The Rig Veda is a monumental collection of hymns that have become a holy scripture to more than a billion Hindus today. These hymns are fascinating not only in their present form. New research has recently demonstrated that the hymns have served an important role in globalization. Astonishingly, this new research is based primarily on the study of musical patterns found in the Rig Veda and globally. The Hindu Post has already reported on the findings, which quickly went viral in August 2025, receiving tens of thousands of likes, shares, and comments. Recognizing the relevance of the story to so many people, the Hindu Post now offers the author of the original research the opportunity to provide a more complete narrative with new material. Read on to know more about how mythology and music connected India to the rest of the world. It’s an incredible story about the Rig Veda, music, the Pharaoh of Egypt, and even Moses.
The Rig Veda is not only ancient, but truly fascinating through the stories that it tells. Many of these stories are simply too great not to share. Take the dialog between Visvamitra and the rivers as an example. In Rig Veda 3.33, Visvamitra reaches a confluence of two rivers. He describes them vividly in his verses, comparing them to wild horses, galloping down from the mountains. In well-chosen words, Visvamitra speaks of canyons, plains, waters, and free movement. Perhaps because the imagery is so appealing, it has been widely shared and echoes through much of subsequent literature. Today, it is found, for example, in “The Lord of the Rings”—truly beautifully visualized in the movie. The white waters of a mountain river briefly morph to become white, galloping horses that come splashing down through a narrow valley.
Visvamitra reaches the rivers—as he himself described in his verses—“followed by wagon and wheel”. His peoples and he are pursued, and they must cross in order to flee. However, the rivers are too wild. Visvamitra’s last hope is to sing and ask the rivers to slow down, enchanting them with his verses. Gradually, the rivers accede. “Like a nursing mother to a child”, they say, “we will lay ourselves down to you”. In the end, Visvamitra and his peoples were able to cross safely.
The poetic imagery of this crossing has been recognized as some of the finest in the history of literature. Even today, Simon and Garfunkel’s verses “like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down” may be an echo. There is no doubt that this imagery has become truly beloved in popular culture, and it has been so for millennia. There exists another early example of a very similar scene that is widely known. Around Visvamitra’s time, Moses also had to flee, leading his peoples, and they, too, reached a body of water that stopped them. Moses then understood that God would split the waters for them to cross. Following the chronology generally accepted by scholars today, Moses was either a contemporary of Visvamitra or lived slightly after him.
For a long time, scholars of religion treated these stories separately, rarely comparing Moses with Visvamitra, and not searching for a connection between the two. Visvamitra seemed too distant. Instead, similarities were treated as a chance encounter at best. However, evidence has accumulated that there is an actual, physical connection between the cultures that Moses and Visvamitra were part of. The image of the waters laying themselves down “like a nursing mother to a child or like a young woman to a man”, as they described themselves to Visvamitra, could have been widely shared, crossing borders right then and there, during the Bronze Age.
The first piece of evidence that suggests a close connection between India, Egypt, and the Near East is not new, dating back to discoveries made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Archaeologists working at Tel Amarna, Egypt, found several foreign king names in the letters of the Egyptian Pharaoh that seemed unmistakably Vedic. In parallel, names of Vedic deities were found elsewhere on archaeological sites in the Near East. These deity names included some of the most popular Vedic gods: Agni, the god of fire (etymologically as in “ignite”), Surya (the sun god), Indra, Mitra, and Varuna, as well as the two horse-gods—the Nasatyas.
There is no doubt that these deity names are the most popular ones of the Rig Veda. However, scholars have cast doubt, claiming the names alone need not prove a truly direct cultural connection between Egypt, the Near East, and India. The connection could be indirect. For example, the names of the gods in India and those found in the Fertile Crescent could go back to an earlier substrate of joint Indo-Iranian ancestry. In this narrative, no direct connection between India and the Fertile Crescent is necessary during the Bronze Age. Obviously, the scholars who pushed this interpretation believed that finding a direct connection between India and the Fertile Crescent was simply too good to be true. Their reasoning seems plausible. The Fertile Crescent and India are separated by thousands of miles of mountains, deserts, and highland plateaus. How would have people crossed them during the Bronze Age?
