrt babhrú- 'brown'), parita (cf. Skrt palitá- 'grey') and pinkara (cf. Skrt piagalá- 'red'). One of the most fascinating sections of the Mitanni Aryan documentation is the mention of five major Indo-Aryan deities: Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Násatyá, precisely in that Dumezilian order:
"If asked to cite them in their most common nominative forms, no Vedologist could possibly hesitate to put down the series: Mitrá-Varuná, Indrah, Násatyá.
If further asked to name a Rigvedic verse in which these names appear side by side and in this order, he would have to quote RV 10.125.1bc:
aham mitrá-varuná ubhá bibharmi
aham indrágní aham aßviná ubhá "10
A major discrepancy between the Vedic and the Mitanni Aryan versions is the substitution of...