Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth: Part 2

[Cyrano]

The more I look at it, this India did not have horses is just a conjecture backed by no evidence. "No Horses" can't be a valid argument to refute OIT or be the sole reason to explain why islamic invaders succeeded in wars against Indian kings. Moreover the 2 topics are seperated by several millinea.

Edit: typo AIT corrected to OIT.

[SRajesh]

And add this
Greeks came with Horses!
Alexander purported to have ridden a famous one.
And they defeated the Persians prior to coming here who had horses remember and of course chariots as well.
We had a relative calm period for Gandhara Art and Bamiyan Buddha to happen!!
And yet we did not attempt to breed horses!
Baluchi breed is local breed and so are the mountain breeds like Bhotia.
We somehow did not realise the importance of Cavalry charge until the Islamic hordes descended on the plains

[Prem Kumar]

The presence or absence of horses (E Caballus) in India is moot from an AIT standpoint. Back during the IE expansion time, most horses would've looked not so different from asses or onagers. It took several centuries of selective breeding for the modern swift, strong horses to make their appearance. This did not even happen in the BCE period (or even if it did, it would have been during the 1st millennium BCE). So, if someone claims that Horse A was stronger than Horse B & therefore conferred a war-winning advantage during the iE expansion period, they're definitely blowing smoke.

Importantly, the chariot-innovation did not happen on the Steppes. It probably happened in India or West Asia (by West Asia, I mean the entire swath from Afghanistan to Syria). All the tech-continuum evidences are found here.

As Dr. Elst argues, wagons would've played an important role in IE spread because, with a wagon, you can bring your family. Instead, if you are just a bunch of horsemen or even chariot-riding males invading a land, you will marry local women. In a couple of generations, you will lose your language. A woman will teach her children her mother-tongue, not the invader's tongue, even if he is the husband. With wagons, you can culturally invade.

Littauer & Crouwel (chariot experts) argue that the Steppes imported the chariot tech very late. They also did not have the impetus to develop the chariot-tech because horseback riding would've been a much more convenient mode of transport for them. That's why the imprints left by the Sintashta carts look so rudimentary.

[Rudradev]

Anyone claiming that horses were even comparably common in ancient India with respect to Europe or West Asia-- let alone that horses in India were "prevalent" or plentiful at the time-- has to answer this question.

Where are the horse bones?

There is only one sort of direct evidence to tell us how the people of a certain civilization raised domesticated animals-- cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, camels, donkeys, horses. Archeological science has protocols for this. You look for skeletal remains of these creatures nearby to the human settlements that you find. An index known as MNI is used to quantify how many of each type of animal are represented in the skeletal remains. Thus you can estimate the relative numbers of different animals that were domesticated in that civilization.

The bones themselves are dated using 14-C radiocarbon methods on the "strata" or layer of the dig in which they were discovered.

From this type of direct dataset the conclusions are clear. Horses are the most abundant animal of all in the Eurasian Steppe. They are less abundant in Anatolian, Mesopotamian and other West Asian sites. And they are rare to the point of being virtually absent in India.

For example in the Indus Sarasvati Valley Civilization... there are over 100 sites that have been discovered for human habitation. Many of them have cattle, sheep, and other animal remains. Only very few (about 5) have domesticated horse remains.

In fact the body of evidence for domesticated horse remains in India is such a small handful that we can identify nearly every instance right here.

From Shrikant Talageri's website: https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/06/t ... ebate.html

Edwin Bryant points out: "The report claiming the earliest date for the domesticated horse in India, ca. 4500 B.C.E., comes from a find from Bagor, Rajasthan, at the base of the Aravalli Hills (Ghosh 1989a, 4). In Rana Ghundai, Baluchistan, excavated by E. J. Ross, equine teeth were reported from a pre-Harappan level (Guha and Chatterjee 1946, 315–316). …equine bones have been reported from Mahagara, near Allahabad, where six sample absolute carbon 14 tests have given dates ranging from 2265 B.C.E. to 1480 B.C.E. (Sharma et al. 1980, 220–221). Even more significantly, horse bones from the Neolithic site Hallur in Karnataka (1500– 1300 B.C.E.) have also been identified by the archaeozoologist K. R. Alur (1971, 123).
...
Bones from Harappa, previously thought to have belonged to the domestic ass, have been reportedly critically re-examined and attributed to a small horse (Sharma 1992–93, 31). Additional evidence of the horse in the form of bones, teeth, or figurines has been reported in other Indus sites such as Kalibangan (Sharma 1992–93, 31); Lothal (Rao 1979), Surkotada (Sharma 1974), and Malvan (Sharma 1992–93, 32). Other later sites include the Swat Valley (Stacul 1969); Gumla (Sankalia 1974, 330); Pirak (Jarrige 1985); Kuntasi (Sharma 1995, 24); and Rangpur (Rao 1979, 219).

This is about as exhaustive a list as anyone has made, of horse remains in ancient India. It may sound like a lot, but it is only a small % of the hundreds of archeological sites where remains of other domesticated animals (though not horses) have been found. Indeed, Bryant's collation of the information cited here shows that the horse remains (bones, teeth) are so rare that it is actually remarkable when someone finds them.

So for those saying horses were NOT rare, a very simple question: what happened to the horse bones? If the cow bones, sheep bones etc. from the very same period survived in many of the sites, why have horse bones been found in only a very small fraction of the sites?

Yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence-- but to use this argument one has to explain why evidence for other animals is abundant but for horses nearly absent.

The second point is: what kind of horses were these? They were not suitable for anyone bigger than a child to ride upon. They were about 4 feet tall, the breeds more popularly known as "ponies" today. Their main purpose was to pull carts or chariots, because they were easier to train in this respect than onagers.

You obviously cannot have cavalry units based on these kinds of horses, much less develop cavalry tactics.

The good news for OIT is this. The AIT people claim that horses were absent in the SDRE "Dravidian" civilization of ISVC, but that they were brought in by TFTA Steppe Aryans in 1500 BCE along with spoked-wheel chariots, the Sanskrit language, and the Rig Veda. The horse-drawn chariots of the Steppe Aryans are supposed to have been crucial for their ability to militarily defeat the ISVC people, establish their own rule, and start persecuting the SDREs with a "caste system" etc.

However, there is no major expansion in the number of horse bones findings after 1500 BCE either! If Aryans brought horses with them, where are the bones of those horses? You would expect to find a lot more of them that could be carbon-dated after 1500 BCE, relative to Indus Valley dates (3500-1900 BCE), but this does not happen.

As Talageri says:

Now it is time for them to produce and us to examine:

• 1. The full data showing the trail of horse bones from the Steppes to Central Asia.

• 2. The data on horse bones in the BMAC in Central Asia (where the "Indo-Iranians" are alleged to have settled before entering India and Afghanistan respectively). Here they already lose the debate since horse bones are almost completely absent in the BMAC!

• 3. The full data (separately) on horse bones in archaeological sites in India between 1500 BCE-1000 BCE and between 1000 BCE-500 BCE.

And all this data must not only show a sudden massive presence of horse bones in the respective areas concerned in line with the alleged time-schedule of the "Aryan" entry into India and their step-by-step spread into the interior areas, but it should also be "comparable to the cultural and religious significance of the horse" in the Rigveda.

• Until all this evidence is produced, presented and examined, there should be a complete moratorium on any discussion or debate on the question of horse bones in India as an item of evidence for the theory that "Aryans" first brought the horse into India after 2000 BCE.

• Until all this evidence is produced, presented and examined, the question of the presence or absence of horse bones in ancient India should be accepted as irrelevant to the AIT-OIT debate.

Meanwhile the spoked wheel has also been established to have existed in the Indus Valley Civilization (Dr. BB Lal's "The Rigvedic People", 2015). So that argument has also gone for a toss.

[Rudradev]

Rudradevji
Per wiki, the original wild horse (E ferus)was present everywhere but died out suddenly in Pleistocene disappeared from americas and left only in old world.
Could these be the bones found in Indian sub continent or referenced in Mahabharata wars!!

Rsatchi ji,

According to Talageri ji it is doubtful that E ferus existed in India. Yet the fact that E ferus existed only outside India, helps provide circumstantial evidence for OIT.
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2021/06/t ... ebate.html

Is aśva=equus ferus, the horse?

