पृष्ठम्:The Sanskrit Language (T.Burrow).djvu/३६

SANSKRIT AND INDO-EUROPEAN 29 Aryan or Indo-European. Nevertheless in a list of names of gods with Babylonian equivalents we find a sun god Surias (rendered Samas) which must clearly be identified with Skt. surya~. In addition Manillas the war god (rendered En-urta) has been compared with Skt. marut-, though here some diffi- culty is caused by the fact that the Skt. word always occurs in the plural. Among the kings of this dynasty one has a name which can be interpreted as Aryan : A bir atlas : abhi-ratha- 4 facing chariots (in battle) The existence of Aryans in this area was unsuspected until the discovery of these Aryan names in cuneiform documentsTand a long discussion has proceeded for many years concerning them. Even though the material is small, it can nevertheless be con- cluded that a significant migration of Aryans in this direction had taken place at this early period. Although the chief centre of the Aryan influence, as far as our records go is the Human state of Mitanni, what w r e find there is an Aryan dynasty ruling over a Hurrian population, with no evidence of any sizeable Aryan settlement. The kings of the Mitanni belonging to the dynasty with the Aryan names use Hurrian as their official language, and it is considered unlikely that in this situation they would have retained their original Aryan speech for long. The question that then arises is to decide from what base the conquest of the Mitanni state had proceeded, since such a base, with an Aryan population, is necessary to account for it. A clue to the answer to this problem is probably to be found in the fact that Aryan influence is found not only among the Hurrians, but also among the Kassites, a people originating in the mountainous regions of Western Iran. A settlement of Aryans in North-Western Iran, to the East of the Hurrian country, and to the North of the Kassites, w r ould account for both of these developments. Since the first discovery of Aryan traces in the ancient Near East discussion has proceeded as to whether these Aryans are to be connected with the I ndo- Aryans or the Iranians, whether they are to be identified with the Pro to- Aryans from which those two branches are descended, or whether they are to be regarded as a third branch of Aryans beside the other two. The predominant opinion at present is that they are to be connected specifically with the Indo-Aryans. This conclusion is founded partly on linguistic grounds, and partly on the fact