In ancient Greece and India, the real use of chariots encompassed sports, cults, journeys and combat. These uses of the supposedly most complex mobile technology of early Greek and Indian culture suggest a potentially similar complex metaphorical or ‘symbolic’ use of the chariot. It can be assumed that steering fast chariots was a demanding and fascinating task: an intensive experience of speed and mid-distance travel, but also a dangerous device, as numerous reported instances of chariot accidents in ancient sources show. Thus, it should not astonish that chariots (and chariot rides) were taken as a source domain, forming a dynamic ‘anthropo-therio-technological metaphor’ for the interpretation of abstract target domains such as gods, or the philosophical reflection of body, soul and liberation. In fact, in both (and other Eurasian) traditions chariots were depicted as vehicles of gods such as the sun, i.e. as a symbol of cosmic stability; they were, moreover, used as symbols of royal power and social prestige, e.g. of kings and warriors (in the Iliad, Vedic hymns, and poetic literature); and, finally, chariots served as metaphors for the ‘person’, the ‘mind’ and the ‘way to liberation’.

The parallel application of chariot imagery for the ‘Self’ and its salvific progress in both Greek and Indian contexts is indeed most astounding – yet it must be remarked that a certain Indian influence on pre-Alexandrian Greece is, although highly unlikely, theoretically possible, since the absolute (and even relative) chronology of the Upaniṣads is still a matter of academic dispute. Applying conceptual metaphor theory as a hermeneutic tool, I will try to outline subtle but important differences between the Greek and Indian chariot metaphors for ‘mind’, the ‘Self’ and ‘liberation’ – for instance in respect to a ‘chariot passenger’ able to descend from the ‘chariot’ at a final destination, or with regard to the ‘horses’ as either ‘parts of the soul’ or (neutral) ‘senses’, to be mastered by the charioteer. A cognitive analysis of chariot metaphors, may, in other words, be a valuable tool for highlighting those (sometimes hidden) philosophical pre conceptions prevalent in abstract domains such as the ‘mind’, the connection of ‘body and mind’, the relationship between the ‘rational’ and the ‘emotional’ part of the ‘mind’, the relation between a ‘steering mind’ and the ‘Self’, etc.