• The word aśva, as well as the original PIE word *ekwos from which it is derived, are taken to originally mean specifically equus ferus, the northern horse. However, this is only a presumption of the Steppe Homeland theory: the word originally referred to any equid animal (as the genus name equus and word equid still do in zoological and general terminology). The PIEs in their homeland were indeed familiar with equus ferus, but so were they familiar with other equid species (onager, wild ass).

• In the OIT scenario, they were familiar with equus ferus because the contiguous PIE area, by pre-Rigvedic times, had already spread out to include the horse-rich areas of Central Asia, where the Druhyu groups, the Uttara-Madra (Hittites) and Uttara-Kuru (Tocharians) as also the later European branches were already very much present.


Even as per accepted wisdom, the earliest domesticated horse is found not in Ukraine but at Botai in Kazakhstan, which is almost equidistant from Afghanistan and Ukraine. As per newer findings, the first domesticated horse could have been even closer: in Uzbekistan to the north of Afghanistan as early as 6000 BCE. (LASOTA-MOSKALEWSKA 2009: A Problem of the Earliest Horse Domestication. Data from the Neolithic Camp Ayakagytma 'The Site', Uzbekistan, Central Asia. pp. 14-21, Archaeologia Baltica Volume 11, Klaipeda University, Lithuania, 2009).

• Horses, whether fully domesticated, or in various stages of semi-domestication, were already abundantly present in human settlements to the immediate north of Afghanistan as far back as 6000 BCE, and so at least well known to thePIEs, and to the Vedic people, by 3500 BCE at the very least.

E caballus might have come through the trade routes.

Yes, no doubt about it.

Remember hearing stories of ports and Portuguese traders and Arab traders during the Vijayanagar times and one of the main imports being horses

Yes of course. But let us remember the timelines. For OIT/AIT we are talking about the period from 7500 BCE to around 500 BCE. Vijayanagar times are much later, 1400 CE (about 2000 years later than this period). And even in this period, horses were still being imported, because we had not been able to breed a stable stock of viable, fertile war-horses within India.

I mean if you could you spend millions buying horses how difficult to breed from the imported lot
How is that a populace that could figure out 'Zero' domesticate cattle failed to figure out ways to stop bleeding 'golden varahas' to the yavanas sir!!

That is the million-varaha question isn't it?

Our ancestors were beyond any doubt the finest engineers, metallurgists, and material scientists of their time. They were masters of mathematics, medicine, surgery, architecture, administration, and commerce. But you cannot fight with nature. If horses are reluctant to breed there is nothing you can do.

The only breeds of horses that were stably reproducing within India (and that too, in small populations) were the ponies. Small, four-foot tall horses that only a child could ride upon. They were very useful for carrying loads or pulling carts/chariots, but not at all for cavalry purposes.

So the solution that our ancestors evolved to avoid "bleeding money to the yavanas" was very simple-- do without the horses. They were imported if at all in very small numbers. An extreme luxury item. Develop other military doctrines that did not rely on having large cavalry units.

As I mentioned, I think the warhorses would have been like the Rafale or Su30 MKI-- a few dozen or a few hundred within an Indian military establishment that had thousands or lakhs of foot soldiers, archers, etc. Yes they would have had a prominent place. Legendary kings like Rana Pratap rode on horseback and their horses are remembered (Chetak in his case). But something becoming memorable does not mean it was plentiful. It can be all the more memorable because it was rare, and became associated with the heroic legend of a king or chieftain.

Given the data as it exists, that is the only scenario that makes sense to me.

And furthermore, what's the need for chariot tech if the proverbial 'horse' is not around!! to pull it.
Understand if the wheel tech i.e, evolved more due to improvements of the cattle cart rather than the chariot!

Talageri explains the full evolution of the chariot from solid wheel to spoked wheel, 4 wheels to 2 wheels, and from onager-drawn to horse-drawn. Please read his entire blog post linked above.

The Rigvedic aśva originally referred to both the onager or wild ass as well as to the superior horse of the north locally familiar to the Druhyus who had spread out into Central Asia in pre-Rigvedic times.

• As in Mesopotamia, the onager was probably commonly harnessed to the cart/chariot in the Vedic/Harappan areas (mainly for transport and racing), but, as the Rigvedic data shows, the northern horse was also known, as a rare, prized and superior animal imported through the northwest.

• It is only in the New Rigveda that the northern horse came to be increasingly used with chariots (especially the new spoked-wheel ones), but still mainly for racing.

• War-chariots came into use mainly around 1500 BCE, when horse-chariots became common everywhere, including in Greece and West Asia.

This thing about horse being precious hence 'Ashwamedha' its difficult to accept isnt it.

Why is it difficult? I mean, when you want to show your strength/dominance you would sacrifice (or put at risk) a very precious item, no?

Again let us see what Talageri ji says on the matter, with evidence from the Rig Veda:

The evidence for the late and northwestern nature of the horse in the Rigvedic culture is overwhelming:

• 1. The only two deified or glorified horses in the Rigveda, both race-horses, are identified with the Tṛkṣis of the northernmost Swat area: Dadhikrās (identified with Trasadasyu) and Tārkṣya (identified by the name itself).

• 2. The horse is associated with the northwestern Soma areas, and the Bhṛgu rishi Dadhyañc, who introduced the secrets of the northwestern Soma to Indra, is supposed to have the head of a horse (I.116.12; 117.22; 119.9).

• 3. Horses are rare and prized animals in the Old Rigveda: so rare that Sudās is presented with horse-heads as tribute by supplicant or defeated tribes (VII.18.19).

• 4. Personal names with aśva only appear in the New Rigveda (see later along with the names with ratha).

5. Perhaps it is also interesting that two distinct aspects of the post-Rigvedic horse-sacrifice are found in two different
parts of the Rigveda: the release of a horse in the open and battle with anyone who tries to capture it is the first aspect,
which shows the animal to be a rare and coveted one, for possessing which kings or tribes could enter into war. This is the only aspect found in the Old Rigveda (III.53), where here is no reference to the rare animal being actually ritually killed.

• Everything else connected with the actual ritual horse sacrifice is found only in the New Rigveda, by which time possibly horses from the northwest were more easily available. Hymns I.162-163 describe the actual ritual horse sacrifice, X.157.1-3 were the verses recited at the sacrifice, and the word aśvamedha (though only as a personal name) is found only in V.27.5; VIII.68.15-16.

So there you have it. In the entire ten mandalas of the Rig Veda (1028 suktas; 10,552 mantras) the "Ashwamedha" is referred to a grand total of TWO times.

How could this NOT be considered rare?

My feeling is that the 'Horse' was the original man's best friend until the 'Dog' came along to steal that tag
Per indian Mythology only major animals indigenous to Indian Sub-continent were accorded companion status or revered
And the horse is there!

Rsatchi ji, if we go by mythology then OIT is already proved. Mandara, an Indian mountain, was used by the adityas and daityas to churn the ocean, and everything else came out of that ocean. So all of existence can be said to have an "out of India" origin. But in this thread, let us try to focus on data that cannot be refuted on the grounds that it is simply mythology.

[Rudradev]

Valid points.
Marwari horses were the war horses of Mewar. Chetak, the legendary horse of Rana Pratap was marwari horse. This breed was/is bred in India.
Indian army has bred horses for more than 100 years.
Kathiawari horses are another breed.
Was it a focus on Arab horses by Mughals or English for larger European horses that created the more recent focus on specific breeds?
How did Marathas get their horses - the dakhini breed? They probably were reared locally.

Yayavar ji,

The Marwari horse's genome has been sequenced recently.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4290615/

Whole genome sequence and analysis of the Marwari horse breed and its genetic origin

...

We constructed a phylogenetic tree using SNVs found in the whole genome data of the seven horse breeds (Arabian, Icelandic, Marwari, Norwegian Fjord, Quarter, Standardbred, and Thoroughbred) [4,6]. We identified 11,377,736 nucleotide positions that were commonly found in the seven horse genomes. A total of 25,854 nucleotide positions were used for phylogenetic analysis after filtering for minor allele frequency (MAF), genotyping rate, and linkage disequilibrium (LD). We found that the Marwari horse is most closely related to the Arabian breed (Additional file 2: Figure S6), while the Icelandic horse and Norwegian Fjord were the most distinct from the other breeds, all of which are known to descend from Arabian horses [17,18].

