A History of Agriculture in India v1.c24: Chapter 18. The Early Aryans—A Bronze Age People
A History of Agriculture in India v1.c24
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Chapter 18. The Early Aryans—A Bronze Age People
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DOMESTICATION OF THE HORSE, AND MIGRATION TO INDIA
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THE home of the Aryans is believed to be in South Russia in the steppes between the Danube, the Volga and the Urals. About 1800-1600 B.C., they left their homeland and dispersed east and west in large hordes. They left their ancestral land perhaps due to a prolonged drought, followed by famine. A large group known as Kassites penetrated into Akkad, and, in due course, became the rulers of Babylon in 1746 B.C. One horde occupied northern Iran, another, the Mittanis, conquered Asia Minor, where they introduced horse-breeding. The third horde entered India through Afghanistan and Baluchistan (Fig. 149) and overwhelmed the Harappans.
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The earliest evidence about the Aryans and their language is from philology. During the period from A.D. 1767 to A.D. 1786, two European scholars, Coeurdox, a French missionary, and Sir William Jones, the founder of the Royal Asiatic Society of Calcutta, made an outstanding linguistic discovery. According to them, the Sanskrit of the Rig-Veda had remarkable affinities with Latin and Greek in vocabulary and grammar. Such striking similarities could be accounted for only by supposing that these languages had a common origin in some extinct language. This supposition was supported by the work of Bopp, a grammarian. By 1813, someone had suggested the word ‘Indo-European’ as a convenient term for the group of allied languages and their presumed original.
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The findings of these scholars were confirmed by Max Müller, who worked in England from 1849 to 1862 under the patronage of the Directors of the East India Company, and translated the Vedas and other sacred texts of the Hindus into English. Max Müller states that a language bears the impress of the earliest thoughts of men often buried under the layers of new thoughts, and philology reveals the very elements and roots of human speech and thought. He concluded that Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and Zend are sister languages derived from a common ancestral language which was spoken by the Aryans in their original home. The terms for god, house, father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, dog, cow, heart, tears, axe and tree are identical in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and German languages. The domestic animals are generally known by the same name in these languages while wild beasts have different names. “Before the Hindus migrated to the southern peninsula of Asia”, observes Max Müller, “and before the Greeks and Germans had trodden the soil of Europe, the common ancestors of these three races spoke one and the same language, [Figure: Fig. 149. The home of the Aryans is southern Russia—the land around the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. From that area they spread to Iran and Asia Minor. From Iran some hordes migrated to India (Courtesy : UNESCO)]
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a language so well regulated and so firmly settled that we can discover the same definite outlines in the grammar of the ancient songs of the Veda, the poems of Homer, and the Gothic Bible of Ulphilas.”¹
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¹ Max Müller, *Chips from a German Workshop*, Vol. II, p. 255
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The Zend Avesta, the religious book of the Parsis, reflects beliefs dating back to the era of the Indo-Iranian community. Zoroastrianism was characterized by a cult of fire. Zarathushtra, the prophet of Zoroastrianism, condemned the old practice of making large-scale sacrifices and drinking haoma (Persian) or soma (Sanskrit). He directed his prophecies against the old caste of priests who adhered to these rites. These customs were apparently widespread among a certain section of Indo-Iranians in ancient times.
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The Avesta divided society into three classes: priests, chariot warriors (rataishtar—the one standing on the chariot), and husbandmen and cattle-breeders. The Rig-Veda also mentions chariot warriors.
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The *Avesta* frequently stresses that cattle are the basis of the welfare of society. In some places appeals are made to people to engage in farming. The bronze reaping-hook and the stone grain-grinders show that the local inhabitants knew farming.
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In the list of the countries given by the *Avesta* one finds the legendary *Aryanam-Vaichakh* (Aryan spaces). This country probably lay in the steppes of the southern Urals, near the Caspian Sea and to the north of the Aral Sea.
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Iran means the homeland of the Aryans. The people of Iran take pride in their Aryan ancestry. Darius I, in an inscription at Naksh-i-Rustam, described himself as ‘an Aryan of Aryan descent’. Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi assumed the title of Arya Mehr, the Sun of Aryans, following the same tradition and pride in Aryan ancestry.
