Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass.
- Victor Hehn
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Cultivated plants and domestic animals in their migration from Asia to Europe / by Victor Hehn ; edited by James Steven Stallybrass. Source: Wellcome Collection.
48/530 page 48
![theirs by mixture with the improved breed in the richer pastures and milder climate of Media. But this Median horse itself had originally come from Turan, the home of those north-eastern branches of the great Iranian stock, which, as far as the light of history reaches, are always found a horse-riding race. Now, as the cradle of the central Indo-Europeans (Aryans] must be imagined as situated in or near that region, we find ourselves again facing our main question—Were they roaming tribes of horsemen (like the ancient Turanians) that detached themselves from the parent stock and inundated Europe ? or did they, like the Assyrians and Egyptians, receive the tamed horse at a later period from their former home on the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes? That the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the horse is proved by its name akva, which is found, with more or less variety of sound, among all the branches of that family; as, for instance, in Sanskrit agva, Anglo-Saxon esh, Old Irish ech, Latin equus, and many others; it is only lost in the Slavic languages. The word is derived from the root ah, “ to hasten,” and was applied to the horse as implying its speed, perhaps in contrast to the slow ox. The conception of the horse as of a swift and fleeting animal ope- rates for a long time in many myths and in poetical language. The sun hastens through heaven, and therefore the Persians and Massagetse sacrificed the horse, as the swiftest animal, to the God of Day. Herodotus says of the Massagetae : “ They worship the sun, and sacrifice horses to that god. The mean- ing of this sacrifice is the dedication of the swiftest of all earthly creatures to the swiftest of all divinities.” Homer calls the sun “untiring,” and the same epithet is applied to Notus and Boreas by Sophocles, while Pindar also describes the chariot-horses as “ untiring.” Mythically the horse is re- garded as one with the storm; this comes out very clearly in the fable of Boreas fructifying the mares of Erichthonius ; and in Homer the horses fly without bending the ears of the corn, and skim the foam of the grey sea : “ These lightly skimming, as they swept the plain, Nor ply’d the grass, nor bent the tender grain ; And when along the level seas they flew, Scarce on the surface curl’d the briny dew.”—Iliad.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24874309_0048.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
