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,