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‘The most reasonable hypothesis, and one which seems best to satisfy the demands of philology and archaeology’, states Piggot, ‘is that originally put forward by Professor J.L. Myres and the late Harold Peake, and developed by Professor Childe, which sees the Indo-European languages evolving among the earliest agriculturists of the South Russian steppes and the lands eastwards to the Caspian Sea. In this South Russian area the basic culture in the late third and early second millennium B.C. was that of agriculturists, perhaps partly nomadic but sufficiently sedentary for small cemeteries to be formed, presumably close to relatively stable settlements. They domesticated sheep and cattle, and the horse was certainly tamed in the latter phases of the culture, if not at the beginning; burials in separate graves, sometimes under a mound or barrow and often accompanied by a stone (exceptionally a copper) battle-axe, emphasize the presence of a stratum of warriors and chieftains in the social structure.’²
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² Piggott, S. *Prehistoric India*, pp. 250, 251
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Investigations by Soviet linguists V. Abayev, V. Ivanov and others show that the words for *a four-wheeled cart, wheel, yoke, pole, road, bridge, stake, cart, oxen, horse* are the same in all the Indo-European languages. The plough is called *krish*, both in Sanskrit and Persian. Agriculture is called *krishi*. It is clear from this account that the disintegration of the unity of the Indo-Aryan tribes took place after they had domesticated the horse and learnt to use the plough, the cart and the chariot.
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Archaeological evidence about the Aryans was lacking so far. In 1972-74 came a remarkable discovery. The archaeological expedition of the Urals University (Sverdlovsk) explored an interesting site: a settlement and burial mound, dating back to the middle of the second millennium B.C., on the banks of the Sintashta River in the south of the Trans-Urals region in the Soviet Union.
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According to Gening the Sintashta relics date back to the sixteenth century B.C., i.e. to the period of the Indo-Iranians’ advance to the East. Parallels in funeral rites, beliefs and social systems can be drawn with the Indo-Iranians, and make it possible to advance a hypothesis concerning the connection between these relics and the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians. Contacts must have been made at the time of their movement to the East from the Volga and the Black Sea steppes. The Sintashta findings make it possible to form the hypothesis that the Iranians had mixed with large groups of local tribes, most probably of Ugro-Finnish origin. The very name of the Indo-Iranians, “Aryans”, was probably inherited from local tribes along with other tribal names.
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What did the expedition find at Sintashta mound? Several dozen big mud huts, grouped in rows, each row having 5-6 huts. They stood close to one another and looked like one “big house”. Inside there were usually two big clay ovens standing by the wall. The chief occupation of the population was most probably animal husbandry, but they also engaged in farming.
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Archaeologists obtained particularly valuable information when, digging in the burial mound situated some 200-300 metres away from the habitation, they discovered bronze knives, awls, a reaping-hook, fishhooks, combat axes, spear-heads, stone arrowheads, maces, grain-grinders, whetbars, piles of costume jewellery: copper-gilted headgear rings, beads (some of opaque glass), and a chestplate made of silver.
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Gening states that the most important was the discovery of combat chariots. Having studied their imprints on the mud, the Soviet archaeologists established that the wheels consisted of at least 10-11 spokes. This set them apart from the wheels of the heavy Assyrian chariots having only four spokes and a heavy rim, and from the chariots found in the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Tutenkhamon, which had six spokes.
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In one of the burial chambers there were skulls and four horse legs in each corner of the chamber where the chariot had been placed. The “horses” were “harnessed” to the chariot. More frequently the burial chambers contained horse carcasses. Next to the horses stood clay vessels, apparently containing some holy drink.
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The articles discovered attest to a high level of animal husbandry. In the third millennium B.C. animal husbandry existed in the steppes of Eurasia. The discoveries in the Sintashta burial mound, with remains of a large number of sacrificial horses, cows, sheep and dogs, have for the first time shed light on the development of this branch of the economy in that region.³
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Apart from philology and archaeology, one cannot ignore evidence of ethnology. The inhabitants of the Punjab in India and Pakistan have great
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³Gening, V. Ancient Settlements of Indo-Iranians, Soviet-Land, Oct. 1977 resemblance with the people of Iran and southern Russia. It was Punjab which was the land where the aryans settled and the Vedas were composed.
Evolution and Domestication of Horse
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The evolution of the horse took place in North America. The earliest ancestral horse, known as Eohippus, was of the size of a fox. It had four toes on the front feet and three on the hind feet. In the Oligocene, the descendant of Eohippus was Mesohippus, a three-toed horse.
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In the Middle Miocene-Lower Pleistocene, the Hipparion, an ancestor of the horse, had three toes, but the side ones did not touch the ground. Its remains have been found in the Chinji beds of the Salt Range in Pakistan, and it became abundant in the succeeding Dhok Pathan beds. No earlier ancestor of horse than Hipparion is found in India. It seems that it crossed from North America into Asia in the Hipparion stage during the Miocene. During the Miocene, there was a general uplift of the continents. The northern land masses grew cooler and drier. Forests retreated and grasslands expanded, providing much scope for the development of the hoofed animals. The uplift of land brought Eurasia and North America into contact across what is now the Bering Strait.