To further explore the relationships among breeds, we compared the Marwari horse genome data with SNP array data from 729 individual horses belonging to 32 domestic breeds [13]. A total of 54,330 nucleotide positions were shared across all individuals including the Marwari horse. After pruning as described above, 10,554 nucleotide positions were used for the comparative analyses. We calculated pairwise genetic distances and conducted multidimensional scaling (MDS) to visualize the relationships among the horse breeds (Figure ​(Figure1).1). The Marwari horse fell together with Iberian-lineage breeds, such as the Andalusian, Mangalarga Paulista, Peruvian Paso, and Morgan horse breeds, all of which are known to have an Arabian ancestry [19-22]. Additionally, we found that the Marwari horse fell between Arabian and Mongolian horses, indicating their dual genetic influences on the Marwari horse as previously suggested.

...We found a clear Arabian and Mongolian component in the Marwari genome, although further work is needed to confirm whether modern Marwari horses also descended from Indian ponies.

We have to always keep in mind the timelines. Yes, in the big picture Marwari is an "indigenous Indian horse" in the same sense that Delhi Sultanate or Mughal Empire is Indian. But if you look at its genetics the conclusions are that it is mainly descended from Arabian and Mongolian horse breeds. Its relatedness to actually indigenous Indian horses (ponies) could not be confirmed.

Marwaris were bred from horses imported around the same time as Mohammed Ghori invaded India (12th century CE). This is nowhere near the time frame of AIT/OIT, of course.

Also, the very fact that after nearly 900 years of breeding, the population of Marwari horses is relatively quite small (a few thousand purebreds at most) shows that breeding them was very difficult, and required investing a lot of time/effort/expense. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, horses do not readily reproduce in India.

Comparatively consider the number of cows and buffaloes in India. https://www.nddb.coop/information/stats/pop . They breed so rapidly that the number increased from 19.8 crores in 1951, to 30.2 crores today! Please look at the table on the page linked above-- it gives a very good idea of the relative numbers of species. Horses are actually on the decline (1.5 million overall in 1951, but only 3 lakhs in the whole of India today). That, again, is because they are imported strains of animals who do not breed well in India-- and, now that they are no longer used for military or police purposes, there is much less demand to breed them. So breeders aren't taking the trouble/making the investment-- with obvious results.

Same argument as for Marwari horses applies to Kathiawaris and other breeds as well.

[Yayavar]

Valid points.
Marwari horses were the war horses of Mewar. Chetak, the legendary horse of Rana Pratap was marwari horse. This breed was/is bred in India.
Indian army has bred horses for more than 100 years.
Kathiawari horses are another breed.
Was it a focus on Arab horses by Mughals or English for larger European horses that created the more recent focus on specific breeds?
How did Marathas get their horses - the dakhini breed? They probably were reared locally.

Yayavar ji,

The Marwari horse's genome has been sequenced recently.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4290615/

Whole genome sequence and analysis of the Marwari horse breed and its genetic origin

...

We constructed a phylogenetic tree using SNVs found in the whole genome data of the seven horse breeds (Arabian, Icelandic, Marwari, Norwegian Fjord, Quarter, Standardbred, and Thoroughbred) [4,6]. We identified 11,377,736 nucleotide positions that were commonly found in the seven horse genomes. A total of 25,854 nucleotide positions were used for phylogenetic analysis after filtering for minor allele frequency (MAF), genotyping rate, and linkage disequilibrium (LD). We found that the Marwari horse is most closely related to the Arabian breed (Additional file 2: Figure S6), while the Icelandic horse and Norwegian Fjord were the most distinct from the other breeds, all of which are known to descend from Arabian horses [17,18].

To further explore the relationships among breeds, we compared the Marwari horse genome data with SNP array data from 729 individual horses belonging to 32 domestic breeds [13]. A total of 54,330 nucleotide positions were shared across all individuals including the Marwari horse. After pruning as described above, 10,554 nucleotide positions were used for the comparative analyses. We calculated pairwise genetic distances and conducted multidimensional scaling (MDS) to visualize the relationships among the horse breeds (Figure ​(Figure1).1). The Marwari horse fell together with Iberian-lineage breeds, such as the Andalusian, Mangalarga Paulista, Peruvian Paso, and Morgan horse breeds, all of which are known to have an Arabian ancestry [19-22]. Additionally, we found that the Marwari horse fell between Arabian and Mongolian horses, indicating their dual genetic influences on the Marwari horse as previously suggested.

...We found a clear Arabian and Mongolian component in the Marwari genome, although further work is needed to confirm whether modern Marwari horses also descended from Indian ponies.

We have to always keep in mind the timelines. Yes, in the big picture Marwari is an "indigenous Indian horse" in the same sense that Delhi Sultanate or Mughal Empire is Indian. But if you look at its genetics the conclusions are that it is mainly descended from Arabian and Mongolian horse breeds. Its relatedness to actually indigenous Indian horses (ponies) could not be confirmed.

Marwaris were bred from horses imported around the same time as Mohammed Ghori invaded India (12th century CE). This is nowhere near the time frame of AIT/OIT, of course.

Also, the very fact that after nearly 900 years of breeding, the population of Marwari horses is relatively quite small (a few thousand purebreds at most) shows that breeding them was very difficult, and required investing a lot of time/effort/expense. This is because, as I mentioned earlier, horses do not readily reproduce in India.

Comparatively consider the number of cows and buffaloes in India. https://www.nddb.coop/information/stats/pop . They breed so rapidly that the number increased from 19.8 crores in 1951, to 30.2 crores today! Please look at the table on the page linked above-- it gives a very good idea of the relative numbers of species. Horses are actually on the decline (1.5 million overall in 1951, but only 3 lakhs in the whole of India today). That, again, is because they are imported strains of animals who do not breed well in India-- and, now that they are no longer used for military or police purposes, there is much less demand to breed them. So breeders aren't taking the trouble/making the investment-- with obvious results.

Same argument as for Marwari horses applies to Kathiawaris and other breeds as well.

Of course. The point was that breeding is/was possible. It may be harder but was possible. The seed maybe from Mongolian or Arabian in 12th century but they have been bred locally since then. And stayed robust enough for the various wars on the subcontinent. The population of Marwari horses is small now but was it small when the Mewaris or MArathas or Banda Bairagis armies were using them? It perhaps was adequate.

Just because the Mughals or English desired additional characteristics and spent a lot of effort on importing horses does not mean breeding of riding and/or war horses was not possible. I brought up the breeding point only because the effort spent in medieval ages on horse import is often used to claim that India did not have horses even long back - after all they were importing in 16th century.

Timelines are separated by a few thousand years but again does not mean that horses could not be reared in India that long back as well. It may have required additional effort but it was doable and so perhaps that is why Nakula was specially mentioned as being an expert (as someone pointed out earlier in the thread).

[Rudradev]

Possible, yes, in that you could in theory get a male and a female horse to breed. But also difficult to the extent that it mostly defied economic sense and could not develop into a self-sustaining program.

See here for a glimpse at what the breeding of horses involves.
https://www.vet.upenn.edu/docs/default- ... aa27e0ba_0

There are numerous things that go into doing it successfully. Unlike sheep or cattle-- you cannot keep the horses in a barn or stable all year, and then one day introduce the male to the female and expect them to go at it. Most especially you cannot do this in a tropical climate like in India, where the libido is decreased as a result of inconducive environment.

In their natural habitat, horses roam around freely all year. Males and females interact socially throughout the year while ranging over several square miles, running together etc. This natural behaviour is critical to their being able to mate successfully.

So at the very least you have to provide a large area of land for your horses to roam around and mimic their natural circumstances. This land area has to be in an environment where the moisture, sunlight, climate, temperature and everything is not too different from where the horses evolved. Plus there is an opportunity cost. Whatever land you are using for this purpose, you cannot use for anything else.

A second difficulty involves the reflex that stallions (males) need to have triggered, before their libido awakens and they are willing to copulate with a mare. Often this involves smelling the mare's hormones in her urine or feces. But not any feces/urine will do! The mare has to be eating a diet of the kind of grasses from her native land, or similar enough that the metabolic byproducts create the exact scent which arouses the male horse.

This again means, you have to control the vegetation of that area of land where you have dedicated resources only to breeding horses. You have to plant the kind of grasses, etc. which the mare will eat, and then excrete the scent which will tempt the male horse. And that is assuming those grasses will grow on your land at all.

Just like this there are lots of complexities. No wonder only somebody as cultured and educated as Nakula, trained in the ashram of Dronacharya himself, was required to take care of managing all these things! Specialists who could manage horse mating in India were not easy to come by, it seems.

