and the Ashvins, the twin horsemen who preceded the coming of Ushas, the Dawn-maiden. Among the later kings of the Mitanni we find the name of Dushratta (or Dasaratha)—one which is very familiar in Indo-Aryan literature from the story of the Rāmāyana, and in Indian history as the name of Asoka's son and successor. Among the finds at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, is a series of letters written by Dushratta to his relative Amenhetep III, King of Egypt, inscribed on clay tablets in the cuneiform script of Babylonia.[1]
During the six centuries of Aryan domination in the Euphrates valley, we can hardly doubt that there was a close communication between the Indian and Mesopotamian branches of the Aryan family, and there are remarkable resemblances to be noted between the Aryāvarta of Mesopotamia and that of the Panjab. The Aryans in Mitanni were living in a land of many rivers on the slopes of an "abode of Snow," the Taurus mountain range, sacred to the Bull—which in Babylonia was a symbol of the Sun ploughing his way among the Stars. It may be only a curious coincidence that on the western side of the Taurus, where their powerful neighbours the Hittites worshipped a god whose emblems, like Siva's, were a trident and a bull,[2] lies the Anatolian vilayet called Sivas with a chief town of the same name, a district towards which the sun-worshipping Aryans of Mitanni must have turned their faces when they adored the setting sun. Was there another Mount Kailāsa in the Anatolian plateau worshipped as the Sun-god's paradise?
The Aryan kings of Mitanni and of Babylon, like those of Vedic India, left no records of temple building or of sculpture. Their sacred literature was handed
