Indo-Aryan words in Hurrian

Vidhyanath Rao rao.3 at OSU.EDU
Mon Nov 13 12:48:00 UTC 2000


> "Aruna" and "Urvana" must either reflect the pronunciation of Varuna
in a
> Hittite/Luwian mouth, or this was how these names were known.

Precisely, and the question is how to decide. The only argument for the
former is the circular `because that is the only one that makes sense in
Vedic'. [It is circular because the source of these names is the bone of
contention.]

An independent way to decide is to look at the allowed sound sequences
in the languages involved. On this ground, I find it hard to believe
that these reflect the pronunciation in Hittite or Luwian: Neither
initial w [or wa-] nor the sequence -ru- seems to be prohibited in these
two languages. I don't know anything about Hurrian, and I hoped that you
could shed some light about these sound sequences in it.

Regards
-Nath





More information about the INDOLOGY mailing list