Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares: Horses in Indian Myth and History (Richard Lectures)

Horses are not indigenous to India. They had to be imported, making them expensive and elite animals. How then did Indian villagers--who could not afford horses and often had never even seen a horse--create such wonderful horse stories and brilliant visual images of horses? In Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares, Wendy Doniger, called "the greatest living mythologist," examines the horse's significance throughout Indian history from the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, followed by the people who became the Mughals (who imported Arabian horses) and the British (who imported thoroughbreds and Walers). Along the way, we encounter the tensions between Hindu stallion and Arab mare traditions, the imposition of European standards on Indian breeds, the reasons why men ride mares to weddings, the motivations for murdering Dalits who ride horses, and the enduring myth of foreign horses who emerge from the ocean to fertilize native mares. Contents 8 Illustrations 10 Preface 14 Acknowledgments 18 A Note on Translation 20 1: Horses in Indian Nature and Culture 24 2: Horses in the Indo-European World but Not in the Indus Valley 44 3: Horses in the Vedas 51 4: Horses and Snakes in the Underworld in the Mahabharata and Ramayana 71 5: Horses in the Ocean in the Sanskrit Puranas 83 6: Ashvashastra, the Science of Horses 98 7: Buddhist Horses 114 8: Arabian Horses and Muslim Horsemen 127 9: Equestrian Epics and Mythic Mares 142 10: Horses of the British Raj 167 11: Horse Myths and Rituals in the Absence of Horses 187 12: Horses in Modern India 210 13: The Gift Horse 228 Notes 242 Bibliography 266 Index 280 Recent books from the Page-Barbour and Richard Lectures 300 "Explores the horse in Indian mythology and history. Despite the fact that horses were imported to India and associated with foreigners and conquerors, Indian villagers created wonderful stories and brilliant visual images of horses. The author relates how Turkish horses, tribal horses, Dalit horses, Hindu stallions, and Arab mares all mix in streams of story that raise issues about the assimilation of foreign cultures in India"-- Provided by publisher