So you have the expense of the large and specialized land, the need for a specialist manager of breeding, and then the opportunity cost.

But even that is not all. The genetics of horse breeding in unfavourable climates make it even more inviable.

Consider an illustration. You buy 20 horses from an Arab merchant. 2 stallions (males), 18 mares (females). You invest money in giving them all the conditions they need to breed effectively. In the wild, in the Eurasian Steppe, they would have mated readily and all the mares would be pregnant and birthing foals. But in Indian conditions, let us say you get 1 stallion who manages to impregnate 2 mares twice.

OK, that is still something. So each mare gives birth to two foals. Now what? You can either breed the brother-sister pairs or the half-brother/half-sister pairs.

At some point, because the number of original parents were few, you are going to get into a situation where you have to breed brother-to-sister, stallion-to-mare. Genetically this is disastrous. Recessive diseases come up, as well as unfavourable conditions like dwarfism, decreased bone strength, etc.

So what does this mean? Within a few generations of making your big investment of 20 horses (plus land, plus keeper)-- you have to go BACK to the Arab merchant and buy NEW imported horses to cross-breed with your recessive offspring. That is the only way to keep up the genetic diversity required among the offspring, and avoid killing off your herd with repeated generations of brother-sister breeding.

It is completely unsustainable to do this with only Indian-bred horses. You need to keep introducing new breeding stock i.e. importing more and more animals in order to keep your population of horses steady. It is not a one-time investment but needs to be kept up by constant infusions of imports.

That's why it doesn't make economic sense for any Indian monarch to have kept up a large or sizeable cavalry.

[nachiket]

Was it a focus on Arab horses by Mughals or English for larger European horses that created the more recent focus on specific breeds?
How did Marathas get their horses - the dakhini breed? They probably were reared locally.

The Dakhani/Bhimthadi breed which the Marathas used was also made by interbreeding some local breeds with Arabian/Central Asian horses. Horses were imported by the sea and had been for quite a while before the Marathas came on the scene. So even the local breeds they used may not have been so local. I don't think looking at the situation in the 17th and 18th centuries really helps because too much trade in horses had happened over centuries by then. Doesn't tell us anything about how common or rare horses were in ancient India.

[SRajesh]

Rudradevji
Thanks for very educative response!
The reasons of Islamic invasions could be multi-factorial : lack of cavalry, Dharmic way of fighting, lack of gunpowder/canon tech plus the lure of the riches to plunder for the invader.

[Cyrano]

If Indian conditions were not favorable for breeding horses, how did they breed horses so successfully in the dry deserts of Arabia and many parts of ME I wonder ?!!

[SRajesh]

Wonder whether the mountain ponies bred with other breed were more pack horse/chariot worthy than suitable to be armour clad war-horse type??
And also whether they were any breed of long distance runner or racing ones.
dont know about hoary past or medieval period but Kunigal Stud farm was established by ??Hyder or Tippoo
Also owning a large number was considered quite an achievement if one goes by local Kannada saying:
Saavira Kudire Sardara, meaning leader/owner of 1000 horses/horsemen

[Yayavar]

Was it a focus on Arab horses by Mughals or English for larger European horses that created the more recent focus on specific breeds?
How did Marathas get their horses - the dakhini breed? They probably were reared locally.

The Dakhani/Bhimthadi breed which the Marathas used was also made by interbreeding some local breeds with Arabian/Central Asian horses. Horses were imported by the sea and had been for quite a while before the Marathas came on the scene. So even the local breeds they used may not have been so local. I don't think looking at the situation in the 17th and 18th centuries really helps because too much trade in horses had happened over centuries by then. Doesn't tell us anything about how common or rare horses were in ancient India.

Exactly the point i was making.

The AIT folks point to this Mughal era imports to say that it was so always. But we have the example of Marwari horses.
The distinction being made is that the Marwari horses, even if they had original seed from central asia, were reared in Indian conditions. These horses do not need regular Arabian or mongolian injection to restock. They were adequate for the needs of the Indian rajas and were carefully reared. This happened on record for 900 years.
Thus it could have happened in the past too for specific type of desired characteristics.

Thus using medieval time or other times when horses of certain types were imported is wrong argument to use by AIT or OIT. It is irrelevant.

What is relevant is the bones found in Harappan digs. Paintings and bones in Bhimbetka for example are a better evidence than that 'horses are hard to rear in Indian subcontinent'.

[Prem Kumar]

An interesting snippet: how many of us know that the Croats were originally Iranian speakers (from the Sarmatian lands)? The name "Croat" is derived from the Iranian "Harahvaiti", which is their pronunciation of the river Sarasvati.

This migration happened in the historical times, though the people themselves were likely Out of India emigrants.

Croatia from Sarasvati - not obvious at first glance, but there it is.

[Cyrano]

Somehow learned folks like Prof Talagiri and other pretentious exponents like AIM have missed this : India has produced Shalihotra Samhita dated to around 3rd Century BCE.

The foundation of veterinary science in India can be attributed to Shalihotra, a 3rd Century BCE expert on animal rearing and healthcare. He is known for composing the Shalihotra Samhita, which was based on Ayurveda and extensively documented the treatment of diseases using medicinal plants. This knowledge was believed to have been revealed to Shalihotra by Lord Brahma himself. The principal subject matter of the Shalihotra Samhita is the care and management of horses. The treatise consists of 12,000 verses and has been translated into Persian, Arabic, Tibetan and English. It describes equine and elephant anatomy and physiology, with a laundry-list of diseases and preventive measures. It also details the body structure, elaborates on breeds and contains notes on the auspicious signs to watch for while buying a horse. Though Shalihotra has composed other treatises on the care of horses, the Samhita is the earliest known work on veterinary science in India. This treasure trove of information on horses and elephants is part of Sarmaya’s rare books collection.

Subsequent veterinary works were largely based on the Shalihotra Samhita, which future authors either revised or built upon. Soon after, veterinarians came to be known as salihotriya. The welfare of animals was considered important and it was the duty of veterinary doctors to prevent infections in animals, which might spread to human society. According to the Arthasastra by Kautilya, veterinarians were also posted on battlefields to tend to injured animals. During peace time, these doctors had to ensure that only healthy animals were sent to the markets to prevent the breakout of infections and diseases. It is believed that King Ashoka set up the first veterinary hospital in India. He set aside lands for the cultivation of herbal medicines for men and animals alike. Medicines were administered in the form of powders, decoctions and ointments. Although herbal plants were the main ingredients in medicines, animal-derived substances and minerals were also used.

https://sarmaya.in/spotlight/shalihotra ... -dolittle/

(title of the article quoted - duh !
So it wouldn't be too audacious to presume that ancient India would have mastered the art and science of breeding horses (but not only) for a few centuries before writing a treatise like Shalihotra Samhita.

Just shows how hard we all have been McCaulayed to credit Europeans to teach us what we have discovered and documented few thousands of years ago, which got translated by Persians and Arabs (who get some credit for it from the west going by words like Algebra, Algorithm etc, or who learnt from Nalanda and Takshasila which they later burned) and have been wholesale expropriated and recast by the west or rediscovered again for which they claim credit and award each other Nobel prizes etc.

This is not to diss western achievements since the post renaissance enlightenment, but its no longer possible to claim that everything was discovered by the west for the first time and we pagans were doomed until the Aryans or later the colonialists came to rescue us.

[BajKhedawal]

In Ayurveda there is a herb named "Ashwagandha" literally meaning "Smell of a horse" and the herb does smell like a horse. So if a age old local medicinal herb is named after horse, than horse must have existed in Bharat since as long as that herb has been, if not older. No?

[sudarshan]

In Ayurveda there is a herb named "Ashwagandha" literally meaning "Smell of a horse" and the herb does smell like a horse. So if a age old local medicinal herb is named after horse, than horse must have existed in Bharat since as long as that herb has been, if not older. No?

There's all kinds of ancient references to the horse in India.

Ashwagandha is one which you mentioned.

Then there's Ashwatthama, Drona's son, who was supposedly named after the neighing sound he made when he was born.

The Ashwini twins were born to Surya and his wife, when they were in the form of horses. So their offspring, Nakul and Sahadev, were skilled with horses.

There is also the Ashwini nakshatra, ruled by the Ashwini kumaras. Even today, boys born under this nakshatra are often named "Ashwin" (Ashwin is also a general name, not just for those born under the nakshatra).

