The Rath Dynamics of the Himalayas: A Physics-First Account of Coupled Oscillators and Beat Entrainment in the Deity Palanquins of Kullu and Mandi ( Himachal Pradesh)

When carried palanquins (palki/rath) exhibit jumping, rocking, and apparently agent-likemotion, especially in religious processions, these dynamics are sometimes attributed to super-natural causation. This paper makes a narrower, testable claim: a purely physical model issufficient to reproduce key signatures of the motion (beat-locked frequency, carrier synchronyshifts, harmonic structure, and large-amplitude rocking under certain regimes), therefore super-natural causation is not required as an explanation of the observed mechanical phenomenon. Wepresent a first-principles model: a 6-DOF rigid body supported at handle points by compliantunilateral contacts, driven by carriers modeled as weakly perturbed limit-cycle oscillators whosephases can entrain to an external beat (music/drum). We give the full mathematical derivation(rigid-body Newton–Euler, phase reduction and the PRC formalism, Adler locking criterion,and the emergence of Kuramoto coupling under weak interactions) and report simulation-onlyvalidation and regime-mapping results. We are explicitly critical about scope: without field mea-surements, this is a mechanistic plausibility study, not historical proof of any particular event.Nonetheless, it refutes a common invalid inference: “surprising motion implies supernaturalagency.”