The [Dasyu/Dasa] image of the 'dark-skinned savage' is only imposed on the Vedic evidence with a considerable amount of text-torturing. - Thomas Trautmann

This uncompromising judgment falls especially upon those Indians who are under British rule, the Bengalis, and among them especially the Hindus, and the content of their moral depravity (which Grant descants upon at length) is that they are lacking in truth, honesty, and good faith to a degree not found in European society. Grant is blunt in the interest not of condemning the Indians but of determining "their true place in the moral scale," ... What he insists upon is the universality of this great depravity in Hindu society, giving it a general moral hue, "between which and the European moral complexion there is a difference analogous to the difference of the natural colour of the two races" (1796:25). But the purpose is neither condemnation for its own sake nor to assert the permanent inferiority of another race.

...Macdonell and Keith wish to impose the "dark-skinned savage" on what the R# Veda says about the Dasyus/Dasas, but that the text does not entirely cooperate with the two parts of this image: First, darkness of skin was not a salient marker of Dasyu/Dasa identity to the hymn writers, for whom the most important attributes of these enemies had rather to do with language and religion; the matter of flat noses is limited to a single disputed passage. Second, the Dasyus/Dasas are depicted as wealthy and powerful opponents, but Macdonell and Keith minimize this evidence and represent them instead as marginal, barbarous hill tribes, consistent with their image of the dark-skinned savage.... What is remarkable about these articles is the way in which they extract the dark-skinned savage from a very recalcitrant Vedic text. The first half of the image is drawn from a grand total of two passages referring to dark skin and a single one interpreted to mean "flat-nosed" against ancient authorities. But, as the articles themselves make abundantly clear, the significant social markers separating Aryas from Dasas or Dasyus for the writers of the texts are religion, above all, and language, while complexion is barely mentioned. The second half of the image, savagery, is completely contrary to the evidence of wealth and many forts possessed by these enemies, which the authors dismiss without evidence.

The supply of horses . . . has been a preoccupation of the rulers of India, from, nearly, one end of its recorded history to the other. . . . It has yet to be determined why exactly India has never been self-sufficient in horses. Climate? A relative scarcity of pasture?" ... whatever the reason, the stock has always had to be replenished by imports, and the imports came from westward in the ancient period. . . . It is a structure of its history, then, that India has always been dependent upon western and central Asia for horses.