Surya's chariot is drawn by seven horses.

In classical music, the notes are as follows:

Sa-----------------Sadja----------------------------------------------------The cry of the peacock
Ri-----------------Rishaba--------------------------------------------------The lowing of the bull
Ga----------------Gandhara------------------------------------------------The bleating of the goat
Ma----------------Madhyama (literally - "middle note")---------------The cry of the kraunja bird (crane/ stork)
Pa-----------------Panchama (literally - "fifth note")------------------The cry of the kokila bird (cuckoo)
Da-----------------Dhaivata------------------------------------------------The neighing of the horse
Ni------------------Nishada-------------------------------------------------The trumpeting of the elephant

And so on.

[Cyrano]

There is also the 8th note called "gardhaba swara", which pseudo experts seem to be singing

[sudarshan]

Not an expert, not pretending to be one, and suck at singing anyway (so I don't even try). But just having references to "Ashwa" doesn't automatically indicate presence of "horses" as we know them today, the word could have meant something else (as in - some other similar animal) back then.

Likewise with "Ashwagandha" the herb could have been named that later (when the smell of horses was noticed), or could have referred to some other "Ashwa" animal back then.

[Srutayus]

I found several mistakes and generalizations in that AIM video. and commented on youtube.

My comments were:

The Marathas did develop a horse breed, the Bhimthadi or Deccani horse. Breeding suffered when one empire succeeded the other, the Deccani suffered from the British replacing the Maratha empire. Also, as one questioner asked, the Marathas from Mahadji Scindia to Yashwantrao Holkar did make serious efforts to transition from cavalry-centric to infantry-centric tactics. The Maratha artillery arguably outclassed the British through the first 3 wars.
Also regarding horse manuals and transmission of knowledge, in India, it goes back to the earliest times. For instance, the Ashva-chikitsa & Shalihotra; illustrations from a 17th-century copy of which, some 2000 years after it was written, can be seen here: https://www.vmfa.museum/piction/7898216-8415283/.

Another key problem with this presentation is the quote from the book: "horse breeding in India & England" and related expatiation. The John Watson quote is specific to the British practice of crossing Indian mares, indiscriminate of specific breed, with English Thoroughbreds. Indian breeding practices suffered because of British practices (the British Indian army was the key source of demand after the fall of the Marathas and other Indian states) that were unsuitable for India and neglectful of Indian breeds as the report itself says.
The book is actually very complimentary on Indian breeds, here are some quotes: ""The Kathiawari, Marwari, Baluchi, and Unmool breeds are pure, and may be used as safely and hopefully as Arabs."
Indeed the book concludes by saying "it seems impossible to explain the recommendation that the use of Thoroughbred stallions should be persevered with, while there exist, over large areas in India, breeds of horses in every way fitted for military purposes."
The book itself is available in digitized form at the UPenn library here: http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/fairmanr ... 00gilb.pdf

[Cyrano]

Sudarshan garu, by pseudo expert I meant AIM types.
The characteristics and usage of the animal referred to as ashwa are consistent through out the ages and correspond to what we call the horse today. If you have come across any evidences to the contrary, please do share.

[sudarshan]

Sudarshan garu, by pseudo expert I meant AIM types.

That's what I thought you meant, I was trying to get you to clarify it explicitly, in case somebody else on this thread thought it was addressed to them and took offense. If you hadn't clarified, your remark would have remained as being addressed to me (which I was okay with), and nobody else need take offense .

The characteristics and usage of the animal referred to as ashwa are consistent through out the ages and correspond to what we call the horse today. If you have come across any evidences to the contrary, please do share.

Just pointing out the academic possibility, for the sake of rigor. No, I don't have evidence contrary to what you said.

[Cyrano]

Glad I clarified ! So its up to those who make extraordinary claims that

"through out the pre-vedic, Vedic, Indus Valley era, Mahabharata era, ancient, medieval, Mughal, Maratha and colonial eras - meaning at no point in time - India did not have adequate horses, could not master its breeding to keep up stocks and therefore could not evolve cavalry tactics"

and offer this an an explanation for India unable to resist invasions through the ages and lately colonial dominance

must back up these claims with extraordinary proof.

As other posters have said, as far as debunking AIT or supporting OIT, this line of argument is worth horse $#!+

[Rudradev]

Somehow learned folks like Prof Talagiri and other pretentious exponents like AIM have missed this : India has produced Shalihotra Samhita dated to around 3rd Century BCE.



The foundation of veterinary science in India can be attributed to Shalihotra, a 3rd Century BCE expert on animal rearing and healthcare. He is known for composing the Shalihotra Samhita, which was based on Ayurveda and extensively documented the treatment of diseases using medicinal plants. This knowledge was believed to have been revealed to Shalihotra by Lord Brahma himself. The principal subject matter of the Shalihotra Samhita is the care and management of horses. The treatise consists of 12,000 verses and has been translated into Persian, Arabic, Tibetan and English. It describes equine and elephant anatomy and physiology, with a laundry-list of diseases and preventive measures. It also details the body structure, elaborates on breeds and contains notes on the auspicious signs to watch for while buying a horse. Though Shalihotra has composed other treatises on the care of horses, the Samhita is the earliest known work on veterinary science in India. This treasure trove of information on horses and elephants is part of Sarmaya’s rare books collection.

How does this contradict anything Talageri is saying?

It makes perfect sense that a detailed treatise on the care and management of horses would be needed, only and exactly because horses in India were exceedingly rare and enormously difficult to breed!

I mean—are you more likely to need a manual on “Caring for my Aston Martin” or “Caring for my Maruti”? Any mechanic in any gully will know how to fix a Maruti, precisely because it is common. Conversely, I know of no elaborate treatise on how to raise cows or sheep in India, presumably because those animals breed very easily in the soil and climate of India… and indeed, Indians have been rearing them since at least the Mehrgarh civilization (7000 BCE).

To put it another way. It does not take much expertise to grow apple trees or cabbages in the temperate lands of Europe or North America—closely-related plants can virtually grow wild there. But it takes a great deal of expertise to grow mango trees or brinjals in such lands.

Perhaps it can be done, but it is an expensive project requiring a lot of dedicated resource management, and even then, you are fighting the weight of evolutionary biology every step of the way. Moreover, even after making the necessary investment, the capacity to breed a self-sustaining variety of mangoes in temperate climate is an extremely difficult proposition.

So would you be more likely to need a horticultural manual on the cultivation of apples, or of mangoes, in such lands?

It’s straightforward. India was a knowledge economy where the most industrious of intellects would apply themselves to the systematic solution of difficult problems—surgery, metallurgy, horse-rearing. Horses were in high demand and very short supply, mostly needing to be imported because breeding them in India was difficult.

That is why there was a need for Shalihotra Samhita to have been written in the first place. Notice also that the other animal emphasized in Shalihotra Samhita is the elephant—which IS native to India but is also an expensive investment because of the amount of food these animals consume. Clearly only the very wealthy (or politically powerful) would have need of such a manual, because who else could afford to acquire and maintain horses or elephants?

This is not to diss western achievements since the post renaissance enlightenment, but its no longer possible to claim that everything was discovered by the west for the first time and we pagans were doomed until the Aryans or later the colonialists came to rescue us.

Not sure who is making this argument, but it certainly isn’t Talageri.

There's all kinds of ancient references to the horse in India.

Ashwagandha is one which you mentioned.

Then there's Ashwatthama, Drona's son, who was supposedly named after the neighing sound he made when he was born.

The Ashwini twins were born to Surya and his wife, when they were in the form of horses. So their offspring, Nakul and Sahadev, were skilled with horses.

There is also the Ashwini nakshatra, ruled by the Ashwini kumaras. Even today, boys born under this nakshatra are often named "Ashwin" (Ashwin is also a general name, not just for those born under the nakshatra).

Surya's chariot is drawn by seven horses.

In classical music, the notes are as follows:…

Sudarshan ji, two quick points here:

Two quick points here.

1) It is well established, both by Talageri and by Western linguists (e.g. Watkins, 1994), that Asva in early Rig Vedic Sanskrit did not necessarily refer to the horse (Equus caballus), but in fact the onager (Equus hemionus). When horses were first introduced into India… see Talageri’s description of how they were very rare and prized… they were initially referred to as “Haya”, a superior steed. In the age of the later books of Rig Veda, Asva did come to mean E caballus or horse by semantic drift. So in general, it’s far from clear what the root specifically referred to in various words from the early Vedic period.

