Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.74

c14.74

The fact that Aryan warfare was based on the use of swift, horse-drawn battle-chariots, carrying a warrior armed with a bow and driven by a charioteer, is in itself of very great archaeological importance. Later we shall see that the *Rigveda* descriptions are so detailed that we can form a very good idea of the construction and to a large extent of the appearance of the chariots of the Aryan invaders of India in the middle of the second millennium B.C.; the chariot suits itself to the metaphors of Oriental religions, and such familiar lines as 'His chariots of wrath the deep thunder-clouds form' might come from the *Rigveda* itself. The Harappā civilization, while fully cognizant of wheeled vehicles, does not seem to have made use of them in warfare - indeed, as we have seen, evidence for any military organization for defence or offence within the Harappā empire is strangely lacking - and the Aryan chariots clearly owe nothing to native Indian traditions. They appear as startling innovations, and to trace their ancestry we must look to the west.