History of the horse in the Indian subcontinent

It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravan. - Mortimer Wheeler

The horse has been present in the Indian subcontinent from at least the middle of the second millennium BC, more than two millennia after its domestication in Central Asia.

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Quotes

A

• From early historical times forward we know that horses have been regularly imported to South Asia. We also know the Indus had a long tradition of trade with centres to the west and north. Would it be surprising therefore if horses were occasionally acquired through trade, ultimately reaching the Indus world by land or sea? This would account for the occurrence of a small number of their bones in various contexts without the need to assume their presence must necessarily be associated with profound cultural change.
  • Bridget Allchin (1977) ,(316) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• These findings of the domestic horse from Mahagara in the east, and Hallur in the south, are significant because they would seem inconsistent with the axiom that the Aryans introduced the domesticated horse into the Northwest of the subcontinent in the later part of the second millennium B.C.E. Due to the controversy generated by Alur's report, a reexcavation of Hallur was undertaken to collect fresh samples of animal bones. Alur (1992) again insisted that specimens of Equus caballus Linn were definitely present in the collection. His response is worth quoting at length to give a sense of the controversy and significance surrounding this animal:
  When I wrote this report, I least expected that it might spark off a controversy and land me in the witness box before the Indian historians' jury. . . . I was apprised of the gravity of the situation when I began to get letters asking me for clarification of the situation against the prevalent belief that the horse is a non-indigenous species and was introduced into India only by the (invading) Aryans. . . . To make my position clear, I wrote in my article . . . that whatever may be the opinion expressed by archaeologists, it cannot either deny or alter the find of a scientific fact that the horse was present at Hallur before die (presumed) period of Aryan invasion. . . . I have only declared the findings that horse bones were traced in the faunal collection from Hallur and am responsible to that extent only.
  • K.R. Alur, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9
  • Alur (1992) "Aryan Invasion of India, Indo-Gangetic Valley Cultures." In New Trends in Indian Art and Archaeology (561-566). Ed. B. U. Nayak and N. C. Ghosh. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The word ashva must originally have implied strength or speed or both before it came to be applied to a horse. ...
  • Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads, quoted from THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• The cow and horse, go and ashva, are constantly associated. Usha, the Dawn, is described as gomati ashvavati; Dawn gives to the sacrificer horses and cows. As applied to the physical dawn gomati means accompanied by or bringing the rays of light and is an image of the dawn of illumination in the human mind. Therefore ashvavati also cannot refer merely to the physical steed; it must have a psychological significance as well. A study of the Vedic horse led me to the conclusion that go and ashva represent the two companion ideas of Light and Energy, Consciousness and Force.... For the ritualist the word go means simply a physical cow and nothing else, just as its companion word, ashva, means simply a physical horse.... When the Rishi prays to the Dawn, gomad viravad dhehi ratnam uso ashvavat, the ritualistic commentator sees in the invocation only an entreaty for “pleasant wealth to which are attached cows, men (or sons) and horses”. If on the other hand these words are symbolic, the sense will run, “Confirm in us a state of bliss full of light, of conquering energy and of force of vitality.”
  • Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda quoted from THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

B

• Through a thorough study of the equid remains of the protohistoric settlement of Surkotada, Kutch, excavated under the direction of Dr. J. P. Joshi, I can state the following:
  The occurrence of true horse (Equus Caballus L.) was evidenced by the enamel pattern of the upper and lower cheek and teeth and by the size and form of the incisors and phalanges (toe bones). Since no wild horses lived in India in post-Pleistocene times, the domestic nature of the Surkotada horse is undoubtful. This is also supported by an inter-maxilla fragment whose incisor tooth shows clear signs of crib-biting, a bad habit only existing among domestic horses which are not extensively used for war. (Bökönyi, December 13, 1993)
  Bökönyi (1997: 300) confirmed his findings: “All in all, the evidence enumerated above undoubtedly raises the possibility of the occurrence of domesticated horses in the mature phase of the Harappa Culture, at the end of the third millennium BC.”
  • Bökönyi, December 13, 1993, and Bökönyi, S., 1997. “Horse Remains from the Prehistoric Site of Surkotada, Kutch, Late 3rd Millennium BC,” South Asian Studies, 13: 297–307.
  • quoted in B.B. Lal, Aryan invasion of India, Perpetuation of a myth. in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 69-70 also quoted by Prof. B.B. Lal from Bokonyi's letter to the Director of the Archaeological Survey of India, 13- 12-1993, in New Light on the Indus Civilization, Aryan Books, Delhi 1998, p.111. quoted also in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate. Elst adds: "Lal took the trouble of quoting Bokonyi precisely because the latter's expertise had falsely been cited in favour of the opposite view, viz. that the horses found were really hemiones."

