r/IndoEuropean • u/UnderstandingThin40 • 21d ago

Indo-European migrations New preprint claims that the Rigveda and Mittani/Hurrian song (hymn to Nikkal) have the same cadence and are from the same musical foundation

What do you guys think?

Paper: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202506.1669/v2

Not an expert but this seems like a stretch?

Also the author doesn’t seem to know that the Mitanni come from the steppe and not India, making him seem less credible.

The paper also in general doesn’t come off as professional.

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u/GlobalImportance5295 21d ago

Also the author doesn’t seem to know that the Mitanni come from the steppe and not India, making him seem less credible.

we actually have no evidence of this. asko parpola is pretty convinced the mitanni reached at least the BMAC (which would have had connections with the IVC) before reaching Anatolia. he is one of the leading indologists: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346469122_Royal_Chariot_Burials_of_Sanauli_near_Delhi_and_Archaeological_Correlates_of_Prehistoric_Indo-Iranian_Languages

i don't agree with him on everything but the direct origin of the Mitanni migration is not as certain as you are thinking.

Aryans also have deeper penetration into Anatolia than just Mitanni land: https://imgur.com/a/aryan-i-uwa-aram-kosyan-iran-caucasus-vol-10-no-1-2006-pp-1-6-6-pages-qIUKIhg

additionally, the fact that the extinct "Syrian elephant" is literally just the Indian elephant and only shows up in Syria during the bronze age (starting ~1800BC) is curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_elephant

It's not the first time these theories have been alluded to: https://imgur.com/a/mittanians-peacock-b-brentjes-1981-mfllFhv

(B. BRENTJES 1981: The Mittanians and the Peacock. Brentjes, Burchard, in "Ethnic Problems of the History of Central Asia in the Early Period")

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u/UnderstandingThin40 21d ago

We have linguistic and even dna evidence of it though (lady of the well sample). I’m sure they went through bmac and mixed with them but they originated in the steppe.

We’ve all heard the peacock seal and Indian / Syrian, the evidence if you can even call that is weak. Are you saying the Mitanni came from India ? There is 0 evidence of that.

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u/yogeshjanghu 21d ago

Mitanni invokes proper rig Vedic pantheon,not indo-Iranian proper indo-Aryan it could only come from Vedic age India.

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u/UnderstandingThin40 21d ago

No, it invokes indo aryan gods, that were the predecessors/ same as many rig vedic gods.

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u/yogeshjanghu 21d ago

it invokes Vedic deities which are indigenous to India.

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u/UnderstandingThin40 21d ago

Which ones ?

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u/yogeshjanghu 20d ago

Look it up yourself bro.

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u/UnderstandingThin40 20d ago

lol classic Reddit response. What’s your source ?

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u/Willing-One8981 20d ago

Posters on this sub write as if there's a whole Mitanni corpus written in Sanskrit, whereas it's just a handful of words across a handful of documents.

Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra and the Nasatyas are listed as witnesses only in the Šattiwaza treaty, written in the 14th C BCE.

And note that other Mitanni treaties are witnessed by Hurrian and Mesopotamian gods, but do not include the names of IA gods. Even in the Šattiwaza treaty the IA gods are someway down the list, following the names of the Hurrian gods.

Varuṇa, Indra and the Nasatyas are clearly IE gods. Mitra, Varuna and Nasatyas have clear IE etymologies. The etymology of Indra is less certain but he's obviously derived from the PIE storm god.

So no, they are not Indigenous to India.