Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.98

c14.98

The chariot held two people, the warrior and his driver. The warrior was on the left, and seems to have been provided with a seat, which he could use at least when he was not actively engaged in warfare. His weapon was a bow and sometimes a spear, but he did not use a sword, at least at the time of the first Aryan advent in India, though a word used for ‘knife’ in the Rigveda takes on the significance of a weapon which might be a sword or a dagger in the Atharvaveda and the Epics. The charioteer had no seat provided - one of his titles, sthātṛ, he who stands, emphasizes the distinction between him and the bowman, but his calling was one of honour, and he might be the noble warrior’s kinsman, as in Homeric Greece and Iron Age Ireland.