Homeric Horses
and their Vedic Cognates

Ryan C. Platte (University of Washington)

This paper attempts to explain a few of the many similarities observable in the treatment of horses in the Iliad and Sanskrit literature, especially Vedic literature. My analysis proceeds from the belief that the cultural notions associated with the horse in Greece and India are not only remarkable but also remarkably similar, and that this similarity is likely to stem from the shared Proto-Indo-European inheritance of both cultures. Indeed, the epic phrase, ōkées híppoi, swift horses, is one of the oldest and best attested poetic examples of Greece and India’s shared Indo-European inheritance, as evidenced by Ved. áśvas āśávah, as well as Av. aspaŋhō āsauuō, which all derive from the same Proto-Indo-European poetic formula, *h₁ōkÏÈwes h₁ékÏwōs (Watkins).

The specific subject of this paper is the similarity of treatment of horses in their relationship to heroes. The most striking example of this may be that the Iliad and Mahabharata both depict horses shedding tears at the death of their master, whose own deaths are remarkably similar. More generally exemplary, however, is horses’ capacity, virtually unique among animals, for semi-divine status and immortality, just like the heroes whom they accompany in battle. Additionally, in both traditions, horses are repeatedly praised for the same qualities which are praised among heroes, the most important of which being their speed. In fact, the mares of Eumelus, those swift enough to warrant their own mention among the heroes in the catalogue of ships, are even referred to as podōÏkeas (2.764), an epithet generally used of Achilles himself.

To explain these similarities I draw evidence from Vedic danastuti-s, the praises of the payments received by poets from patrons that often end Vedic hymns. Horses feature here as a common form of payment, but also appear so as to publicly proclaim the wealth, and therefore, power of the patron while simultaneously serving as a thematic link to previously described heroic figures, whose own prowess is explicitly reflected in the quality of their horses. Thus Danastuti-s render explicit the economic, social and poetic nexus inhabited by horses in Indian oral poetics. I suggest, then, that a similar system, traceable to the period of common Greco-Indian heritage, remained functional while the poetics of Greek heroic song were being shaped by the particular relationship between oral poets and their patrons. I suggest that this inherited relationship, given the economic and social position of the horse in Indo-European society, results in the unusual coincidence in Greek and Indian treatment of the horse-hero relationship.