--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
>
> Actually, what Piotr said was that there might be a link between
> horses and the arrival of *Dravidian* [not Indo-Aryan] speakers in
the
> 2nd millennium.
VA: Thanks very much for pointing that out. What Piotr suggests is
much more reasonable than scenarios in which the horse is said to
have been introduced into India by IA speakers.
Piotr's scenario nevertheless robs the proponents of AMT (Aryan
Migration Theory) of the role accorded to the horse itself (with and
without the chariot) in enabling the IA speakers to spread their
language via elite domination over the Para-Munda/Dravidian populace
of IVC. See for instance, the following quotes, wherein the horse
itself is supposed to have played an important role in the spread of
Aryan supermacy in IVC area and further east -
Witzel [1997:xxii, note 54] ---
"The immigrating group(s) may have been relatively small one(s), such
as Normans who came to England in 1066 and who nearly turned England
into French speaking country- while they originally had been
Scandinavians, speaking N. Germanic. This may supply a model for the
Indo-Aryan immigration as well...
..However, the introduction of the
horse and especially of the horse-drawn chariot was a powerful weapon
in the hands of the Indo-Aryans. It must have helped to secure
military and political dominance even if some of the local elite were
indeed quick to introduce the new cattle-based economy and the
weapon, the horse drawn chariot, - just as the Near Eastern peoples
did on a much larger and planned scale. If they had resided and
intermarried with the local population of the northern borderlands of
Iran (the so called Bactro-Margiana Archaeological complex) for some
centuries, the immigrating Indo-Aryan clans and tribes may originally
have looked like Bactrians, Afghanis or Kashmiris, and must have been
racially submerged quickly in the population of the Punjab, just like
later immigrants whose staging area was in Bactria as well: the Saka,
Kusana, Huns, etc
"
Witzel [1995:114] ---
"Something of this fear of the horse and of the thundering chariot,
the "tank" of the 2nd millennium B.C. is transparent in the famous
horse 'Dadhikra' of the Puru king Trasadasya ("Tremble enemy"" in RV
4.38.8)
"
REFERENCES -
Witzel, Michael. 1995; `Early Indian History: Linguistic and Textual
Parameters'; in George Erdosy (ed.), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South
Asia: 85-125; Walter de Gryuter; Berlin
Witzel, Michael; Lubotsky, A; M. S. Oort, M. S. (Eds.); 1997; F. B.
J. Kuiper- Selected Writings on Indian Linguistics and Philology;
Rodopi; Amsterdam/Atlanta (Note: The introduction to the text, which
alone is cited in this webpage, has Witzel as the sole author).
*****
> Well, the word 'modern horse' is routinely applied by biologists to
> distinguish equus finds from other Old World equines (hipparion,
> hypohippus, anchitherium), which, apart from some overlap, are
usually
> very much earlier.
VA: In regular texts on horse racing etc., the 'modern' horse is used
to specify that the horse that we know today is a crossbreed of 4 or
more breeds of ancient horses. By this definition, some of the horses
of present day Turkmenistan and others like the extant specimens of
Tarpan horse, are not 'modern horse'.
Regards
Vishal Agarwal