Yashaswini Chandra

“If the earliest literary tradition of India is Vedic, much of the oldest art that has come to us is Buddhist.”
― Yashaswini Chandra, The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback

“[...] before different parts of India fell into a pattern of importing horses as well as producing their own, the subcontinent began on an almost clean slate. The native population of wild horses had disappeared by 8000 BCE,10 and it was only the ancestors of the Indian wild ass or ghor khar, particularly associated with northwestern and western India, that survived. The infusion of horses since then can be ascribed to the Indo-Aryans, speakers of an Indo-European language that evolved into Sanskrit, who migrated to the subcontinent from the north and the west in waves from circa 1500 BCE. There is limited evidence of the horse from the earlier, Bronze Age, Harappan or Indus valley civilization. Many of the famous terracotta seals to be recovered from Harappan sites are engraved with various animals, but there is no sign of the horse.”
― Yashaswini Chandra, The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback