Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/28

The Religion of the Veda
Assyria, Mitani, Phoenicia, and Canaan, addressed to
certain Egyptian Pharaohs, their liege lords. These
tablets have thrown much new light upon the history
of Western Asia. There is among them a letter
written by a king of Mitani in Syria, Dushratta by
name. In this letter figure among others the names
of his brother Artashuvara and his grandfather Arta-
tama. These names are obviously Iranian (Persian),
or "Iranoid"; with the tablets themselves they date
back to at least 1600 B. C. The names Artashuvara
and Artatama open out with the syllables arta-,
familiar to Western students of history as part of
the numberless Persian names like Artaxerxes, Arta-
phernes, etc. This stem arta is identical with arta-
of the Western Iranian, Achemenidan inscriptions,
with asha of the Avesta, and with rta of the Veda.
The word means "cosmic order," or "order of the
universe." We shall find it later on, figuring as one
of the most important religious conceptions of the
Rig-Veda. We have here at any rate a definite
lower date for the idea; it is likely to have existed
a long time before 1600 B.C. From the point of
view of the history of religious ideas we may, in fact
we must, begin the history of Hindu religion at
12
1 See the author, American Journal of Philology, xxv., p. 8;
F. Hommel in Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Böhmischen Gesell-
schaft der Wissenschaften, 1898, Number vi,