• It is well known that wild horses did not exist in India in post-Pleistocene times, in the time of horse domestication. Horse domestication could therefore not be carried out there, and horses reached the Indian subcontinent in an already domesticated form coming from the Inner Asiatic horse domestication centres via the Transcaspian steppes, North- east Iran, South Afghanistan and North Pakistan. The northwestern part of this route is already more or less known; the Afghan and Pakistani part has to be checked in the future.
  • Bokonyi (1997), 300: in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • Bokonyi, Sandor. 1997. "Horse Remains from the Prehistoric Site of Surkotada, Kutch, Late 3rd Millennium B.C." South Asian Archaeology 13:297-307.

• The evidence concerning horses remains nonetheless the weakest point in the case for an Indian Urheimat. While the evidence is arguably not such that it proves the Harappan culture’s unfamiliarity with horses, it cannot be claimed to prove the identity of Vedic and Harappan culture either, the way the abundance of horse remains in Ukraine is used to prove the IE character of the settlements there. At this point, the centre-piece of the anti-AIT plea is an explainable paucity of the evidence material, so that everything remains possible.... The non-invasionists should recognize the merits in the invasionist skepticism of the horse evidence found in the Harappan cities. It is one thing for Prof. B.B. Lal (one of those healthy doubters who only came to dismiss the “myth of the Aryan invasion” gradually) to cite recent finds of horse bones as proving that “the horse was duly known to the Harappans” and to quote archaeozoologist Prof. Sandor Bokonyi as confirming that the horses found in Surkotada were indeed horses (which some had refused to believe due to their AIT bias), and that “the domestic nature of the Surkotada horses is undoubtful”. It is another to deduce that the horse was simply part of Harappan life rather than an exotic curiosity; AIT defenders have a point when they maintain that the horse was not part of the Harappan lifestyle the way it was in the Kurgan culture. More work is to be done, both in digging and ... interpreting the data.
  • Sandor Bokonyi quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. quoting Sandor Bokonyi

• Some caveats seem to be in order, here: the first point that needs to be established is that, in terms of its proto-Indo-European pedigree, there seems to be a widespread opinion among linguists, going back at least to Fraser (1926), that considering *ekwos to have been a domesticated horse involves accepting some major assumptions which can easily be called into question. We don’t know if the term referred to equus caballus Linn or some other type of equid in the proto-period, we don’t know if it referred to a domesticated horse or a wild horse, and, allowing that it did refer to a domesticated equus caballus Linn, we cannot rule out the possibility that it was a late loanword that circulated around the IE-speaking area. Clearly, if the word for horse could have circulated after the dispersal of the IEs, and then been restructured according to individual dialects, then stating that the IEs knew the horse before their dispersal and must therefore have inhabited an area wherein the horse is native (and eliminating other areas where the evidence for the horse is a later phenomenon) is barking up the wrong tree.
  • Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 487-90 .488

• One must accordingly be wary of making the Indo-Aryans themselves overly synonymous with the horse, since the horse could have been imported in the proto-historic period, just as it has been throughout the historic period, but this in itself need not indicate a priori that the Indo-Aryans were imports as well, especially if the domestic horse was a post-Indo- European development that circulated throughout the various dialects as Lehmann (1993) has argued, or an item known only in some areas where the proto-Indo- European dialects were spoken as Colemann (1988) has suggested.
  • Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 487-90

• As an aside, to pronounce unambiguously that there is no evidence of the horse in the IVC, on one side, or to insist that there is conclusive evidence, on the other, are both somewhat sleights of hands. A more precise statement is that there is some evidence of the horse, but it has been contested. There is no uncontested evidence because there are only minor differentiating features between the various species of Equus. Equus hemionus khur, for example, is indigenous to the Northwest of the subcontinent, but it is Equus caballus that is the sought-after Aryan steed.
  • Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 487-90

