When colonial historians discovered linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and European languages, they came up with a hypothesis which suggests that a group of Indo-European people ‘invaded’ India, circa 1500 BCE. Some scholars have called these Indo-European ‘invaders’ as ‘Aryans,’ and argued that the writings they produced are the Vedas – the earliest corpus of literature in the subcontinent. In popular parlance, this argument came to be known as the ‘Aryan Invasion’ theory.

Numerous scholars have questioned the validity of this theory; it’s one of the most contentious debates in Indian history. To prove their theoretical propositions, historians have used the existence of an animal – the horse – as evidence.

For instance, the Rig Veda, the oldest known Veda, mentions the word ashva, meaning “horse,” over 200 times. Historians have presumed the widespread presence of the phrase ashva (horse), during the Vedic times, as evidence – and argued that the horse had been brought into the subcontinent by the Aryans to destroy and dominate the ‘native’ ox-driven people.

The historian R.S. Sharma, in his fascinating article – ‘The Aryan Problem and the Horse’ – argues that the horse was crucial for the southward spread of the Rig Vedic people. According to him, the Rig Vedic people – whom he calls ‘Vedic colonisers’ – used wheeled chariots to wage war against the natives.



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