2) The fact that a culture is fascinated with some animal doesn’t mean that it was in any way prevalent. In fact, the rarer and more prized something is, the more it has the makings of a legend.

Look at it this way. The dragon is a hugely common motif in traditional Chinese iconography, art, poetry, and so forth. Can we conclude that there were huge fire-breathing lizards flying over the Yellow River valley?

Meanwhile, sheep and goats did not seem to capture the imagination of the Indian civilization even though they were in fact present in huge numbers and a common feature of daily pastoral life—it’s question of “ghar ki murgi daal barabar”. People in general are not inclined to celebrate the ordinary.

Just pointing out the academic possibility, for the sake of rigor. No, I don't have evidence contrary to what you said.

Actually, the evidence that horses were exceedingly rare and economically prohibitive to breed in India is overwhelming.

1) The archeological evidence. This is what we cite when we refute the AIT, don’t we? We ask—if Aryans invaded the Indus valley, where are the human skeletal remains showing signs of battle injuries in the ISVC sites? Historical battles are attested by findings of large numbers of such skeletons. Since the evidence is absent, there is no archeological basis to claim that an Aryan invasion happened.

By the exact same token—if horses were prevalent in ancient India, where are the horse bones? I have cited Talageri above in his exhaustive listing of horse skeletal remains found in India. viewtopic.php?p=2508705#p2508705

Pre-ISVC: 4 sites—Bagor, Rana Ghundai, Mahagara, Hallur.
ISVC: 5 sites—Harappa, Kalibangan, Lothal, Surkotada, Malvan.
Post-ISVC: 5 sites--Swat Valley, Gumla, Pirak, Kuntasi, Rangpur.

That’s 14 sites over a period stretching 5000 years. The significance of this becomes apparent when you consider that bones of other domesticated animals—sheep, goats, cows, buffaloes etc. are found at over 100 sites encompassing the ISVC period alone. (Ref: B. B. Lal, “The Rigvedic People—Immigrants, Invaders, or Indigenous”, 2015).

If we use the absence of appropriate skeletal remains to rebut AIT, then by that same standard, we must recognize that the extreme rarity of horse bones from this entire period points to a very obvious conclusion. It’s the most direct form of primary evidence possible.

2) The genetic evidence. Think of it this way—let us assume that, using the techniques mentioned in Shalihotra Samhita and other such knowledge, Indians HAD managed to create a self-sustaining population of indigenous horses, large enough to provide a stable breeding stock, in the pre-medieval era itself.

Why, then, do we not find any genetic trace of these pre-medieval Indian horses in medieval Indian breeds? Please see my post above for a link to the study that sequenced the genome of the Marwari horse. It says very clearly that the Marwari’s primary ancestry is Arabian and Mongolian, whereas any trace of ancestry from indigenous Indian breeds “could not be confirmed”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4290615/

How does one explain that if Indians had produced a self-sustaining breeding stock of indigenous horses by the pre-medieval era, there is absolutely no verifiable genetic trace of this indigenous stock in an Indian breed from the medieval era?

The only circumstances in which this can occur is if raising horses in India is as difficult as raising, for example, mango trees in Europe. At best you can cultivate a small orchard. Without your constant tending and systematic attention, the trees will die. It will never be a self-sustaining population of trees that could survive without exhaustive human intervention.

This is in stark contrast to the reality in West Asia and the Eurasian Steppe where horses would breed readily, with the result that their genetic signatures are prolifically attested in breeds around the world today.

In contrast to this, most of the “evidence” being proffered to suggest that horses were commonplace in ancient India seems to be purely circumstantial—references in poetry, cultural iconography, art etc. As discussed previously, such lines of evidence are far from sufficient to inform us about the relative abundance or rarity of horses. Any such claims are, by definition, speculative.

*****

Finally I would like to thank Srutayus ji for posting a link to this horse-breeding manual from the British Indian Army: http://sceti.library.upenn.edu/fairmanr ... 00gilb.pdf

It is a very interesting and informative work, and in fact validates many of the difficulties of horse-breeding in India that I had outlined in my previous post here: viewtopic.php?p=2508735#p2508735

“It may be observed that the officers in charge of the Indian horse-breeding operations have peculiar difficulties to contend against. The native disinclination to castrate had to be over- come to prevent the excessive use of weedy sires ; in a country whose fields are unfenced, and where horse-stealing is (in some regions) common, the natives could not give their young stock the degree of liberty necessary for their full development. The practice of closely hobbling, or even chaining and padlocking the fore-legs together, was universal, and the natural result was deformity of limb, narrowness of chest, and ruined action.” (pp 53-54)

In other words—if you do not provide a large piece of open land for horses to run around and engage in their natural mating behavior, the offspring are invariably substandard.

“To gain greater size and power the Government sanctioned in 1876 the purchase of 300 stallions, and, with an eye to the lack of substance displayed by native mares, roadster blood was largely introduced. These 300 stallions were sanctioned merely as a beginning ; the number was increased as the new scheme developed. In the year 1886 the Indian stud was composed of the following stallions: —go English Thoroughbreds, 159 Hackneys and Norfolk Trotters, 146 Arabs, 10 stud-bred horses, 6 Australian Thoroughbreds, 2 Turkoman stallions and i Persian. In addition to these, pony stallions were provided in suitable districts, under the control of District Committees, to cover small and unbranded mares. Some 19,588 branded {i.e., officially approved) mares were on the registers in 1886. In the year 1900 the number of stallions was returned at 384.” (p 54)

This is exactly what I described. Because the breeding stock of Indian mares (which were themselves the result of prior breeding between Arabian and Mongolian strains) was defective, new infusions of foreign breeding stock were deemed necessary to improve the offspring. A self-sustaining breeding population was extraordinarily difficult to achieve and new imports were required to sustain the bloodlines after a few generations.

Yet, even this approach did not produce the desired results:

“Colonel Hallen added that when his employment in stud work began in the Bombay Presidency, 26 years previously, he believed it right to use Thoroughbred and Arab stallions on the country -bred mares:

‘I have now to confess that on visiting, three years ago, one of the best breeding districts in the Bombay Presidency, and attending an annual horse show held there, I found the stock resulting from the use of these sires, though very handsome in top and prettv in carriage of head and tail, lamentably deficient in bone and sinew of limb. The Director of the Army Remount Department was present, with the hope of finding Remounts, but he did not succeed in seeing one fit for the British services; I believe that not one country-bred Remount for the British services has been secured in the Bombay Presidency. May I, therefore, ask you to remember that Thoroughbred and Arab stallions have brought about this result. . . We should, I believe, rely on the pure half-bred* of England as a sire to give more bone and substance to our stock.’ " (p 57)

This book does indeed praise the hardiness of some Indian breeds of the time—at least in the opinion of Sir John Watson:

“in certain States of India there exists breeds of horses which are pure, which the natives strive to maintain pure, and are, in the judgment of the Commissioners, well worth preserving in their purity. They say : "The Kathiawari, Marwari, Baluchi and Unmool breeds are pure, and may be used as safely and hopefully as Arabs."” (page 64).

Of course, without the benefit of genetic analysis, the commissioners could not have known that the Marwari at least was itself of Arabian and Mongolian ancestry. However, let us give credit where it is due—surely the cumulative wisdom since the time of Shalihotra Samhita had benefited the Rajput horse-breeders so that they managed to breed at least some populations of sturdy horses in northwestern India.

But the same Sir John Watson says, fatalistically, on page 61:

“In Sir John's opinion our endeavour to create an Anglo-Indian type of horse capable of reproducing itself can never succeed ; the endeavour has been persevered in for a century, has failed, and will fail; " for we are fighting against nature, and nature will beat us in the long run."

This is simply a more pointed way of saying what I have asserted as a general principle on page 59 — i.e., that "climate and the prevailing normal conditions of life are paramount in determining what the size and character of the horse of any given country shall be.”

So overall, this book is an important reference for how extremely difficult it was to breed horses in India even during the British period. There is no reason to believe that it had ever been easier in any earlier period of Indian history.

[Srutayus]

However difficult breeding horses in India was, there was a strong and long indigenous knowledge base over the lengthy stretches of our history.

There would have been stretches during which breeding was successful and times when they were not. Indigenous horse breeding and knowledge transfer requires strong patronage, something that would have come under pressure from regimes that looked abroad for their needs. The somewhat fanciful reproductions of a more than 2000 year text from a few centuries ago is testament to that.