The evidence that I found further supports the hypothesis that there existed a connection as direct as one can only imagine. A closer look at Visvamitra’s verses helps explain what I found.
When Visvamitra called the rivers, he uttered two final words “bhávatā supārā́”, which translates to “make yourself easy to pass!” Is there anything special about them?
Visvamitra uttered these words after a lengthy dialog in which the rivers were reluctant to give way, relating mythological reasons why they could never stop flowing. They gave good reasons: the god Indra had freed them, and they followed the riverbed he had shaped with his mace. The dialog fills several verses. To be precise, the rivers didn’t even answer at first. They started speaking only after Visvamitra begged them and portrayed their confluence in beautiful words. He said the two rivers at the confluence resembled two mother-cows that together licked a joint calf. The Vedic text reads “mātárā saṃrihāṇé”. Only after hearing these words do the rivers begin to answer, and only after “make yourself easy to pass!” do they decide to yield. These two final words thus become the successful moment of Visvamitra’s enchantment. The meaning of the words does not seem too special, but the words also have a rhythm, which tells us a truly fascinating story.
The translation of Visvamitra’s supplication that I provided above maintains the original rhythm of the Vedic words. The rhythm is: “DOO-do-do-DOO-do-DOO-DOO!” Applying this to our translation, we obtain: “MAKE your-self EA-sy TO PASS!” These words also had a melody. In Vedic, the melody followed the word accent, as the ancient grammarian Panini explained. Following his lead, we obtain the melody: “DOO-de-do-DOO-do-DOO-DEE!” (Here, “DEE” and “de” are higher pitched than “DOO” and “do”.) Surprisingly, this melody is the same in both key moments of the story: when Visvamitra compares the rivers to cows licking a calf and when he asks them to make themselves easy to pass. This isn’t all. There is something else that seems entirely incredible.
What is astonishing about this melody is that it occurs not only in the Rig Veda but also in the most ancient song ever unearthed—a musical score dating from the Near East from 1400 BCE. The lyrics of this music are composed in Hurrian. This is the same language associated with the Vedic king names in the archives of the Egyptian Pharaoh around the same time. Now, it appears that the Hurrians not only had Vedic throne names and Vedic deities, but they also had music with the same melodies as those found in the Rig Veda.
Indeed, we can find Visvamitra’s specific combination of rhythm and melody also appearing in the Hurrian hymn. To be precise, the Hurrian hymn has two musical phrases. The first ends with “DOO-de-do-DOO-do-DOO-DEE!” That’s the same melody and rhythm as in Visvamitra’s incantation where he asks the rivers to make themselves easy to pass. By comparison, the second out of two musical phrases of the Hurrian hymn ends with “DOO-DOO-DEE-do-DEE-do-DEE!” While this combination of rhythm and melody is very different, it is also frequently found in the Rig Veda. As a matter of fact, both combinations of rhythm and melody are signature elements of Rigvedic poetry.
Specifically, “DOO-de-do-DOO-do-DOO-DEE!” is the most frequent Rigvedic rhythm and melody utilized in the books 4 and 6 of the Rig Veda, while “DOO-DOO-DEE-do-DEE-do-DEE!” is the most frequent Rigvedic combination of rhythm and melody utilized in book 5.
The occurrence of these musical motives as the most frequently used in Books 4, 5, and 6 of the Rig Veda makes the final point of my research. These three books comprise the most ancient core of the Rig Veda that dates exactly from 1400 BCE, when the Hurrian hymn was also written down and preserved.
