Talk:History of the horse in South Asia

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[edit] 17 ribs

In RV 1.162.18, the horse is described as having 34 (2x17) ribs:

The axe penetrates the thirty-four ribs of the swift horse; the beloved of the gods, (the immolators), cut up (the horse) with skill, so that the limbs may be unperforated, and recapitulating joint by joint. (transl. Wilson)

It has been speculated that the Rig vedic horse could therefore be the extinct Equus Sivalensis (or horse of the Siwaliks), which had only 17 pairs of ribs, while west asian and other horse species have more ribs. ^[1] It lived in the Himalayan foothills. Modern horses with 17 ribs still live in South East Asia and South Asia (Timor and Sulu horse). [1]

[edit] Title

Dab, I think the title of the page is not very good. It severly limits the scope of this article, on which I'd like also to see a discussion of the horse in postvedic times and in (post)vedic texts. (which needs expansion) With this title, it could as well be merged into Indo-aryan migration (and the title should anyway rather be "History of Equus caballus Linn in South Asia"). I'm proposing to move the article to Asva or to "The horse in Ancient India" or to "History of the horse in South Asia". And I don't know if you're just having a bad day, but please be a bit more verbose in the edit summary or talk page when deleting something, even if it's just a few words explaining what you do. [2] [3] [4] --Rayfield 17:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the page should be merged with Ashva and moved to Asva. There's no need to have these two articles divided. The current title has also other problems. There were horses in India that probably were native to India (e.g. Equus sivalensis, E. namadicus), and there are horse finds in India (that are unconnected to the AMT) well before 2000 BCE. A better title would be "History of the horse in South Asia". --Rayfield 20:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I am fine with the merge, but the resulting article will still have rather separate "archaeology" and "mythology" sections, which will again evolve into sub-articles over time, so that I don't see why they cannot stay separate, of course clearly referring to one another. "Ashva" is a good title for the literary topic, but not very good for a discussion of archaeology. I am fine with Horses in Ancient India, History of the horse in South Asia or similar. dab (ᛏ) 11:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] E. sivalensis

could we not spare ourselves the crackpottery of associating the IVC with Ice Age fauna? All this achieves is make look everybody arguing for IVC horses like a complete fool. I am intrigued by the possibility of E. caballus in 2000 BC India, but the tendency of the ideologists to cite anything at all to have their way makes it difficult to follow the actual debate. dab (ᛏ) 10:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)