Horses

[Sn. Subrahmanya]

The Hun Period - Denis Sinor
from the Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, 1990, pg203

"Information on the horse, faithful and indispensable companion of
the Hun warrior, is also lopsided. Written sources contain many
references to the ugly but sturdy Hun horses and the veterinary
surgeon Vegatius Renatus described them in some detail. On the basis
of contemporary descriptions one may safely conclude that the typical
Hun horse was from a breed of the Mongolian pony. There is a strange
contrast between the vivid descriptions given by the authors and the
absence of any information provided by burials. To quote S.Bokonyi,
a foremost authority on the subject, "We know very little of the Hun's
horses. It is interesting that not a single usable horse bone has
been found in the territory of the whole empire of the Huns".
There is yet no answer to the question of what happened to the mortal
remains of these fearful conqurors and their strange mounts. Hun
domination was short lived and if the dead were cremated and and the
horse bodies not put into graves, the likelihood of finding their
bones is necessarily limited."

Bokonyi is quoted from his "History of Domestic Mammals in Central and
Eastern Europe"


Subrahmanya
Houston, TX