Yashaswini Chandra has a PhD in the history of art from SOAS, where she was also a teaching fellow, and formerly worked with Sahapedia, an...
Yashaswini Chandra has a PhD in the history of art from SOAS, where she was also a teaching fellow, and formerly worked with Sahapedia, an open online resource on the arts, cultures and histories of India. In her first book, The Tale of the Horse: A History of India on Horseback, Chandra reminds us of how central horses were to polities, economies and ruling classes, both ancient and medieval, before the mechanisation of the modern world changed everything.
Chandra’s book introduces us to the divine origins of the horse in Indian mythologies, descending from the skies and emerging out of the sea, and how it embedded itself firmly into Indian traditions and popular culture. In telling the history of the animal, Chandra is also recounting the stories of the people who bred, traded and went to war on horseback.
In the book, for example, you’ll learn how hundreds of thousands of horses were brought overland to India from Central Asia and beyond as well as on ships from West Asia, creating powerful lasting trade links spanning entire continents, and also how European biases about Indian horse breeds as well as the colonial distrust of nomadic communities altered the nature of the...