• Another observation that needs to be pointed out is that a number of scholars are prepared to consider that the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), which will be discussed in the next chapter, is an Indo-Aryan culture. The horse has been evidenced in this culture in the form of representations in grave goods. However, no horse bones have been found despite the availability of a large number of animal bones. This again underscores the point that lack of horse bones does not equal the absence of horse. Nor, at least in the opinion of those who subscribe to the Indo-Aryan identifica- tion of the BMAC, does this lack equal the absence of Indo-Aryans. Therefore, anyone prepared to associate the BMAC culture with the Indo-Aryans cannot then turn around and reject such an identification for the Indus Valley on the grounds of lack of horse bones in the latter.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• The discussions on the horse and chariot are exhausting and I have nothing further to add to what I and many others have already written on this issue, except that I was only made aware of the reference to the 34 ribbed horse in the Rgveda after I wrote my book. This does seem to further complicate attempts to connect it with the already highly problematically reconstructed proto-Indo-European steed from the Russian steppes.
  • Edwin Bryant . "'Somewhere in Asia and No More,' Response to 'Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda' by Kazanas." Journal of Indo-European Studies 30.3-4 (2003): 341-353

• In the absence of irrefutable linguistic evidence, there is no reason to feel compelled to believe that the introduction of the horse into the subcontinent is indicative of the introduction of new peoples any more than the introduction of any other innovatory items of material culture (such as camels, sorghum, rice, lapis lazuli, or anything else) is representative of new human migratory influxes.
  • Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, p. 228.quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

D

• The most interesting is the discovery of bones of horse from the Kayatha levels and a terracotta figurine of a mare. It is the domesticate species (Equus caballus), which takes back the antiquity of the steed in India to the latter half of the third millennium BC. The presence of horse at Kayatha in all the chalcolithic levels assumes great significance in the light of the controversy about the horse.12
  • M. K. Dhavalikar, Indian Protohistory (New Delhi: Books & Books, 1997), p. 115. quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• The Proto-Indo-European term for 'horse' shows only that horses were known (nobody doubts this); it does not mean that horses were already domesticated.
  • D'iakonov (1985),, 113 in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • 1985. "On the Original Home of the Speakers of Indo-European." Journal of Indo-European Studies 13, nos. 1-2:92-174.

• IE linguistics can agree on the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European etyma "ekwos 'horse'. . . . But let us note |that) the animal terms tell us, in and of themselves, nothing about the cultural uses of those animals or even whether they were domesticated; but only that Proto- Indo-European speakers knew of some kind of horse . . . although not which equid. . . . The fact that the equid *ekwos was the domesticated Equus cabailus spp. Linnaeus . . . come[s] not from etymology but rather from archaeology and paleontology. The most we can do with these prehistoric etyma and their reconstructed proto-meanings, without archaeological and paleontological evidence (which does indeed implicate domestication), is to aver a Proto-Indo-European familiarity with these beasts.
  • Diebold (1987) (53-54) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

E

• The first wave of Indo-European emigrants . . . may have reached the Caspian and Black Sea coasts and domesticated the horse there, or learnt from the natives how to domesti- cate the horse. They communicated the new knowledge along with a few specimens of the animal to their homeland . . . along with the appropriate terminology, so that it became part of the cultural scene depicted in Vedic literature. Meanwhile, the Indo-European pioneers on the Black Sea made good use of the horse to speed up their expansion into Europe.
  • Elst (1996) ,40, in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Note also what the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15 th edition, Vol. 9, p.348, has to say in the course of a description of Indian archaeology: ―Curiously, however, it is precisely in those regions that used iron, and were associated with the horse, that the Indo-Aryan languages did not spread. Even today, these are the regions of the Dravidian language group".
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2008). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

F

• The significance attached to the fact that the Indogermans were acquainted with the horse . . . may have been exaggerated. We do not know the precise meaning of the Indogermanic words in question; we do not know whether they mean the domesticated or the wild animals." ... "it is difficult to see how these names can be safely used for determining the original home of the Indogermans".
  • Fraser (1926), (266-267). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • Fraser, J. 1926. "Linguistic Evidence and Archaeological and Ethnological Facts." Proceedings of the British Academy 12:257-272.

