The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c16.15

v1.c16.15

That the sound changes which have been enumerated are not so very old has been shown by the names found at Boghaz-köi. And this is not the only evidence. To the same period as the Boghaz-köi inscriptions belong the famous letters from Tel-el-Amarna. In these occur references to the people of Mitāni in north-west Mesopotamia, whose princes bear names like Artatama, Tusratta, and Suttarna, which seem unmistakably Āryan in form. For five hundred years (c. 1746–1180 B.C.) a mountain tribe—the Kassites—from the neighbourhood of Media held rule over the whole of Babylonia, and amongst these also the names of the princes and deities seem Āryan, though the people themselves, like those of Mitāni were of another stock. Names like *Shurias* ‘Sun’ and *Marytas* seem identical with the Sanskrit *Sūrya* and *Marutas* (the wind-gods), while *Šimalia* ‘queen of the snow mountains’ can hardly be separated from the name of the great mountain range Himālaya and the Irānian word for snow, *zima*. To a much later period belongs the list of deities worshipped in different temples of Assyria, which was found in the library of Assurbanipal (about 700 B.C.), in which occurs the name *Assara-Mazaś*, immediately preceding the seven good angels and the seven bad spirits. The combination hardly leaves it doubtful that we have here the chief deity of Zoroastrianism (Ahura Mazda) with the seven Ameshaspentas and the seven bad *daivas* of that religion. Into the many other problems that arise in this connexion it is not necessary here to enter; but it is important to observe that even so late as this the first part of the god’s name remains more like the Sanskrit *Asura* than the Avestan *Ahura*. While modern Hinduism is the lineal descendant, however much modified in the course of ages, of the ancient Āryan worship which we know first in the Rigveda, the religion of the Avesta is a reform which, like other religious reforms, has been able to get rid of the old gods only by converting them into devils, the worship of which was probably none the less diligent for their change of title.