The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c24.119

v1.c24.119

Additional evidence, however, has comparatively recently been furnished by certain cuneiform tablets which the German professor Hugo Winckler discovered, in 1907, at Boghaz-köi in North-eastern Asia Minor. These documents give, in their own special language, a record of treaties between the kings of Mitāni and of the Hittites about 1400 B.C. Among the gods called to witness are deities common in part to India and Persia, whatever the relation may be. The names involved in the tablets are Mi-it-ra, U-ru-w-na, In-da-ra, and Na-ša-at-ti-ia, corresponding respectively to Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, and Nāsatyā (the latter regularly a dual in the Veda, and representing the two Açvins) in the Indian pantheon. They answer likewise in due order to the Persian Mithra and to those elements common between the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda and the Vedic Varuṇa, as explained above; but on the other hand Avestan Indra and Nāonhaithya (a singular in Av., Vd. x, 9; xix, 43) appear as demons in the Zoroastrian scriptures. It is not the place here to enter into a discussion of the question as to whether the supernatural beings thus mentioned in the Boghaz-köi clay tablets are to be interpreted as being 'proto-Irānian,' 'Vedic,' 'Āryan,' or even 'Mitānian' alone, because the matter is still open to debate by scholars. It is sufficient to draw attention to the general bearings of such a discovery upon the subject of relationship between India and Persia, however direct or indirect the connexion may be².