History of the horse in the Indian subcontinent Quotes

“Let couriers to thy father speed
On horses of the swiftest breed.”

“The birthplace of the horse, indeed, is the sea, its kindred is the sea.”

“Why does no gold-wrought chariot lead
With four brave horses, best for speed?”

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

“The first deliberate and conscious attempt of shaping a horse in durable material like stone was witnessed in the art of the Mauryas in India.”

“A study of the theme of ‘horses’ in the Rigveda would hold some surprise in store for those who a priori believe in the realism of Vedic images.”

“Wikipedia: History of the horse in the Indian subcontinent”

“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.”

“Scarce could I move each stubborn horse:
Shedding hot tears of grief he stood
When Ráma turned him to the wood.”

“All in all, the evidence... 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.”

“And thought-swift horses whirled their lord
Racing along the earth, or rose
High through the clouds whene'er he chose.”

“Horses had she of noblest breed,
Like Indra's for their form and speed,
From Váhlí's hills and Sindhu's sand,
Vanáyu and Kámboja's land.”

“Considering that the presence of the horse during the Harappan period is a matter of popular controversy in Indian archaeology, the subject deserves more serious and systematic treatment than it has so far received.”

“Śatrughna, look, the mountain see
Where heavenly minstrels wander free,
And horses browse beneath the steep,
Countless as monsters in the deep.”

“Like youthful elephants, tall and strong,
Fleet coursers whirled the car along:
In such a car the Thousand-eyed
Borne by swift horses loves to ride.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“[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.””

“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.”