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Question – 99
Did the climate change
caused by the comet-hit of 3136 BCE get reflected in any displacements in
Bharat?
Answer:
A major displacement
of home-bred horses from India to outside was noticed following this cosmic
impact.
Several varieties of horses were indigenous to Bharat
as made known from both the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Gandhara was known for
indigenous horse breeds that prompted Amāvasu, the ancestor of Sumantu and
Jahnu to shift to Gandhara. According to the Mahabharata, Gandhara, Kāmboja and
Arāṭṭa were known for horses such as Kalmaṣa, Tittiri and Mandūka.
Vāhlika horses were preferred by the Ikṣvāku-s right from the
time of Bhagīratha. Dhṛtarāṣṭra gifted the Vāhlika breeds to Krishna when he
visited him for the peace mission. All these horse breeding sites, occupied right
from the Ramayana times, came under the control of Jayadratha during the Mahabharata.
Jayadratha wielded power up to Vāhlika by friendship and matrimonial alliances.
Looking at the events in the Mahabharata, we are led
to speculate that Jayadratha was tolerated in the incidence of attempted
molestation of Draupadi, mainly because he controlled the horse breeding
regions. Until such a time that the Pandava-s could wrest control of his region
from him, which happened only with the Great War, people were not willing to
upset him completely.
After the death of Jayadratha and the change of climate
turning hostile for horse-breeding following the comet-hit, the breeders must have
moved further west and Northwest with their horses. This is reflected in the sudden
appearance of genetic material seen in the Anatolian horses which researchers
find not to be of autochthonous origin but migrated from outside.
A paleogenetic study of the horses in Anatolia and the
Caucasus establishes that there was no autochthonous independent domestication
of horses in these regions, but a large-scale introduction of domestic horses
at the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, whose origins were not
known. (https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/sciadv.abb0030)
The origins can be traced to the
Gāndhāra-Vāhlika-Sindhu axis that was controlling the horse trade until the Mahabharata
war. With these regions suffering a defeat in the war, the horse breeding trade
had shifted to Anatolia. The climatic changes in the aftermath of the comet-hit
could also have necessitated the shift to newer regions.