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During the Quaternary Period, camels and horses migrated from North America to Eurasia. Equus, or true horses, appeared in the Pleistocene. Their side toes were reduced to mere splints of bones, while the middle toe hardened into a large tough hoof. The teeth also became adapted for chewing of the grasses that grew in the plains.
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A strange fact about the horses is that although North America was the centre of their origin, they spread into Eurasia in the Miocene and became extinct in North America in the Pleistocene.
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Equus namadicus has been found in the middle Pleistocene alluvium of the Narmada Valley in Madhya Pradesh, and also in the Siwaliks, above Chandigarh.
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The genus Equus includes seven species. The true Caballine horses occupy the plains of Eurasia north of the great mountain ranges. The asses are in north Africa. The two species of half-asses or hemiones or onagers are in the dry zone of Asia, viz. Iran, Arabia, Gujarat (India) and Sind (Pakistan). In addition, there are three species of zebras in East and South Africa (Fig. 150). This distribution suggests that late in the Tertiary, an ancestral type of horse spread over the regions mentioned above and subsequently developed geographical subspecies which have since become distinct species.
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Two races of wild horse survived into the twentieth and nineteenth centuries respectively. One is Przewalskis horse, which roamed about in Mongolia until the Russian Revolution. About forty individuals of this wild horse still survive in the Tachin Shara Nuru Mountains in Mongolia.
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The other is the tarpan, the horse of south Russia which became extinct in 1851 in the Ukraine. Originally, both were widely distributed in the temperate zone.
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**Domestication.** According to Zeuner, ‘From 2000 B.C. onwards the horse-drawn chariot swept across the Western world, a contraption which requires elaborate domestication and special training. The chariot itself, of course, is older. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the horse was domesticated considerably before 2000 B.C.
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The domesticated horse is almost exclusively of tarpan stock. The probable area of domestication of the horse is Ukrainian and east Russian steppes, Kazakhstan and the steppes of western Asia mainly around Lake Aral and including the plains of Turkestan, Ust-Urt Plateau and Turan. The horse was tamed by the inhabitants of this immense grassland. The western part of this zone was still a centre of horse domestication in Scythian times.
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The horse gave man greater mobility than he had ever had before, and it made possible a secondary nomadism, combined with temporary crop-raising.
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The people who brought the horse across the mountains to the Near and Middle East appear to have spoken Indo-Germanic languages. Thus the original centre of the domestication of the horse might briefly be circumscribed as Turkestan. This view is, however, not based on archaeological evidence, but on biological considerations.
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Remains of the ‘horse’ have been found in some of the early prehistoric sites of the East and often been quoted as evidence for domestication. Unfortunately, not one of them bears the test of critical examination. The important ones are Anau, Sialk and Shah Tepe. These bones were found to be of half-asses or hemiones and not of true horses.
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Gordon Childe (1951) worked out the spread of wheeled vehicles into Europe. He believes that the wheeled cart and the potter’s wheel are both inventions of the Uruk culture of southern Mesopotamia and that this happened before 3500 B.C. There is evidence that the wheeled cart was preceded by the sledge, and sledges have been found in the royal tombs of Ur which are at least 1000 years younger. The earliest evidence consists of script signs on late Uruk tablets.
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Childe held that wheeled vehicles reached the Indus Valley by about 2500 B.C., north Syria by 2200 B.C., Crete by 1900 B.C., Greece by 1550 B.C., south Russia by 1400 B.C., north Italy by 1100 B.C., central and northern Europe by 1000 B.C. and Britain by 500 B.C.
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According to Zeuner the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia became acquainted with the horse in the course of the third millennium B.C. Horse is mentioned for the first time in the Chagar Bazar tablets, written in the reign of Samsi-Adad (c. 1800 B.C.). Even in the days of Hammurabi (c. 1750 B.C.) the horse seems to have been of little economic importance, as it is not mentioned in his code of law. But a letter, apparently written during the reign of his successor, Samsulluna, says that about that time large movements of peoples took place, which brought many horses to Mesopotamia. The same movements would have brought it to Egypt in the west and to India in the east. About 1700 B.C., or slightly later, the horse was known in all countries of the Near and Middle East, viz. Kassite Babylonia, Syria, Mitanni on the Upper Euphrates, the Hittite state in Asia Minor, the Amorite principalities of Palestine and the New Kingdom of Egypt. In this entire area the horse was at that time used exclusively to draw the two-wheeled chariot.
