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_G
reek_words

https://www.academia.edu/82835041/Evidence_of_Indo_Aryan_words_and_gram
mar_in_8_Minoan_Linear_A_inscriptions

https://www.academia.edu/82024361/Evidence_of_Indo_Aryan_words_in_the_Mi
noan_Linear_A_libation_formula

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 va ij. One single word which puts the whole
picture in a nutshell is the word ma i (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 (man , a unit of
measure, and bekan a, 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 ma i). 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 k i 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 (k i anti), X.27.4, 13 (k i ti, k i m, 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 vidy identified by Caveney is found only in the New Rigveda in X.
71.11. And c ra is post-Rigvedic. And so is iddhi.

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 m h, 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), ki k (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 asikn 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.