• All things considered, nothing allows us to take the horse as a privileged marker of the presence of Indo-European, Indo-Iranian or Indo-Aryan speakers. It follows that the entire archaeological and linguistic reasoning proposed by D. Anthony is tautological, to the extent that it only shows that in Indo-European languages the vocabulary of horse and chariot is Indo-European... It would have been necessary to show that the lexicon of the horse and chariot in non-Indo-European populations is Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan, etc. by loan. However, JANFIUNEN 1998 showed for the horse (as well as domestication, horse riding?) a diffusion in oriental Asia which is not based on an Indo-European origin.
  • p. 275. Henri-Paul Francfort. La civilisation de l'Oxus et les Indo-Iraniens et Indo-Aryens en Asie centrale. 2005, in: G. Fussman, J. Kellens, H.-P. Francfort, X. Tremblay, Aryas, Ariens et Iraniens en Asie centrale

• The sacrifice of horses, in fact, is in no way specific to Vedic India: only the ritual of this sacrifice is, very different from that of the funerary ritual of Sintashta. The Indian aśvamedha is in no way a funeral ritual. Likewise, that the i-e name (?) of the chariot (ratha) is only attested in the i-ir languages does not mean that it is an i-ir invention, because, like so many others words, its equivalent may have disappeared from other languages i-e and because having a word to designate the war chariot does not mean that they invented it.
  • p. 802 Fussman G. Entre fantasmes, science et politique. L’entrée des Āryas en Inde. Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 2003;58(4):779-813.

G

• The lack of a clear Proto-Indo-European word for ̳donkey‘, given the presence of domesticated donkeys throughout most of the territory where horses were domesticated and where the Indo-European tribes must have lived, can be explained by assuming that *ek h wos was originally used with the meaning 'donkey‘ as well as 'wild horse; horse‘. ...[the PIE speakers lived in] Central and Eastern Asia, where paleozoological data show that the domesticated donkey is a recent introduction.
  • Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture. Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. and Ivanov, V.V. Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, Berlin, New York.

• In India the ... true horse is reported from the Neolithic levels at Kodekal [dist. Gulbarga of Karnataka] and Hallur [dist. Raichur of Karnataka] and the late Harappa levels at Mohenjo-daro (Sewell and Guha, 1931) and Ropar and at Harappa, Lothal and numerous other sites. … Recently bones of Equus caballus have also been reported from the proto-Harappa site of Malvan in Gujarat.
  • A. Ghosh, An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1989), vol. 1, p. 4. quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

H

• No archaeological evidence from Harappan India has been presented that would indicate anything comparable to the cultural and religious significance of the horse (...) which can be observed in the traditions of the early IE peoples, including the Vedic Aryas. On balance, then, the ‘equine’ evidence at this point is more compatible with migration into India than with outward migration.
  • Hans Hock, quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2007). Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate.

I

• If horseback riding really did began at the turn of the IV mil. B.C. before the dispersal of Proto-Indo-European, it did not leave traces in the vocabulary of the later dialects. . . . Thus it cannot be proven that this type of ancient . . . horseback riding had originally been connected with Indo-Europeans".
  • Ivanov (1999) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • Ivanov, Vyacheslav. 1999. "Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European." UCLA Indo-European Studies 1:147-264 (233).23

• Indeed Ivanov (1999), who has undertaken by far the most comprehensive study of the cognate terms for horse in Indo-European as well as the adjacent languages of Northern Caucasian and Human, points out that "the Indo-European homeland need not be identical to the area of horse domestication, but should be connected to it. The ways in which names and technical knowledge . . . spread should be explored".
  • quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

J

• At Surkotada from all the three periods quite a good number of bones of horse (Equus Caballus Linn) ... have been recovered. The parts recovered are very distinctive bones: first, second and third phalanges and few vertebrae fragments.
  • Jagat Pati Joshi, Excavation at Surkotada and Exploration in Kutch (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, Memoirs N°87, 1990), pp. 381-382.quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