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Fig. 150. Late Pleistocene distribution of the members of the genus Equus (horse). The asses and zebras were confined to Africa and hemiones or half-asses to the Middle East and northern India. There are no overlaps (After Zeuner)
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From Mitanni, of about 1360 B.C., a remarkable document is available. It is called the Kikkuli Text and was studied by Hrozny (1931). This treatise gives detailed directions for training and is apparently exclusively concerned with chariot-horses. Strangely enough, several technical terms used are reminiscent of Sanskrit expressions. Whilst this document provides a vivid picture of horse-breeding in the fourteenth century B.C., it is relatively late. Hrozny indeed argues in favour of an Aryan horse-equipped invasion which happened about 2000 B.C.
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Fig. 151a. A terracotta horse, Lothal (Gujarat), c. 2000 to 1800 B.C. (Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India)
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Fig. 151b. Clay figure of a horse from Kaiyatha, District Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, c. 1700 B.C. (Courtesy: H.D. Sankalia)
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Fig. 152. Bronze axes with shaft holes recovered from upper layers of Mohenjodaro, dated to about 1800 B.C. to 1600 B.C., which probably belonged to Aryan invaders from Iran (Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India)
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Fig. 153. Chariots drawn by horses were commonly used by the nobles in the Buddhist period. Houses were multi-storeyed with wooden balconies. The dress of the people was a dhoti and a turban. Pillar details of East Gate Stupa I, Sanchi, first century (Courtesy: Archaeological Survey of India)
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The picture of a horse on the silver cup of Maikop, in the Caucasus in Russia, is dated at 2000 B.C. This is the earliest pictorial record of the horse.
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By 2000 B.C. the horse was known in the Caucasus area, as already stated, and made its appearance in Asia Minor (Mitanni). By 1800 B.C. it had reached Troy, and within the century that followed it spread over the whole of the Near and Middle East, in conjunction with the two-wheeled chariot. In Greece it was established in the sixteenth century, and thereafter it must be regarded as a normal piece of equipment of Mediterranean economy.⁴
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⁴ Zeuner, A History of Domesticated Animals, pp. 300, 303, 313, 329, 332 and 333
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Horse in India and Pakistan. The wild horse that reached India early in the Pleistocene was long extinct. There is no evidence about the presence of the domesticated horse in India prior to the invasion of Aryan nomads about 1600 B.C. We do not find any figure of horse in the seals of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Kalibangan. However, the bones of horse (Equus caballus) have been discovered from Surkotada in Gujarat in sub-period IC, and from earlier levels as well. A terracotta horse has been discovered from Lothal, c. 2000 B.C.—1800 B.C. (Fig. 151,a) and clay figure from Kaiyatha, District Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, has been dated c. 1700 B.C. (Fig. 151,b). However, these do not indicate any significant use of horses. There is no evidence of domestication of the horse in India.
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The earliest horse remains so far reported come from Rana Ghundai in northern Baluchistan. According to Zeuner, the remains attributed to this species more probably belong to the hemione.
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The same doubts apply to the rare finds of horses made in the Indus Valley culture. It is only with the Aryan invasion that the horse becomes frequent in India, an invasion affording a parallel to those that occurred in the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries B.C. in western Asia and in Europe.
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Apart from cattle, the really characteristic domesticated animal of Aryans was the horse. Pack horses, riding horses, chariot horses, war horses, race horses and even ploughing horses, all find frequent mention in the Vedas.⁵ From the descriptions of the colouring of horses in the Rig-Veda, Ridgeway concluded that they had chestnut heads and backs, shading off into dun on the lower parts of the body, in the manner of the wild horse of the steppes known as Przewalski's horse, and that they were of Mongolian or Upper Asiatic stock. They seem to have been kept in stalls on occasion at least, and were hobbled when put out to graze. Stallions were sometimes gelded, but mares were especially used as draught animals in war-chariots, and riding seems to have been very exceptional and never formed a technique of warfare. This may well have been partly due to the fact that the invention of stirrups seems to come unaccountably late in the development of horse-harness, and that a secure seat for a fighting man could hardly be attained without them. Military cavalry was known to the Assyrians and the Achaemenids, and the invention of stirrups must be an ancient oriental contribution to horsemanship.
