CHAPTER NINETEEN

EQUUS HEMIONUS, THE KHUR

19.1 The Living Animal

19.1.1 Zoology The khur (Plate 28) is the indigenous wild horse of the South Asian subcontinent. It is a small to pony-sized horse with a shoulder height of 1–1.42 m. Khurs have a stocky built, short legs and a relative large, massive head compared to most domestic horses, but not unlike many modern ponies. The tail is naked and ends in a tuft of hairs as in donkeys and zebras. The tail is moderately long, and reaches about the middle of the leg. The erect brown mane is continued as a dark brown stripe extending along the back to the root of the tail; sometimes also a transverse shoulder stripe is present as in the domestic donkey. The khur has broader hooves, and shorter hairs on mane and tail than both domestic horses and donkeys; their black-tipped ears are in size between those of a horse and a donkey. They lack the typical forelock, the tuft of hairs between the ears on the forehead, of the domestic horse (fi g. 332). The khur is a social animal which lives in herds of upto thousands of individuals of both sexes, though during the dry season they disperse into small groups. Two standing khurs often place their heads on each other’s backs as a token of friendliness, but it also provides them with a clock-round view of their surroundings. Despite their not exactly graceful built, khurs are swifter than most domestic horses, and reach a maximum speed of 70 km/hr and sustain a pace of 50 km/hr for over an hour without sweating.1 Khurs are legendary for this ability to run swiftly and tirelessly for longer periods (Plate 28); they outrun

1 C. Groves, “The taxonomy, distribution, and adaptations of Recent equids,” in Equids in the ancient world, ed. R. Meadow and H.-P. Uerpmann (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1986), 11–65. 260 EQUUS HEMIONUS most horses.2 In addition, they also climb much better than domestic horses. The khur originally occurred roughly from Palestine in the west to the Gobi desert in the east, each region with its own subspecies or race, for example the onager in Persia and the khiang on the Tibetan Pla- teau; the latter is often regarded as a species on its own (Equus khiang). Gradually, the wild populations became restricted to small pockets of habitat and reserves, and on the Indian subcontinent the khurs are restricted to the Rann of Kutch (Gujarat; mainly the Little Rann), the Thar desert (Rajasthan and Pakistan), and the coastal plains of Baluchistan (Pakistan); the khiangs are restricted to Ladakh ( Jammu and Kashmir). Nowadays, the khur is an endangered species; at the end of the twentieth century the total wild population in the Rann of Kutch counted only about 1,000 individuals,3 while in the past it was common to see herds each consisting of over a thousand animals. Their decline is due to habitat loss, hunting for meat and competition from domestic livestock. The habitat of khurs consists of dry steppes and fl at desert country, including salt fl ats and gravel plains. They concentrate in and around the bets: fl at grass-covered oases in the desert which expand and fl ourish during the monsoon rains. It is very diffi cult to tell apart the remains of the indigenous khur and the imported domestic horse (Equus caballus). Taxonomical differences are mainly found in the metapodals and fi rst phalanges: those of the khur tend to be more slender than those of horse.4 Further, the valley between metaconid and metastylid in the molars of the lower jaw is usually rather V-shaped in khurs, and open U-shaped in horses.5 Khur remains have been recognized as such at Surkotada6 and Rangpur,7 both in Gujarat, and in all levels, ranging from pre-Harappan

2 Prothero and Schoch, op. cit. (2002). 3 J. Smielowski and P. Raval, “The Indian wild ass and captive populations,” Oryx 22 (1988), 85–88. 4 S. Bököny, “Once More on the Osteological Differences of the Horse, the Half-ass and the Ass,” in The Caspian Miniature Horse of Iran, ed. L. Firouz (Miami: Field Research Projects, 1972), 12–23; B. Compagnoni, “The Bone Remains of Equus hemionus from Shahr-i Sokhta,” in Approaches to Faunal Analysis in the Middle East, ed. R. Meadow and M. Zeder, Peabody Museum Bulletin 2 (1978), 105–118. 5 Ibidem. 6 Sharma, op. cit. (1974), 75–76, pls. X through XIII. 7 Determined as “donkey” in Nath, op. cit. (1963) and Chitalwala and Thomas, op. cit. (1977–1978), 14.