K

• [the adoption of the horse or the camel reflects] “changes [that] were made by the indigenous [Late Harappan] inhabitants, and were not the result of a new people streaming into the region. The horse and camel would indicate connections with Central Asia.”
  • Jonathan M. Kenoyer, “Interaction Systems, Specialized Crafts And Cultural Change,” in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), p. 227 quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• How do we know what kind of animal denoted the Rigvedic word asva (also atya, vájin, haya etc)? Certainly the Greek, Latin, etc cognate words denoted a particular equid, but how can we be sure that the Rigvedic animal is the same? After all, the only description we have is of an equid with 34 ribs in RV I, 62, 18 (a late hymn).... Hymn III 53, 17-18 also has oxen, while stanza 5 has vájin rásabha either ‘horse’ and ‘ass’ or ‘fast ass’ for Indra(!). The ass is not unusual since I, 34, 9 also has the yoking of vájin (‘horse’ or ‘fast’) (and) rásabha (‘ass’), here for the Asvins; also I 116, 2 and 162, 21! (Could one speculate further that vájin and perhaps asva might at times denote ‘ass, onager, hemione’?).
  • Kazanas, N. (2002). Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda: Indo-Aryan migration debate. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 30(3-4), 275-334.

L

• For example, Phase III of Lothal in Gujarat, which is Mature Harappan in contents, has yielded a terracotta figure of the horse. It has a stumpy tail and the mane is indicated by a low ridge over the neck. And this figure is not the only evidence regarding the presence of the horse at Lothal. Reporting on the faunal remains from the site, two experts, namely, Bholanath of the Zoological Survey of India and G. V. Sreenivas Rao of the Archaeological Survey, have the following to say:
  The single tooth of the horse referred to above indicates the presence of the horse at Lothal during the Harappan period. The tooth from Lothal resembles closely with that of the modern horse and has the pli-caballian (a minute fold near the base of the spur or protocone) which is a well distinguishable character of the cheek teeth of the horse.
  • (S. R. Rao 1985: 641) S.R. Rao, 1985. Lothal – A Harappan Port Town (1955–62), Vol. 2. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India.
  • quoted in B.B. Lal, Aryan invasion of India, Perpetuation of a myth. in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 69-70

• In other words, the prominent place given to horses and chariots in the Rig Veda can tell us virtually nothing that might distinguish any real society for which the Rig Veda might provide a partial cosmology. If anything, it suggests that in the real society (as opposed to its mythological counterpart), horses and chariots were a rarity, ownership of which was a mark of aristocratic or kingly distinction.
  • 240 Sir Edmund Leach. Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245. quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

M

• Perhaps the most interesting of the model animals is the one that I personally take to represent a horse. I do not think we need be particularly surprised if it should be proved that the horse existed thus early at Mohenjo-daro.
  • About the terracotta animals from his excavations at Mohenjo-daro, Mackay wrote (1938, Vol. 1: 289; Vol. 2, pl. LXXVIII, no. 11) Mackay, E. J. H., 1938. Further Excavations al Mohenjo-daro, 2 vols. Delhi: Government of India. in B.B. Lal, Aryan invasion of India, Perpetuation of a myth. in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 69. also quoted in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• Deep in the specialized literature on horse classification, we can find that Indian and other horses extending to insular Southeast Asia were peculiar from other breeds. All showed anatomical traces of admixture with the ancient equid known as Equus sivalensis. Most standard works leave a question mark as to the extinction date of Equus sivalensis. However, like that equid, the horse of southeastern Asia has peculiar zebra-like dentition. Also, both were distinguished by a pre-orbital depression. The orbital region is important because it has been demonstrated as useful in classifying different species of equids. Finally, and most importantly in relation to Vedic literature, the Indian horse has, like Equus sivalensis, only 17 pairs of ribs. In comparison, the horses of Central Asians, Europeans and Iranians had 18 pairs of ribs... So the horse of India including, that of the asvamedha sacrifice in what is regarded as the oldest part of the Rgveda, is a distinct variety native to southeastern Asia.
  • A new look at Vedic India by Paul Kekai Manansala [1]

R

• The significance of the horse for the understanding of the distribution of early Indo-European has been much exaggerated.
  • Renfrew (1999) (281) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • 1999. "Time Depth, Convergence Theory, and Innovation in Proto-Indo-European: 'Old Europe" as a PIE Linguistic Area." Journal of Indo-European Studies 27(3-4):258-293.

