Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 153 



see that the keepers of his elephants and his grooms provide 

 good provender for these animals. If they do not, he punishes 

 them very severely." The same writer^ says that the Indian 

 horses were very difficult to ride save for those trained to do 

 so from boyhood, and because their mouths were hard it was 

 customary to control and guide them not with a bit but 

 with perforated muzzles. As will presently be made clear, 

 the untractable temper of the Indian horses at this period is 

 sufficient of itself to show that they were Upper Asiatic and 

 neither Arabian in origin nor themselves the source of the 

 Arab race. 



The evidence just adduced renders it certain that India 

 as a whole has never been able to breed horses in any numbers 

 of good quality'-, and it is equally certain that in the thirteenth 

 century A.D., and we know not how long previously, two 

 separate breeds of horses kept steadily streaming into Hin- 

 dustan — the Mongolian from the Himalayas, and the Arab 

 and its derivatives from Arabia and the Persian Gulf; it has 

 also been shown that the modern ponies of Bhotan, Nepal, 

 and Spiti may be safely considered as in the main Mongolian, 

 whilst we shall soon find that various breeds of trans-Indus 

 horses, which are largely used in India, and which do not 

 stand heat as well as the ' country-breds ' (mainly of Arab 

 strain, as we have just seen), are merely Mongolian ponies 

 modified by Arab blood. These considerations, when taken 

 along with the description of the Vedic horses just cited, put 

 it beyond doubt that the chariots of the Aryan conquerors 

 of the Panjab were drawn by horses of the Mongolian, i.e. 

 Upper Asiatic, stock. 



From the facts cited it is clear that there has been a 

 continual blending of the Mongolian and Arab blood all across 

 Hindustan, especially in the northern area, and accordingly 



^ Op. cit. XIII. 9. 



- Prof. Ewart has sent me the following extract from a letter from an Indian 

 chief in the Bombay Presidency dated May 1904: "My daughter has two 

 Shetland pony mares : one of them foaled after her arrival, six years ago. 

 That foal is alive and in good health. Since then both the mares have foaled 

 regularly every year to a stallion that was imported with tliem, but none of the 

 foals live more than a month." 



