WENDY DONIGER ON HORSES & GODS

Wendy Doniger writes about horses and gods with an equal joy and affection

WWendy Doniger has been crazy about horses ever since she first rode one in 1965. Released earlier this week, Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares, she says, “is the work of the love of a lifetime”. The affection with which Doniger picks stories about horses from Indian mythology and history is tangible. “Yoga,” she points out, “really means putting a bridle on your mind and your body, harnessing the otherwise unruly senses. It’s a horse metaphor—to put the yoke on a horse is to tame and control it.”

In Doniger’s book, we see how gods and men have both tried taming horses since the dawn of time, but according to her, horses also “lead humans from the world of the tame into the world of the wild”. Speaking to india today over a Zoom call from Massachusetts, describing the joy she would feel when her horse would take off, Doniger’s face lights up: “It’s like flying. You just hang on for dear life. You become him. You go into his world.” Doniger, a consummate storyteller, allows the horses in her book a very similar abandon. Her reins are loose. Her stallions and mares usually speak for themselves.

Horses sometimes play a crucial part in the Hindu pantheon. When Vishnu, for instance, appears with a horse’s head, he is called Hayagriva. Kalki, his last avatar, is imagined either as a horse or a horseman. But horses, Doniger points out, become even more significant in Hindu ritual. While the horse sacrifice was performed by several kings down the ages, Dasharatha sacrifices a horse in the Ramayana, not for sovereign might but for an offspring. “The idea of the sacrifice here is that the horse gives the king his royal power, his fertile power.” Rather than imagine this as a sacrifice of a horse, Doniger thinks of this as a sacrifice by the horse. “The horse’s life force goes into Dasharatha and then into Rama.”

Unlike stallions, who are often prized for their virility, mares are at times vilified for being oversexed. Worse still, they are thought of as bad mothers. Saranyu, who takes the shape of a mare, abandons not just her partner, the Sun, but also her children. “That’s not how mares behave. Mares take care of their foals in much the same way as everybody else takes care of their babies,” says Doniger. “I think this story is really based upon a deeply ingrained Indo-European masculine sexism. What you value in men are things like heroism, warrior-like qualities. The women are just there to keep the men happy.”

Doniger’s book is more than just a breakdown of myths, however. It is as informed by history as it is by religion. Indians, she says, viewed mares differently after Arabs began to arrive on horseback: “In Arab mythology, mares are very good. The mares of Muhammad, for example, are very valued.” So, in the Rajput stories that Doniger recounts, there are noble mares, but there are noble Muslims, too. “You often see it’s the horse who complicates the whole idea of who is an enemy and who is a friend.”

The Arab influence, according to Doniger, can be seen in both the stories we tell of horses and in our horses themselves. “Arabian horses are really the basis of most of the great Indian breeds today—the Kathiawari, the Marwari. They got mixed up so much that you absolutely cannot tell them apart.” In one chapter, Doniger shows how the British categorised Indians on the basis of caste in much the same way that their horses belonged to a hierarchy of breed. These tales of discrimination can be hard to read. “To know what a horse will be like, you need to know who the parents are. When you apply this to human beings, as people did in the 19th century, it all quickly becomes casteism and classism.”

Unlike The Hindus: An Alternative History and On Hinduism, books somewhat encyclopaedic in scope, Doniger’s recent titles have had a narrower focus. Much like Winged Stallions, her 2017 book The Ring of Truth arrived at larger truths through the prism of sex and jewellery. “As a young New York Jewish girl, India was the faraway, the exotic. But as I grew older, as I got to know India better, I realised that it was very much like my world, and that all the things I love best about India were things I love best anywhere. I began to write more personally. I really care about animals, sex and jewellery.”

Even Beyond Dharma, Doniger’s 2018 book about dissent in ancient India, was deeply personal. “It was inspired by my concern for the silencing of dissent in India today.” After Penguin India decided to pulp The Hindus in 2014, Doniger, 80, says her relationship with the country has changed. “I miss my trips to India. They are not essential for my work, no. I have always been a textualist, never an anthropologist, but my friendships matter very much to me. I think I probably will never see India again.” ■ by Wendy Doniger `699; 322 pages

WINGED STALLIONS AND WICKED MARES Horses in Indian Myth and History

—Shreevatsa Nevatia