Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares - (Richard Lectures) by Wendy Doniger (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Despite the fact that horses were imported to India and associated with foreigners and conquerors, Indian villagers created wonderful stories and brilliant visual images of horses. The author relates how Turkish horses, tribal horses, Dalit horses, Hindu stallions, and Arab mares all mix in streams of story that raise issues about the assimilation of foreign cultures in India"--

Book Synopsis

Horses are not indigenous to India. They had to be imported, making them expensive and elite animals. How then did Indian villagers--who could not afford horses and often had never even seen a horse--create such wonderful horse stories and brilliant visual images of horses? In Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares, Wendy Doniger, called "the greatest living mythologist," examines the horse's significance throughout Indian history from the arrival of the Indo-Europeans, followed by the people who became the Mughals (who imported Arabian horses) and the British (who imported thoroughbreds and Walers). Along the way, we encounter the tensions between Hindu stallion and Arab mare traditions, the imposition of European standards on Indian breeds, the reasons why men ride mares to weddings, the motivations for murdering Dalits who ride horses, and the enduring myth of foreign horses who emerge from the ocean to fertilize native mares.

Review Quotes

Doniger's ride through four millennia of Indian legend and folklore is full of sacrificial horses, horse-headed gods, transformations and couplings.

--Asian Review of Books

Every time Doniger discusses anything at all, she beautifully tosses in the whole world. She treats it all with subtle wit, broad comedy, and analytical brilliance.

--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Like Doniger's other works on mythology and history, Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares is astonishingly accomplished in the weaving of mythical narratives into a meaningful depiction of the Indian imagination. But the book is clearly also a work of love by a scholar who has spent most of her life in psychic connection with horses.

--Ariel Glucklich, Georgetown University

Worth the forty-year wait... Winged Stallions and Wicked Mares seems to be, in a sense, the culmination of Doniger's career, linking her lifelong passion for horses with Indian history and storytelling. The deep personal connection to both of the subjects is noticeable throughout the book and makes it a pleasure to read.

--Journal of the American Oriental Society

One of the finest works on the history of animals in South Asia.--Religious Studies Review

About the Author

Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago and author of more than forty books, including The Hindus: An Alternative History.