But we must definitely not generalize over the long stretches of our history.

[venkat_kv]

Somehow learned folks like Prof Talagiri and other pretentious exponents like AIM have missed this : India has produced Shalihotra Samhita dated to around 3rd Century BCE.

snip

snip

How does this contradict anything Talageri is saying?

It makes perfect sense that a detailed treatise on the care and management of horses would be needed, only and exactly because horses in India were exceedingly rare and enormously difficult to breed!

I mean—are you more likely to need a manual on “Caring for my Aston Martin” or “Caring for my Maruti”? Any mechanic in any gully will know how to fix a Maruti, precisely because it is common. Conversely, I know of no elaborate treatise on how to raise cows or sheep in India, presumably because those animals breed very easily in the soil and climate of India… and indeed, Indians have been rearing them since at least the Mehrgarh civilization (7000 BCE).

To put it another way. It does not take much expertise to grow apple trees or cabbages in the temperate lands of Europe or North America—closely-related plants can virtually grow wild there. But it takes a great deal of expertise to grow mango trees or brinjals in such lands.

Perhaps it can be done, but it is an expensive project requiring a lot of dedicated resource management, and even then, you are fighting the weight of evolutionary biology every step of the way. Moreover, even after making the necessary investment, the capacity to breed a self-sustaining variety of mangoes in temperate climate is an extremely difficult proposition.

So would you be more likely to need a horticultural manual on the cultivation of apples, or of mangoes, in such lands?

It’s straightforward. India was a knowledge economy where the most industrious of intellects would apply themselves to the systematic solution of difficult problems—surgery, metallurgy, horse-rearing. Horses were in high demand and very short supply, mostly needing to be imported because breeding them in India was difficult.

That is why there was a need for Shalihotra Samhita to have been written in the first place. Notice also that the other animal emphasized in Shalihotra Samhita is the elephant—which IS native to India but is also an expensive investment because of the amount of food these animals consume. Clearly only the very wealthy (or politically powerful) would have need of such a manual, because who else could afford to acquire and maintain horses or elephants?

“To gain greater size and power the Government sanctioned in 1876 the purchase of 300 stallions, and, with an eye to the lack of substance displayed by native mares, roadster blood was largely introduced. These 300 stallions were sanctioned merely as a beginning ; the number was increased as the new scheme developed. In the year 1886 the Indian stud was composed of the following stallions: —go English Thoroughbreds, 159 Hackneys and Norfolk Trotters, 146 Arabs, 10 stud-bred horses, 6 Australian Thoroughbreds, 2 Turkoman stallions and i Persian. In addition to these, pony stallions were provided in suitable districts, under the control of District Committees, to cover small and unbranded mares. Some 19,588 branded {i.e., officially approved) mares were on the registers in 1886. In the year 1900 the number of stallions was returned at 384.” (p 54)

This is exactly what I described. Because the breeding stock of Indian mares (which were themselves the result of prior breeding between Arabian and Mongolian strains) was defective, new infusions of foreign breeding stock were deemed necessary to improve the offspring. A self-sustaining breeding population was extraordinarily difficult to achieve and new imports were required to sustain the bloodlines after a few generations.

Yet, even this approach did not produce the desired results:

“Colonel Hallen added that when his employment in stud work began in the Bombay Presidency, 26 years previously, he believed it right to use Thoroughbred and Arab stallions on the country -bred mares:

‘I have now to confess that on visiting, three years ago, one of the best breeding districts in the Bombay Presidency, and attending an annual horse show held there, I found the stock resulting from the use of these sires, though very handsome in top and prettv in carriage of head and tail, lamentably deficient in bone and sinew of limb. The Director of the Army Remount Department was present, with the hope of finding Remounts, but he did not succeed in seeing one fit for the British services; I believe that not one country-bred Remount for the British services has been secured in the Bombay Presidency. May I, therefore, ask you to remember that Thoroughbred and Arab stallions have brought about this result. . . We should, I believe, rely on the pure half-bred* of England as a sire to give more bone and substance to our stock.’ " (p 57)

This book does indeed praise the hardiness of some Indian breeds of the time—at least in the opinion of Sir John Watson:

“in certain States of India there exists breeds of horses which are pure, which the natives strive to maintain pure, and are, in the judgment of the Commissioners, well worth preserving in their purity. They say : "The Kathiawari, Marwari, Baluchi and Unmool breeds are pure, and may be used as safely and hopefully as Arabs."” (page 64).

Of course, without the benefit of genetic analysis, the commissioners could not have known that the Marwari at least was itself of Arabian and Mongolian ancestry. However, let us give credit where it is due—surely the cumulative wisdom since the time of Shalihotra Samhita had benefited the Rajput horse-breeders so that they managed to breed at least some populations of sturdy horses in northwestern India.

But the same Sir John Watson says, fatalistically, on page 61:

“In Sir John's opinion our endeavour to create an Anglo-Indian type of horse capable of reproducing itself can never succeed ; the endeavour has been persevered in for a century, has failed, and will fail; " for we are fighting against nature, and nature will beat us in the long run."

This is simply a more pointed way of saying what I have asserted as a general principle on page 59 — i.e., that "climate and the prevailing normal conditions of life are paramount in determining what the size and character of the horse of any given country shall be.”

So overall, this book is an important reference for how extremely difficult it was to breed horses in India even during the British period. There is no reason to believe that it had ever been easier in any earlier period of Indian history.

Rudradev Saar,
all of what you are quoting maybe true, but did the shalihotra Samhita only deal with horses and elephants or all the animals in general with the then prized text on horses and elephants. Anybody who is rich or powerful will only have a range of horses and elephants. it could be a guild of traders or a king who could afford it and then create conditions to rear them in numbers. Afterall even if you take Aston martin example there has to be considerable Aston martins in the country to have a manual to fix them. a few here or there will be expected to ship back to the home country to be repaired. So horses should have been atleast in a considerable numbers in the subcontinent whether owned by kings or traders of their time to warrant a manual to treat them.

The brits/west who brought about AIT just to showcase their superiority may not be the right reference. Even in your quotes of the british Sir John Watson's opinion of pure bred probably only gives a peek into the thought process of thorough breds, pure blood and what not. most of the quoted horses are also probably from the royal families/ martial houses so to speak.

but there could another simpler explanation. Even if all of your theory about horses running wild in steppes with perfect climates for breeding with the required grass/food is taken into account, it could also be that once indic influence went all the way till Central Asia (afterall we call Kandahar as Gandhara) that what are now different countries/regions could have been under a single/double chakravartin sphere of influence with a large scale people to people contact and usage of animals with relatively free borders.

After all today after independence we can have apple from J&K, Himachal, to the tea in Assam or coffee grown in Coorg or any flora and fauna found in different parts of the country. These might not be thought in the realm of possible if India, had splintered along the small princely states and region as hoped/expected by Brits during our independence. then each would claim and the records that say, that India was home to certain animals or vegetables would be argued against saying we need special climates so its not possible and idea of India in the olden times as a unified country is also not possible, although the last point is OT to this horse discussion.

[sudarshan]

Sudarshan ji, two quick points here:

1) It is well established, both by Talageri and by Western linguists (e.g. Watkins, 1994), that Asva in early Rig Vedic Sanskrit did not necessarily refer to the horse (Equus caballus), but in fact the onager (Equus hemionus). When horses were first introduced into India… see Talageri’s description of how they were very rare and prized… they were initially referred to as “Haya”, a superior steed. In the age of the later books of Rig Veda, Asva did come to mean E caballus or horse by semantic drift. So in general, it’s far from clear what the root specifically referred to in various words from the early Vedic period.

2) The fact that a culture is fascinated with some animal doesn’t mean that it was in any way prevalent. In fact, the rarer and more prized something is, the more it has the makings of a legend.

Look at it this way. The dragon is a hugely common motif in traditional Chinese iconography, art, poetry, and so forth. Can we conclude that there were huge fire-breathing lizards flying over the Yellow River valley?

Meanwhile, sheep and goats did not seem to capture the imagination of the Indian civilization even though they were in fact present in huge numbers and a common feature of daily pastoral life—it’s question of “ghar ki murgi daal barabar”. People in general are not inclined to celebrate the ordinary.

Just pointing out the academic possibility, for the sake of rigor. No, I don't have evidence contrary to what you said.

Actually, the evidence that horses were exceedingly rare and economically prohibitive to breed in India is overwhelming.