S

• A. K. Sharma (1992-93) comments on the academic reaction to these not inconsiderable reports: It is really strange that no notice was taken by archaeologists of these vital findings, and the oft-repeated theory that the true domesticated horse was not known to the Harappans continued to be harped upon, coolly ignoring these findings to help our so-called veteran historians and archaeologists of Wheeler's generation to formulate and propagate their theory of "Aryan invasion of India on horse-back."
  • A. K. Sharma (1992-93) , 31, in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• The situation took a new turn, somewhat melodramatically, a few years ago. The material involved had been excavated in Surkotada in 1974 by J. P Joshi, and A. K. Sharma subsequently reported the identification of horse bones from all levels of this site (circa 2100-1700 B.C.E.)... Although some scholars accepted the report, doubts about the exact species of Equus represented by the bones prevented widespread recognition of Sharma's claim...Twenty years later, at the podium during the inauguration of the Indian Archaeological Society's annual meeting, it was announced that Sandor Bokonyi, a Hungarian archaeologist and one of the world's leading horse specialists, who happened to be passing through Delhi after a conference, had verified that the bones were, indeed, of the domesticated Equus caballus... Sharma, vindicated, received two minutes of applause from the entire assembly; there now seemed to be no doubt about the horse at Surkotada. Sharma comments on this validation:
  This was the saddest day for me as the thought flashed in my mind that my findings had to wait two decades for recognition, until a man from another continent came, examined the material and declared that "Sharma was right." When will we imbibe intellectual courage not to look across borders for approval? The historians are still worse, they feel it is an attempt on the part of the "rightists" to prove that the Aryans did not come to India from outside her boundaries.
  • (Sharma 1992-93, 30). A.K. Sharma voicing his disappointment that his initial report on horse bones was rejected by some scholars, but was much later vindicated by horse expert Sándor Bökönyi, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. 1992-93. "The Harappan Horse Was Buried under the Dunes of . . . " Puratattva 23:30-34

• Although A. K. Sharma claims that the bones of Equus caballus have been discovered "from so many Harappan sites and that too right from the lowest levels [thus establishing] that the true domesticated horse was very much in use by the Harappans" (1992-93, 33), with the exception of the report from Rana Ghundai, which was questioned by Zirnmer, and Piggott's reported horse figurine from Periano Ghundai, it would appear that much, if not all, of even the contested evidence comes from strata associated with later Harappan sites or at least not from the Pre-Harappan or Early Harappan period.
  • A. K. Sharma in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9

• Burrow (1972) notes the existence of a word for the horse which is found only in Tamil and Brahui (DED 500: Tamil ivu ḷ i, Brahui (h)ullī) and which therefore must have existed in the earliest Dravidian [...] McAlpin suggests that this early Dravidian word probably referred to the Asian wild ass, Equus Hemionus, which is native to South Asia, rather than to the domesticated horse, Equus Caballus.
  • Reconstructing Social Context from Language ― Indo- Aryan and Dravidian Prehistory. Southworth, Franklin C., pp.258-277 in ―The Indo- Aryans of Ancient South Asia‖. ed. George erdosy, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, 1995.