By comparison, books 1–3 and 7–10 of the Rig Veda have long been considered to be expansions of the earliest core and contain a higher proportion of newer compositions. This newer material continued using the same rhythms but more frequently favored different melodies. In parallel, the prosodic style gradually changed. Thus, the matching musical patterns demonstrate not only generically that there is a musical connection, but they demonstrate that there is a very specific musical connection within a fixed time frame, dateable around 1400 BCE. Taken together, the evidence thus supports the theory that there was a musical connection in the Bronze Age, especially around 1400 BCE. In turn, this observation tells us something interesting about Egypt, life on the rivers, and even Moses!
For millennia, rivers have been the one central, natural force that supported human life. Egypt is an excellent example. In Egypt, all human life arranged itself around the Nile. Perhaps understanding the river was nowhere as important as then and there, in Egypt, where the Nile flooded the plains periodically. As a matter of fact, one of the most important tasks of the Pharaoh was to predict the moment when the floods were expected to come. This facilitated agriculture and social life. The reason for the floods was not seen, originating much further south in the poorly understood monsoon patterns of regions well beyond the Sahara. The only, magical thing that was known was that one could predict the dates when the floods were expected to come.
If we admit that there was a connection between Egypt and India, it seems natural that this mysterious story of life on the Nile was widely disseminated. The story of the mysterious yet predictable flooding could have traveled to India, where people creatively engaged with it. Being creative as humans always are and modifying the story could suddenly have meant that it was plausible that someone with the right knowledge could not only predict but also control the behavior of a river. For example, the rivers could be asked to stop flowing, and they would sometimes yield to one’s begging, especially in times of need, if one had to cross wild waters, followed by one’s own people, pursued by others. Perhaps, then, we can credit the Pharaohs of Egypt at least in part for inspiring Visvamitra to attempt to enchant the rivers. He asked them to let him and his peoples cross, and the rivers responded and let him pass. The rivers did not question the power of Indra who had carved the riverbeds and was guiding the waters down from the mountains. However, Visvamitra succeeded to enchant the rivers, and they decided to slow down when asked. Perhaps Visvamitra’s story was widely shared, and it quickly traveled back to Egypt. If so, we can credit Visvamitra at least in part for inspiring Moses to converse with God, who did the unthinkable. He split the entire immovable sea, letting Moses and his people pass, in times of need, just like Visvamitra passed when pursued with his peoples. Over time, the story became ever more enchanted. Of course, we will always credit Moses for inspiring Jesus to step on the water. Jesus’s story is even more breathtaking. He did not even need to split the waters in order to cross them. Perhaps no other history is as divinely inspiring as this.
If this perspective on what happened in Egypt and India is true, it follows that the stories of the Pharaoh, Visvamitra, Moses, and Jesus are connected. The evidence I found suggests these connections are present, or at least very likely, and they make for a more global history of religions, where themes, myths, and music connected distant people across continents for millennia. I believe this version of the history of religions is both more accurate and more beautiful, because the stories of Pharaohs, Visvamitra, Moses, and Jesus build on each other and grow. Visvamitra grew out of the Pharaoh’s story, Moses grew out of Visvamitra’s, and Jesus grew on the shoulders of Moses. Along the way, the most meaningful elements of the story were preserved. In the meantime, the globe experienced two global collapses (the Bronze Age collapse and the Middle Ages), and it has experienced two dreadful world wars and several pandemics. Only the culture went on, connecting people.
One of the cultural elements that has been passed down unchanged is Visvamitra’s rhythm. It traveled unchanged, like the earliest light that originated in the Big Bang. Today, we sing the very same ancient rhythm, for example, in the U.S. national anthem. The text reads “…LIGHT, what so PROUD-ly WE HAILED!” The rhythm is the same “DOO-do-do-DOO-do-DOO-DOO!” To reach the United States, this rhythm has passed through England, Rome, and Greece, and it entered the finest Greek, Roman, and European poetry.
— Dan C. Baciu, active professor across California, Illinois, Kentucky, and Europe, with research featured on the Science AAAS weekly podcast.