....

Thanks for presenting the evidence. I know very little about this subject, will defer to you until I learn more. The points you've presented are a good start.

However, how do you reconcile the treatment of cows in India with what you said? Cows are native to India and plentiful, yet they are venerated.

[Prem Kumar]

Guys: Rudradev is correct. Horses were always rare & prized. They were also imported from regions outside present day India (though many of these regions were part of Bharatha-Varsha in earlier times)

1) Ramayana says the best horse breeds are from Bahlika, Khamboja & Vanayu
2) Mahabharatha says that excellent breeds from the same above regions participated in the Kurukshetra war
3) Chaanakya in Arthashaastra says the following about horses

The breed of Kámbhoja, Sindhu, Aratta, and Vanáyu countries are the best; those of Báhlíka, Pápeya, Sauvira, and Taitala, are of middle quality; and the rest ordinary (avaráh)

All the above regions lie outside today's India: Khamboja (Af-Pak), Bahlika (Bactria), Vanayu (NWFP) & Aratta (either Afghanistan or Armenia). Even Sindhu, which can be argued to be in modern-India, is in the North-West border. But the overall trend is pretty obvious.

Indians were very familiar with horses, their training, classification, usage as cavalry etc. They also knew where to source the best breeds from, even though local breeds were available.

[SRajesh]

Rudradevji
A noob pooch: hobbling and fencing leading to poor development of stallions and hence inferior breeds??
Has this got anything to do with abundance of Predators i.e., Big Cats capable of killing unprotected horses??
The cattle and sheep and goats were corralled in the night and guarded. But come daytime they were taken out for grazing and yoked to Plows and carts and hence the bulls could get sufficient physical activity for development.
We never had a culture of dray horses for plowing or pulling the carts and hence the lack of exercise
But elephants were a different ball game all together as cats would find it difficult to attack unless as a pack, but our major cats were solitary hunters like tigers and leopards.
And if you look at Arabia no big cats and Europe again no big cats but Americas wolfs and mountain lions, but white man nearly hunted the wolfs to extinction so the horses could run free!! and mountain lions hunt as solitary animals

[Prem Kumar]

The paper by renowned horse expert Sandor Bokonyi about the Surkotada horse being a true horse, in late 3rd millennium BCE. Many of us know of this, but attaching the actual paper

https://sci-hub.st/10.1080/02666030.1997.9628544

[Prem Kumar]

An epic takedown of David Anthony & his linguistic collaborator Ringe's fakery in pushing the Pontic Caspian narrative.

Its titled Wheels, Language and Bullshit & is in the Philology Journal. A must-read (read from Page 57 onwards).

Mainly the linguistic bullshit is called out. There is also a juicy section on how Anthony faked the Steppe-chariot narrative. While in reality, these were ceremonial wagons without even steering!! They'll barely make it from one end of the village to another.

Even the "wagon" tech (forget about chariots) in the Steppes is primitive and borrowed from others. There is no history of improvement of the tech like we see in India, West Asia or Egypt.

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contento ... cation/pdf

The next paper by Aleksander Gej (2001) points out that the Novoti-
tarovskaja culture certainly liked its wagons, indeed, the number of
graves with wagons increased exponentially relative to the Maikop cul-
ture from a handful to several hundred. This culture nevertheless pro-
duced the same model of 4-wheeled vehicle until the Catacomb Grave
culture of the 2nd millennium BCE, with Gej pointing out that there was
no evidence for a steering mechanism even at this late stage. This seems
to me to be a fatal flaw in Anthony’s theory, since, as Burmeister points
out, an unsteerable wagon would have been confined to a steppe envi-
ronment. As soon as it attempted to expand into a densely forested area,
it would have collided with the nearest tree . Anthony’s steppe dwellers
may thus have had plenty of wagons, but none of them were fit for the
grand purpose of spreading Indo-European languages and instead were
probably popular more as mobile homes suitable only for the Steppe
itself. It should be noted that in his 2007 book, Anthony, 2007, p. 132,
cites Gej’s 2001 paper in great detail but fails to even mention the issue
of steerability (indeed, the issue of steerability is completely absent from
his book). The above suggests that his bronze age riders only shaped the modern
world in that they were the ancestors of the trailer park, johnny-come-latelys
to a Eurasia through which key vehicle and other technologies had already
disseminated for the simple reason that it had already been networked to
lesser or greater degrees for millennia.
In 2012, the Turkish archaeologist Mesut Alp announced that he had
found a stone model of a wagon in eastern Anatolia (Kiziltepe) dating
back to the mid-6th millennium BCE. Such a finding, if confirmed, would
sink Anthony’s Pontic Steppe model. Unsurprisingly, Anthony doesn’t
mention this,

[Prem Kumar]

A review of the recent paper by Bahata Ansumali Chattopadhyay who is arguing for a "significant presence" of Dravidian speakers in the IVC

https://vogonpoem.wordpress.com/2021/08 ... ilization/

[Prem Kumar]

Guys: a must-watch series! Talageri's presentation on Carvaka Podcast

The Complete Linguistic Case for OIT. This is a 3 part series. The 1st part is embedded below.

This one is a killer. Explains isoglosses and how Steppe-AIT cannot explain them, but OIT elegantly can. Lots to learn from this video.

[Prem Kumar]

A good, new article by Jaydeep Rathod in BrownPundits. Kurganists have been peddling a lie that the PIE society was pastoral. It seems to not be the case. The article examines several archaic words related to wheat, barley millets, agricultural processes/tools etc. And non-surprisingly, these are all present in Indo-Iranian, Hittite, sometimes Tocharian. But mostly absent in European IE languages.

Deals a serious blow to the Steppe hypothesis because, after extensive archaeological examinations, both Yamnaya and later Sintashta cultures had no evidence of agriculture until late Bronze Age. So, there is no way they could have been the source for these agricultural-PIE-words

https://www.brownpundits.com/2021/09/08 ... outh-asia/

[Prem Kumar]

I am sharing below a fascinating review of the Kikkuli Horse Training manual, found in Anatolia!

Its clear that:

1) The training manual was written with Indo-Iranian technical jargon for training distances, horse color etc
2) Kikkuli was from the land of Mitannis, but already by his time, the Indo-Iranian language was archaic. But the technical terms remained

Its pretty damn clear that the Indo-Iranians perfected the art of training horses for chariotry, wrote technical manuals about it and very likely introduced it into the Near East. This tech went to Sintashta later.

This is not surprising, when you find sophisticated chariots in Sanauli

http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The ... c_2009.pdf

[Cyrano]

https://indianexpress.com/article/techn ... y-7556077/

[Shwetank]

.

[Rudradev]

Fantastic. Brave man. Now wait for all the "Niraj Rai is a Hindoo Nationalist" hit pieces to emerge, so that his findings can be virtuously sidelined like Talageri's.

[Prem Kumar]

Shwetank: a request. Thanks for putting in the effort to summarize the talk.

I had come across this video a few weeks back and refrained from posting it here, for a reason. We don't want to give the AIT camp advance notice about what is to come. Yes, I know the video is out there, but its in Hindi and not yet popular. Lets keep it that way.

The other camp is well organized, scheming & nasty. To give an example of the Reich lab itself: it has a history of timing their papers to disrupt something else or make political points. There was a New Yorker article about it. An example closer to home: Narasimhan's paper was in pre-print stage for more than a year. It was timed to release on the exact day when the Rakhigarhi paper was released by Shinde et al. There was also a lot of behind the scenes discussions about the content/tone etc.

From the outside, we don't see these things, but the wheels are very much in motion.

Its your choice, of course, but you may want to think about whether you want to let this post stand or take it down.

[Shwetank]

Hello Prem, that thought had occurred to me too actually as it is so disruptive they will do everything to dismiss it ahead of time. On the other hand Niraj seems to have no problem talking about it in public and it has also shown up on twitter. Most of all, since they will be using the peer-review process, it will be known about sooner or later. I think it's inevitable that word will get out & the biggest challenge will be getting past peer-review as they will certainly be more tough with his work than say Reich et al. Funnily enough, Niraj says in the above interview that genetics people from the west are also fair and will stick to the data and change their mind if required, maybe being naïve? So only bad thing which can happen is give the other camp more time to prepare, but they can just delay review of the article once received to give other groups time to respond (a common tactic in peer-review) so not sure it would make a difference. I am still open to taking the post down though, might take it down later today.