25/08/2025
☆Rigvedic Poetic meter Trishtubh found in Syria! This is dated to 1000 BCE. Trishtubh is the most popular meter of Rigveda! Anyone who have read the book Rivers of Rigveda would see it in the Appendix section.
The “Hymn to Nikkal”, discovered at Ugarit (modern-day Syria), aligns remarkably with Rgvedic poetry. Nikkal is an ancient goddess of orchards, fruitfulness, and fertility, worshipped in the Levant and Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age, particularly in Ugarit and the surrounding regions.
Cadences from the Ugaritic hymn match the two most prevalent cadences in Rigvedic verse endings. Statistical analysis shows that one of these cadences is the single most frequent ending in Rigveda verses (across all metres), and the other is the second most frequent, particularly in Triṣṭubh verses. This underscores a truly striking rhythmic similarity. Ugaritic hymn exhibits metrical and melodic patterns bearing unmistakable signature marks of Rigvedic poetry.
The Mitanni kingdom - a Bronze Age polity of North Mesopotamia & North Syria - existed in 1500-1300 BCE. This kingdom likely served as the conduit for transmitting these musical and poetic traditions between the Rigvedic NW India and Syria. Mitanni was an Indo-A***n influenced Hurrian speaking kingdom.
The Mitanni-Hittite Treaty of 1380 BCE is very famous. It invokes many Indo-A***n deities of Rigveda like Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya (Ashvins). It was a treaty between Suppiluliuma I (Hittite king) and Šattiwaza (Mitanni king) written in Akkadian language (diplomatic lingua franca of the region).
Though the Hurrian language spoken by Mitanni was a non-IE (non Indo European) language, it preserved many loan words of Indo A***n (Samskrtam), just like Dravidian languages:- Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. This is because, the rulers and elites of Mitanni kingdom spoke Indo A***n.
Hurrian was the administrative language and very popular. It was the native language of Mitannis. Hurrian texts survive directly in Hurrian, but many are preserved within Hittite archives, either untranslated or adapted into Hittite.
This is another evidence of outward migrations especially with Rigveda dated to 1000-900 BCE. In 400 years Rigvedic culture of NW India reached Syria in the form of the Indo A***n elites & rulers of the Mitanni kingdom.