Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.102

c14.102

The wheel diameter, not given in the Sanskrit text cited, is on analogy likely to have been from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet, and the body of the chariot would have risen a similar amount above the axle. Przewalski’s horse is a small animal, not more than 12 to 13 hands high, and the extant representations show similarly small horses drawing the Western Asiatic chariots. In Europe the Iron Age horses were as small as 11½ hands at the withers (3 feet 10 inches). These conclusions are embodied in a drawing (Fig. 32) of the likely appearance of the Aryan war-chariot of the middle of the second millennium B.C.