CHINAR SHADE : SANSKRIT IN ANCIENT SYRIA

Wednesday, July 3, 2024

SANSKRIT IN ANCIENT SYRIA

( Head of a Saka warrior )

( Head of a Pahalva found in Sarnath )

SANSKRIT IN ANCIENT SYRIA

It might surprise many when I say that the first people to leave behind evidence of having spoken Rigvedic Sanskrit aren't Indians – they were Syrians. And Rigvedic Sanskrit was first recorded in inscriptions found not on the plains of India but in what is now northern Syria. The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the "Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.

Between 1500 and 1350 BC, a dynasty called the Mitanni ruled over the upper Euphrates-Tigris basin, land that corresponds to what are now the countries of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. Each and every Mitanni king had a Sanskrit name and so did many of the local elites. These names include Purusa (meaning “man”), Tusratta (“having an attacking chariot”), Suvardata (“given by the heavens”), Indrota (“helped by Indra”) and Subandhu, a name that exists till today in India.

The Mitanni had a culture, which, like the Vedic people, highly revered chariot warfare. A Mitanni horse-training manual, the oldest such document in the world, uses a number of Sanskrit words: aika (one), tera (three), satta (seven) and asua (ashva, meaning “horse”). Moreover, the Mitanni military aristocracy was composed of chariot warriors called “Maryanna”, from the Sanskrit word "marya", meaning “young man”.

The Mitanni worshipped the same gods as those in the Rig Veda (but also had their own local ones). They signed a treaty with a rival king in 1380 BC which names Indra, Varuna, Mitra and the Nasatyas (Ashvins) as divine witnesses for the Mitannis.

David Anthony in his book , "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" says that not only did Rigvedic Sanskrit predate the compilation of the Rig Veda in northwestern India but even the “central religious pantheon and moral beliefs enshrined in the Rig Veda existed equally early”.

It will equally surprise many to know that a stone head from Mauryan period of a foreigner found in Sarnath has been established to be of a member of some elite Pahalva or **Saka from West Asia.

The Pahlavas find mention in Manu Smriti, various Puranas, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and the Bṛhat Saṃhita.Pahalvas were also known as Rathaeshtar or the chariot warriors in ancient Iran.

The Manusmriti mentions that the Pahlavas and several other tribes like the Sakas, Yavana,Khasas , Kambojas Paradas were originally noble Kshatriyas, but later, "due to their non-observance of valorous Kshatriya codes and neglect of chivalry, they gradually sunk to the status of *Mleechchhas" .

The term West Asia in this context stands for Iran and Afghanistan, where the Sakas and Pahlavas had their base-camps for eastward movement. The prelude to future inroads of the Indo-Bactrians in India had after all started in the second century.

(Avtar Mota)

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Recto...Front or Right

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Verso ...Back or Left

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*Mlechchha were the people of foreign extraction in ancient India. A Sanskrit term, mlechchha was used by the Vedic peoples much as the ancient Greeks used barbaros, originally to indicate the uncouth and incomprehensible speech of foreigners and then extended to their unfamiliar behaviour.

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**The term ‘Saka’ historically referred to numerous tribes living in the territories of present-day Kazakhstan (Zhetysu), Central Asia (Pamir, Fergana, and Khorezm), Eastern Turkestan, and Afghanistan between the eighth century BCE and the first centuries of our era. The name of the tribes may be derived from the Scythian word saka, meaning ‘deer’, but this is not certain. We don't know if it was a self-designation or a name given to them by neighbouring peoples.