Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

The history of the word for yoke is particularly important for the whole semantic
field, the most important parts of which came from Indo-European into the other
groups, although the technological and linguistic exchange and interborrowing was so
active that it would be a simplification to search for only one direction.
Besides the names for the chariot (ßuluganni), the wheel (ßurki) and yoke (iukan)
in Hittite, three more terms are known which can help reconstruct terminology of
wheeled transport. The Hittite name for the thill ßiÍÍa is identical to Old Indian Vedic îΩâ
“pole of carriage or plough” (ekeΩa “having one pole”), Pali and Prakrit îsâ “pole of
plough”; Avestan aêÍa “plough”, Modern Persian xêÍ; Homeric Greek o‡hkew (Plural)
“yoke-rings, through which the reins passed”, ofiÆion “tiller, helm, rudder” (with the
development of sea-travel meanings typical of Greek and Germanic: Old Icelandic âr,
Old English ár), Slovene oje, ojesa “thill”, Serbian-Croate oje, Czech oj, Old Polish oje,
High Luzhitian wojo, Low Luzhitian wójo, Ukrainian woje, Belorussian ojiÍte “thill”
(Proto-Slavic stem in -s-), Lithuanian iena, an old Baltic borrowing in Finnish aisa <
*oisâ. The Hittite verb turiya- “to harness, to yoke” is derived from a noun cognate to
Old Indian Vedic dhur “pole of a car”. Since the verb is already used in the oldest Hittite
texts (as in the collection of stories about palace officials and in the first variant of the
Laws) and the noun had disappeared by that time, the word is important for the
chronology of the whole semantic field in Hittite. 368 Corresponding terms displayed an
extraordinary wealth of additional meanings in Vedic. The whole mythological picture
of the universe was expressed through this terminology of wheeled vehicles. As an
example, two lines from the g-Veda (VII.63.2) may be cited:
samânám cakrám pariâvíurtsan,
yád Eta≈ó váhati dhûrΩú yuktá˙
368 On a possible correspondence in the Cuneiform Luwian noun turin, see above.