A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s13.41

v1.c8.s13.41

The discoveries made by Hugo Winckler in Boghazköi in Asia Minor in the year 1907, gave an impetus to more recent discussions on the question of the age of the Ṛgveda and of Vedic culture.² The clay tablets from the archives of the capital of the ancient Hittite kingdom, which were found in Boghazköi, included records of treaties concluded by the king of the Hittites and the king of Mitani at the beginning of the 14th century B.C. The gods of both kingdoms are invoked as guardians of the treaties, and in the list of gods there appear, beside numerous Babylonian and Hittite deities, the names of Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra and Nāsatyau among the gods of Mitani.³ How did the names of these deities reach the Mitanis in Asia Minor? Scholars diverge greatly in their reply to this question. The historian Ed. Meyer ascribes these gods to the Aryan period, *i.e.*, the period when the Indians and Iranians as yet formed an undivided nation in language and religion[^1); and he assumes that, at the same time as these “Aryans” appeared in western Mesopotamia and Syria, the separate development of the Aryans in north-western India had already begun: the Vedic hymns, the earliest of which arose “probably not later than about 1500 B.C.” bearing witness to this development. A similar opinion has been expressed by P. Giles. Oldenberg [^2) thinks it more likely “that these are the gods of some western Aryan tribe akin to the Indians, inherited from some common past, as the Indians on their part had inherited them from the same source.” He leaves the question open whether these were Iranians before Zoroaster's time, or whether a third branch of the Aryans is meant, and takes the view that this discovery does not justify us in assuming greater antiquity for the Veda.