 "Ashva" (a Sanskrit word for a horse) is one of the significant animals finding references in several Hindu scriptures.In later periods, the difficulty of breeding large numbers of horses in the Indian climate meant they needed to be imported in large numbers, usually from Central Asia, but also elsewhere.Although the usual assumption has been that the Indo-Aryan migration relied heavily on riders, who may have introduced the domesticated horse to the subcontinent, 
there are few clear references to actual horse riding in their earliest text, the Rigveda, most clearly in RV 5.61.2-3, describing the Maruts as riders