History and the horse

Book review of The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback

To the burgeoning field of animal history—reflecting the complex relationships between the human and the animal worlds, especially the domesticated ones—Yashaswini Chandra has added an attractive book on horses in Indian history. Her narrative, intends to capture the multifaceted significance of the horse as a “sentient being” in historical contexts, beyond the “erudite, albeit staid articles” on the horse in trade and warfare. The book aims to fill the void of “dedicated books” on the subject. Although Dr Chandra offers the book as a “story”, she has pegged her work to several primary sources and an impressive array of secondary readings. An art historian by training, she has woven her words with lovely illustrations in black and white and colour.

The horse offered humans the fastest mode of communication till the advent of the fuel-driven automobiles and motor-bikes and, hence, was indispensable, especially for the political and economic elites. The horse was possibly first domesticated on the Eurasian, especially Central Asian, steppes around 3500 BCE. There is little evidence, in spite of the clamour from some historians and archeologists, of the presence of this noble animal in South Asia before the mid-second millennium BCE.

The subject demands attention as quality horses were a rarity in the subcontinent and often brought from west and central Asia. The immense importance of the horse as a war animal has been integral to the political fortunes of powers. Rulers and their key functionaries and other elites in South Asia had to depend on the horse-dealers (asva-vanij, known to the grammarian Panini) for procuring horses; the traders sought the breeders and pastoral groups who actually supplied the animal to varied consumers. It goes to Dr Chandra’s credit for illuminating the role of the breeders and pastoralists, often invisible in this protracted trade. She has recovered some of the pasts of these simpler, non-sedentary communities, often at the fringe of complex state societies, by combing through historical and art-historical sources with ethnographic accounts and folklore (mostly from Rajasthan). Her deep personal bonding with this animal and first -hand equestrian knowledge are distinctive markers of this book. Though the author has studied the horse right through Indian history, her thrust remains post-15th century CE. From the mid-19th century, the importance of the cavalry was relegated on account of the British Raj’s much greater reliance on foot-soldiers and canons.

Horses were expensive commodities because of their use in cavalries. But the most expensive horse was the sea-borne (bahri, bahr = sea) one, as Ziauddin Barani informed us. The author should note, however, that the earliest known scene of the maritime transportation of the horse is captured by a terracotta seal (circa 1st-3rd century CE) from Chandraketugarh near Kolkata.

The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback

Author: Yashaswini Chandra

Publisher: Picador 

Pages: xi+ 298; Price: Rs 699

Interestingly, the author hints at the efficacy of local (non-imported) horses, which were often crossed with the more celebrated overseas breeds. Particularly notable is Dr Chandra’s discussions on the usefulness of Deccanese horses in the 18th century Maratha army; these horses came from areas watered by the Godavari and the Bhima and served the Maratha army with distinction. Similarly the Kathi/Kathiawari horse, in close ties with those from Kutch, figures prominently in this book. But this does not minimise the widespread love for imported Arab and Iranian horses. The number of annually imported horses in 16th century Mughal India was 30,000; that figure sky-rocketed to 100,000 in the 17th century. That Sher Shah built a fine mausoleum for Ibrahim Khan, his grandfather and a horse dealer, highlights the politico-cultural importance of this animal. It is in the fitness of things that Nur Jahan patronised a caravanserai, known for the regular visits by horse-dealers, near Jalandhar. The Punjab plains and further up north yielded buldashti horses, so named after this region (mulk-i-buldashta).

Dr Chandra is at her best in combining the evidence of Mughal and Rajput paintings (her forte) with Rajasthani folklore in the course of this equine enquiry. Enchanting, of course, are the paintings of Jahangir, Shahjahan and Aurangzeb on horseback; no less endearing are the accounts of equestrian paintings by Bhavani Das of Kishangarh and by Bagta of Udaipur-Mewar. To these are admirably coupled the Rajasthani legends of Pabuji, Chunda and Jaitsi; the iconic figure of Chetak, Rana Pratap’s mount in the battle of Haldighati, also gets a fitting mention. The Rajput heroic tradition of guarding their horses as much as their honour in the battlefield looms large in Dr Chandra’s narrative that also pays attention to female riders on horses. The author must be congratulated for bringing into focus the groom/caretaker of the horses, the chabuksawars, the grasscutters and the bhangis who were indispensable for cleaning the excreta of the animal but were condemned to a sub-human position in the varna-jati system.

Dr Chandra’s efforts would have been more rewarding had there not been some crucial conceptual and methodological limitations. For instance, the title talks about a tale but the subtitle speaks of history; and, the concluding sentence marks her work as a “fable”. Can the three categories be merged or even be used interchangeably? This not only leaves this reviewer in considerable confusion over the author’s objectives, but the reader will find the text wordy, verging on the touristy. The fine selection of illustrations does not require this excessive story-telling. Some rigorous blue-pencilling would have heightened the author’s arguments.

The other problem is that none of the images has been serially numbered in the text, though these are fully enlisted (vii-xi), which makes it inconvenient for a reader to match the descriptions with the un-numbered illustrations. The author acknowledges someone for breaking the news that this horse had found a Picador (a pun on the horse-mounted bullfighters that is also the name of her publisher). That’s fine, but the book did not go through more competent copy editing at Picador.

If this book offers a tale of horses, then why is it confined to the history of India merely on horseback? I found no convincing reason for excluding the importance of horse-driven chariots in the subcontinent’s past. Till Gupta times chariots were important components of the army along with cavalry. Several omissions need underlining at this juncture. In the history of the horse it is impossible to ignore the evidence of the burial culture of horse-driven chariots at the Central Asian site of Sintashta (circa 2100 BCE), excavated by David W Anthony. Dr Chandra, who is so keen on bringing folk culture and anthropology into her horse-history, is also silent on the game called Buzkashi in Afghanistan, though there is reading material available on this game. Since her strength lies in the post-15th century subcontinental scenario, there was no need for her ill-equipped discussions on the period prior to 1500 CE.  This explains why she has not paid any attention to the supply of horses through the northeast which witnessed the tea-for-horses network involving Yunan and Tibet. Either she could have undertaken a much more rigorous and critical reading of the available materials on the pre-1500 CE horse-history or simply started her story from the mid-second millennium with which she is more familiar.

The author has offered a commendable work on a less visited aspect of South Asian past, but she appears to have cast her net too wide. There may be a problem in presenting an account on an ambitious scale, without having the wherewithal, empirical and conceptual, to tackle it.

The reviewer is a historian of early India with a particular interest in the Indian Ocean maritime history