158 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



provided with horsemen and chariots drawn by horses at the 

 time of Alexander's invasion, it is clear that the Indians who 

 furnished Xerxes with chariots drawn by wild asses were either 

 the tribes from the western side of the Indus, who dwelt in what 

 is now Baluchistan and eastern Persia, or else from the peoples 

 of the eastern bank of that river, who dwelt in what is now 

 Cutch, Kathiwar and Baroda. But, though Cutch is still the 

 stronghold of the wild ass, yet as we have seen that all the 

 region round Bombay was supplied with horses from the Persian 

 Gulf and Arabia in the thirteenth century A.D. and we know 

 not how long before, it is most improbable that the horse was 

 indigenous in Cutch or Kathiwar. On the other hand there is 

 the clearest historical evidence that by the Christian era great 

 numbers of the yellow-dun horses of upper Asia and Europe 

 had been brought into all the regions lying on the east bank of 

 the lower Indus. 



We saw that the Scythians had been keepers of horses from 

 a remote period and that these horses were probably of the 

 same stock as the Mongolian pony of modern times, and that 

 the wild horses of the Caspian steppes were probably of a light 

 dun colour. Along the ancient highway which led from the 

 Caspian region up the Oxus valley, the Scythian tribe of Sacae 

 forced their way into Bactria (Afghanistan) in the second 

 century B.C., and ultimately overthrew the Greeks who had 

 ruled that region from the time of Alexander. The Scythians 

 then carried their arms across the Hindu Kush, and subdued 

 all the territory previously under Greek dominion extending 

 down the valley of the Indus to the sea. Though these Scythians 

 had been expelled before the time of the Periplus of the Ery- 

 thraean Sea, and the country was then subject to the Parthian 

 king, the name had survived, and it is accordingly called Scythia 

 in that treatise, as indeed it was long after in the days of Ptolemy 

 (120 A.D.), who more distinctly terms it Indo-Scythia. This 

 comprised the whole region adjoining the lower course of the 

 Indus now known as Scinde, together with Cutch, Kathiwar, 

 and Gujerat 1 . As it is incredible that the Scythians would have 



1 Eidgeway, The Early Age of Greece, Vol. i. p. 404. 



