The familiar story is simple: John Coltrane admired Ravi Shankar, named his son Ravi, recorded “India” and Om and absorbed ‘Eastern spirituality’ into his music. However, the historical record is much richer: Vedic chants, tambura, raga notes and Indian traditions reflected through Coltrane’s work, suggesting a musical conversation, rather than a mere one-way influence.Coltrane’s 1961 “India” is the clearest signpost in this regard. Carl Clements cites Bill Bauer’s view that the song likely drew on a Vedic chant from Folkways FE 4431, Religious Music of India (1952), recorded in India under French musicologist Alain Daniélou, including“Vedic Chanting – Taittirīya Upanishad” by Pandita Ramji Shastri Dravida. Ahmed Abdul-Malik later told biographer Lewis Porter that he had given Coltrane the idea, apparently by pointing him to the record.First Pressing of Religious Music of India (1952), Photo: The Smithsonian Institution.At the November 1961 Village Vanguard sessions, Abdul-Malik joined Coltrane for an alternate rendition of “India,” whose soft opening strums are best described as probable tambura, though some discographies list oud. The “India” on Impressions came from that Vanguard engagement. Clements and Bill Cole also note the presence of an Indian drone or an alap-like thinking in “Naima,” “Psalm,” “After the Rain,” “Chim Chim Cheree” and “Song of Praise,” which were structural echoes rather than literal ragas.Coltrane experimented with multiple basses, linking the extra bass to sounds heard on Indian records, including a so-called “water drum,” and to a droning bass line. The terminology is imprecise, but the intent is clear: Indian listening was shaping not just his notes, but also the ensemble’s acoustic design.Clements links Coltrane’s reshaping of small note patterns to Indian vikriti, and the free, drone-based “Psalm” to alap. The deeper influence was not merely scale and encompassed time, repetition and musical development. He further argues that Coltrane understood “Bhairavi” as more than a scale, marking its ascent, descent, mood and time of day.Yet in 1961 Coltrane called his use of Indian ideas as “more or less subconscious.” By then, he was already listening closely to Shankar, whom he later met, planned a deeper study with in 1967 and named his son after. A modern re-reading of Coltrane’s manuscript identifies “Bhairavi,” “Charukeshi,” “Todi” and “Hanumatodi” with some confidence, while several other raga labels remain uncertain. His notes also range across “Algerian, Arabian, Balinese, Chinese, Japanese and Persian scales,” showing that India was part of a much broader search.This is important. Coltrane studied Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, however manuscript research says the book was not the source of his “Scales of India” pages. His Circle of Tones and interest in symmetrical pitch organisation are genuine, whereas the claims that the diagram encodes yin-yang cosmology remain unverified and do not establish an Indian source.Coltrane was not just hunting for new notes. He was exploring what sound could do to a body, a mind or even the world. On “Nature Boy” (1965), Coltrane’s 10/4 passage plausibly echoes Hindustani jhaptal, yet a deliberate Carnatic mora or solkattu borrowing remains unverified.Porter, via Clements, says Coltrane made a “special study of India” embracing Yogananda and Gandhi; Bill Cole adds J.Krishnamurti and Yoga to this spiritual trail. Om draws on Bhagavad Gita 9.16–17.Furthermore, Shankar recalled Coltrane as a vegetarian, clean-living and reading Ramakrishna, although his “six months” drug chronology is too short to repeat literally. Ascetic practice, Indian religious study and musical exploration appear part of one search, without implying a single Indian faith.Not a one-way influenceIndia’s jazz legend Braz Gonsalves was already shaping an Indian jazz voice through his EP Raga Rock in 1970. Naresh Fernandes places Gonsalves in a Bombay Indo-jazz tradition predating Coltrane’s engagement with raga. Yet Coltrane influenced him too: Warren R. Pinckney Jr. records Gonsalves naming Coltrane alongside Artie Shaw, Charlie Parker and Sam Most. At Jazz Yatra 1980, DownBeat critic Lee Jeske described Gonsalves as bringing Coltrane’s innovations “back to their home.”Jazz pianist Madhav Chari did not abandon his math PhD on a whim, Coltrane was also the catalyst here. In Calcutta, in 1982, Afro Blue Impressions, especially “My Favourite Things” and “Impressions,” proved pivotal in this regard. Chari became a self-described “John Coltrane addict,” while his early piano style bore a distinct McCoy Tyner imprint. He later summed up the turning point in his essay “Pundit Coltrane Shows the Way.”Veteran jazz singer Radha Thomas, a much-loved presence on the jazz scene, wrote lyrics to Coltrane’s “Naima” in the 1970s and later revisited it with Marie Hagén and Bangalore pianist Aman Mahajan. She was among one of the earliest lyricists to do so, alongside Jon Hendricks and Mark Murphy.Jazz fusion pioneer Dinshah Sanjana’s band Divya blended Hindustani and Carnatic elements with jazz-rock improvisation. Alice Coltrane heard the group at the Jazz Jamboree in Warsaw and invited the band to the fifth John Coltrane Festival in Los Angeles, where they performed at University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) Royce Hall in 1991.Coltrane was quietly present in Bombay’s modern jazz scene as well. Guitarist Noel Borthwick, who cites Coltrane as a formative influence, led The Jazzmates on the rare 1991 Magnasound cassette Sound Matters, one of India’s early homegrown modern-jazz albums.John Coltrane, Photo: Wikimedia Commons.Bombay’s Azure Hades offer an intriguing “Coltrane Circle” parallel. At Jazz Yatra 1990, “Jazz Veda” was described as based on a Vedic sāman chant, close to the source that scholars have proposed for Coltrane’s “India.” Their cassette Inspirational Satisfaction also included “Fibonacci Number” and “123 · 1234 · 123456,” suggesting a fascination with numbers and patterns that recalls Giant Steps and Coltrane’s geometric diagram for Yusef Lateef. Bassist Shrikanth Sriram also performed with Divya at Alice Coltrane’s John Coltrane Festival at UCLA.Indian-American trumpeter Rajesh Mehta heard Nadaswaram in Coltrane, later channeling Chennai temple collaborations into ORKA-M. Drummer John McLaughlin and collaborator Ranjit Barot heard raga-like modal structures in Coltrane’s music before formally studying Indian classical music. The quartet’s freedom recalled jam sessions at Barot’s mother’s home, Kathak legend Sitara Devi.UC Berklee graduate, guitarist Amit Heri, who worked with Charlie Mariano, recalled buying every Coltrane album he could find and later dedicated Elephant Walk to him. He still referred to Coltrane as his “greatest influence in jazz” in 2016.Chennai guitarist Prasanna became deeply absorbed in Coltrane’s music before moving to the US in 1994, later calling Olé Coltrane the album that made jazz click as a personal expression and not just a harmony or a technique.Bengaluru-based Varijashree Venugopal tackled Coltrane’s formidable “Giant Steps” in her Carnatic scat style, using Indian Sargam. Calcutta guitarist and composer Amyt Datta, a major figure in the city’s contemporary jazz and fusion scene, linked his composition “Electric Insenity,” from the album Ambiance de Danse, to a five-note Coltrane scale and called Coltrane “a master of his craft with the mind of a supercomputer,” citing “Giant Steps.”Arjun Sen, who grew up in Shillong listening to Coltrane, the Beatles and Indian and Western classical music, called Coltrane “home” and paired A Love Supreme with Bismillah Khan as “kindred spiritual journeys.”Coltrane’s influence spanned South Asia. In Lahore, Jaubi drew on A Love Supreme for Nafs at Peace, while the Sachal Jazz Ensemble reworked “My Favorite Things” with South Asian colour. Rez Abbasi found Coltrane through “Giant Steps” and later recorded “Lonnie’s Lament” on fretless guitar. In Nepal, Jazzmandu featured Coltrane standards, while Sri Lankan sitarist Pradeep Ratnayake brought his music into an East-West setting alongside ragas, folk melodies and jazz.Coltrane’s Indian story was therefore never one-way. What he drew from ragas, chants and spiritual thought returned to South Asia in new forms. From Bombay to Bengaluru to Lahore to Kathmandu, the circle closed but the sound that came back was no longer only Coltrane’s.Sujit Sinha is an avid record collector, music archivist, and business entrepreneur.