Scientists in California have discovered one of the earliest signs that Vedic culture wasn’t limited to India. The evidence of this was discovered in music. According to research, a hymn composed over 3,000 years ago near the eastern coast of the Mediterranean has a very close resemblance to the Rig Veda. Keep reading to know more.
Vedic Culture Extends Beyond India
According to WION, the research in California was led by Dan C. Baciu from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The study was published on Preprints.org. He compared “Hymn to Nikkal,” written in Ugarit, to verses from the Rig Veda. Surprisingly, he found that the hymn and the Rig Veda both share the same rhythm or cadence. Baciu used computer-assisted analysis and discovered that one in five Rig Veda verses ends with the same cadence as the Hymn to Nikkal. He added that the chance of this coincidence is less than a million.
In the hymn written in the Mediterranean, there are two types of cadences. One cadence is simple, and the other one is quite complex. As per the research paper, both cadences are also present in the Rig Veda, with the simple one ending verses and the complex one tied to a Triṣṭubh meter.
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Music Connection In Hymn To Nikkal And The Rig Veda
Moreover, the notes in the music go up and down in the same pitch in both the Hymn to Nikkal and the Rig Veda. Indian scholars have mentioned this pattern in the Rig Veda. During the research, when researchers recreated the music digitally, they could see and hear how closely the two pieces matched. It highlighted that melodies seemed similar, though they were from different regions and cultures.
As per Baciu’s study, a similar music pattern was witnessed even after centuries. It appeared in Greek lyric poetry in the works of Sappho, and even in European literature, like German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s verses in 1801.
His study concludes that music was the first global language.
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Cover Image Courtesy: Canva Pro/Savas Bozkaya (Representative Image) & Wikimedia Commons