and arrows included in chariot burials in the steppe, and the bronze rapiers found
under kurgans in southern Caucasia and at several Minoan sites.
The military use of chariots in the second quarter of the second millennium BC,
therefore, seems not merely to have revolutionized the way that battles were fought
in the civilized world, as I had once supposed, but to have moved warfare from
the city wall to the battlefield, and in so doing to have marked the beginning of
militarism. During the century and a half after Hammurabi’s death offensive warfare
began and war was glorified, with the emergence of a class of men whose
profession was combat. The members of this class prided themselves on their
weapons, their armor, their prowess in battle, and the number of opponents they
had killed. Here was the warrior class that Dumézil saw in Indo-European myths.
Kristiansen and Larsson have explored in depth the interconnections of this
warrior class, with special reference to the Nordic Bronze Age but casting their
net over all of western Eurasia.^4
Membership in this class was neither cheap nor easy. The skills of the chariot
archer and chariot driver depended on natural talent and long practice, and the
material investment was considerable: the crew not only had to have a chariot and
a team of well-trained horses (and perhaps a replacement or two), but also would
have an expensive composite bow and scores of arrows to go with it,^5 bronze
rapiers, and leather tunics and helmets covered with bronze scales. For the
crewman all of these things were practical and essential, although they also
became status symbols for the rich and powerful. Militarism had appeared
suddenly, and it led to profound changes over most of western Eurasia.
Our most eloquent evidence for the new outlook comes from India. Chariot
warfare continued in India long after it had ended in the Near East and the Aegean,
and the Mahabharata and the Ramayana present vivid descriptions of it. Arthur
Cotterell, making excellent use of Indian and Chinese iconography for his very
accessible book on chariotry, observed that “representations of Rama nearly
always show him armed with a composite bow, not least because prowess as an
archer is inseparable from the development of the Ramayanatale.”^6 In Vedic,
ratheṣṭhais an epithet of Indra, and in Avestan a raθaēštais a ruler, but literally
is “a man who stands in a chariot.”^7 The hymns of the Rig Veda, dating to the
second half of the second millennium BC, are replete with imagery drawn from
chariot warfare. These Sanskrit texts take us as far as we are likely to get inside
the mind of the chariot archer and driver. Indra, the supreme god of the Aryans,
who drinks deep draughts of soma juice and then plunges into battle, is regularly
described in the first book of the Rig Veda as driving his heavenly chariot, and
his arrows are the thunder-bolts. The mentality of the chariot warrior is especially
clear in Hymn 6.75 of the Rig Veda, which Ralph Griffith titled “Weapons of
War” in his 1896 translation:
1 THE warrior’s look is like a thunderous rain-cloud’s, when, armed with
mail, he seeks the lap of battle.
Be thou victorious with unwounded body: so let the thickness of thy mail
protect thee.Chariot warfare and militarism 111