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⁵ Aiyer, A.K.Y.N. Agriculture and Allied Arts in Vedic India, p. 47
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The Aryan horses seem to have been used essentially as chariot-animals, whether in warfare, or for chariot-racing, which was a favourite sport. It seems to have been indulged in purely for amusement and for prizes (except on a few formal religious occasions, such as the royal consecration), and the race took place along a course to a mark round which the chariots turned and came back again—the aikavartana and so forth of the Mitannian Guide to the Turf.⁶
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⁶ Piggott, S. Prehistoric India, pp. 268, 269
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The Aryan chariot, as it appears in the Rig-Veda, has a name (ratha) which is an Indo-European ‘wheel’ word, represented by the Latin rota, Celtic roth, Old High German rad, and Lithuanian ratas, and similarly common to the whole language group are the words for wheel, axle, nave, and yoke. It resembled the two-wheeled chariot depicted on East Gate of Stupa I at Sanchi (Fig. 153). Chariots drawn by four horses are also depicted in Sanchi reliefs.
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The Aryans were the first people to introduce the idea of rapid transport made possible by the use of horses. For their farm work, ox-drawn four-wheeled carts were used, and horses were bred solely for use with the light two-wheeled chariot.
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Piggott states that ‘the evidence from Baluchistan and from Sind and the Punjab is reasonably consistent in implying that at some period likely to have been before 1500 B.C. the long-established cultural traditions of North-Western India were rudely and ruthlessly interrupted by the arrival of new people from the west. Thick layers of burning indicate violent destruction of Rana Ghundai, Dabar Kot and other Baluchi settlements. The burning of the Baluchi villages and the equipment of the graves at Shahi-tump suggest that these new arrivals were predominantly conquerors who travelled light, and adopted the pottery traditions of the regions in which they established themselves. In Sind, at Chanhu-daro, a barbarian settlement appears in the deserted ruins of the Harappa town.’⁷
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⁷ Piggott, S. Prehistoric India, pp. 240, 241
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Groups of skeletons of men, women and children, some bearing axe or sword-cuts were found lying on the topmost level at Mohenjo-daro. Mortimer Wheeler attributes this massacre to the invading Aryans. Two bronze axes with shaft-holes were discovered from the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro (Fig.152). Apart from these axes two bronze daggers with thickened mid-rib were also discovered. Piggott regards them as an import from Iran. The axes resemble those recovered from sites in north of Iran, e.g. Hissar III, Shah Tepe and Turang Tepe. A shaft-hole axe represents a technological advance over the flat axe. These were the type of weapons which could be associated with the Aryans.
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The Aryan conquest of the Harappan towns is indicated by references in the *Rig-Veda* to their god Indra, who is described as Purandara, or the destroyer of fortresses. Dange has suggested that the expression can also mean destroyer of canals. So, it may refer to destruction of Harappan irrigation systems. The following are references to the destruction of fortresses and cities in the *Rig-Veda*.
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"Indra has overturned a hundred stone-built cities" (R., IV. 3.9.20). "Indra, you are the blaster of fortresses" (Y., 386.38). "Indra demolished the ancient cities of Ashna" (R., II. 2.9.5). "Invincible, destroying the phallus-worshippers, he won by his prowess whatever wealth (was concealed in the city) with the hundred gates" (R., X.8.9.3.). "Thou hast destroyed the impregnable cities of the Dasyu Shambara" (R., VI. 3.8, 4).³
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No doubt there is an element of exaggeration in these hymns as conquerors always boast of their superiority to their rivals, but most of the Harappan towns were walled and had citadels.
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The Aryans' advantage lay in superior weapons of warfare, the trained horse and the bronze sword with thickened mid-rib. The training of the horse for war, and of milch-mares as a source of an exceptionally complete food must have an immense advance, giving the herdsman a power over great spaces, and enabling him to organize vast stretches to gratify his ambitions and to meet his needs. After acquiring command over the horse, the nomad horsemen marched into peripheral fertile lands of Iran, Mesopotamia, southern Europe and India. The domestication of the horse caused a great crisis in human history which may be compared to the invention of the steamship and later on of the aeroplane in modern times. The ancient civilizations of India and Syria were shaken to their foundations and ultimately crumbled before the onslaught of the horse and the bronze sword. The horse was used by the Aryan nomads for management of herds of cattle, sheep and goats in the grassland of the southern steppe, and it served a new purpose in the peripheral fertile lands. The Aryans found that not only sheep and goats but subject people could be just as well controlled with the aid of the horse.
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³Aiyer, A.K.Y.N. *Agriculture and Allied Arts in Vedic India*, p. 51