T

• The "equine argument" is one of the most hypocritical arguments in the AIT armory, since the crux of the argument seems to be as follows: "the equine archaeological data does not provide material evidence for an OIT, therefore the OIT stands automatically disqualified. The equine archaeological data does not provide any material evidence whatsoever for an AIT either; but this does not disqualify the AIT, as the AIT does not require this evidence since the AIT is beyond doubt or question.
  • Talageri, S. G. (2008). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The idea that invading Indo-Aryans entered India, bringing the horse with them, and introduced the animal into India, is also totally inconsistent with the linguistic evidence...: ―Sanskrit has many words for the horse: aśva, arvant or arvvā, haya, vājin, sapti, turanga, kilvī, pracelaka and ghoṭaka, to name the most prominent among them. And yet, the Dravidian languages show no trace of having borrowed any of these words; they have their own words kudirai, parī and mā [...] The Santali and Mundari languages, however, have preserved the original Kol- Munda word sādom. Not only has no linguist ever claimed that the Dravidian and Kol-Munda words for ̳horse‘ are borrowed from ̳Aryan‘ words, but in fact some linguists have even sought to establish that Sanskrit ghoṭaka, from which all modern Indo-Aryan words are derived, is borrowed from the Kol-Munda languages.
  • Talageri, S. G. (2008). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• The horse could have been very well known to the proto-Indo-Europeans in their original homeland before their dispersal from it (which is really the only thing indicated by the facts), without the horse necessarily being a native of that homeland, or they themselves being its domesticators".
  • Talageri (1993) 158, in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The supply of horses . . . has been a preoccupation of the rulers of India, from, nearly, one end of its recorded history to the other. . . . It has yet to be determined why exactly India has never been self-sufficient in horses. Climate? A relative scarcity of pasture?" For our purposes, the fact remains that "whatever the reason, the stock has always had to be replenished by imports, and the imports came from westward in the ancient period. . . . It is a structure of its history, then, that India has always been dependent upon western and central Asia for horses".
  • Trautmann (1982), in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.
  • Thomas R. 1982. "Elephants and the Mauryas." In India History and Thought (245- 281). Ed. S. Muckerjee. Calcutta: Subarnarekha. (261).

W

• One terracotta, from a late level of Mohenjo-daro, seems to represent a horse, reminding us that a jaw-bone of a horse is also recorded from the same site, and that the horse was known at a considerably earlier period in Baluchistan.
  • Wheeler, R. E. M., 1968. The Indus Civilization, 3rd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.(1968: 92)
  • in B.B. Lal, Aryan invasion of India, Perpetuation of a myth. in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge 69

• Even Mortimer Wheeler (1953) identified a horse figurine and accepted that "it is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravan".
  • Mortimer Wheeler (1953) 92, in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 9.. 1953. The Cambridge History of India. Supplementary Volume: The Indus Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Z

• Zimmer (1990a) points out that the inference that the horse was known to the Indo-Europeans is primarily based on such poetic formulas as 'swiff horse', 'horses of the sun', 'characterized by good horses', and so on. He feels that "the formulas tell us nothing specific about the use of horses, but archaeology and history supply the necessary information".
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. Zimmer, Stefan 1990a. "The Investigation of Proto-Indo-European History: Methods, Problems, Limita- tions." In When Worlds Collide (311-344). Ann Arbor: Karoma. (316).

From Hindu texts

• The four-and-thirty ribs of the. Swift Charger, kin to the Gods, the slayer's hatchet pierces.
  Cut ye with skill, so that the parts be flawless, and piece by piece declaring them dissect them.
  • verse I.162.18, the Rigveda (Griffith translation) Wikisource

• Indra-Soma, by means of the truth (eva satyam), shatters the stable where Dasyus were holding “horses and cows” (ashvyam goh).
  • Rig-Veda, IV.28.5. as quoted/cited in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• In another hymn, Indra’s human helpers find the Pani’s “horses and cattle”: “The Angirasas gained the whole enjoyment of the Pani, its herds of the cows and the horses.”
  • Rig-Veda I.83.4. as quoted/cited in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• The most striking passage is from the famous dialogue between the divine hound Sarama, Indra’s intransigent emissary, and the Panis, after she has discovered their faraway den, where they jealously hoard their “treasures.” Sarama boldly declares Indra’s intention to seize these treasures, but the Panis are unimpressed and threaten to fight back; they taunt her: “O Sarama, see the treasure deep in the mountain, it is full of cows and horses and treasures (gobhir ashvebhir vasubhir nyrsah). The Panis guard it watchfully. You have come in vain to a rich dwelling.”
  • Rig-Veda X.108.2-11. as quoted/cited in THE HORSE AND THE ARYAN DEBATE by Michel Danino* (Published in the Journal of Indian History and Culture of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Institute of Indological Research, Chennai, September 2006, No.13, pp. 33-59.)

• The four and thirty ribs of the strong steed,
  Kin of the gods, the axe meeteth;
  Skilfully do ye make the joints faultless;
  Declaring each part, do ye cut it asunder.
  • The Yajur Veda [2]

• The birthplace of the horse, indeed, is the sea, its kindred is the sea.
  • The Yajur Veda [3]