The Ashvamedha (Sanskrit: अश्वमेध aśvamedhá; "horse sacrifice") was one of the most important royal rituals of Vedic religion, described in detail in the Yajurveda (YV TS 7.1-5, YV VSM 22–25 and the pertaining commentary in the Shatapatha Brahmana ŚBM 13.1–5). The Rigveda does have descriptions of horse sacrifice, notably in hymns RV 1.162-163 (which are themselves known as ), but does not allude to the full ritual according to the Yajurveda.

Gayatri Pariwar have been organising performances of a modernised version of the sacrifice, not involving actual animal sacrifice, since 1991.

The Vedic sacrifice

The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a king (rājā). Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, and general prosperity of the kingdom.

The horse to be sacrificed must be a stallion, more than 24, but less than 100 years old. The horse is sprinkled with water, and the Adhvaryu and the sacrificer whisper mantras into its ear. Anyone who should stop the horse is ritually cursed, and a dog is killed symbolic of the punishment for the sinners. The horse is then set loose towards the North-East, to roam around wherever it chooses, for the period of one year (or half a year, according to some commentators). The horse is associated with the Sun, and its yearly course. If the horse wanders into neighbouring provinces hostile to the sacrificer, they must be subjugated. The wandering horse is attended by a hundred young men, sons of princes or high court officials, charged with guarding the horse from all dangers and inconvenience. During the absence of the horse, an uninterrupted series of ceremonies is performed in the sacrificer's home.

After the return of the horse, more ceremonies are performed. The horse is yoked to a gilded chariot, together with three other horses, and RV 1.6.1,2 (YV VSM 23.5,6) is recited. The horse is then driven into water and bathed. After this, it is anointed with ghee by the chief queen and two other royal consorts. The chief queen anoints the fore-quarters, and the others the barrel and the hind-quarters. They also embellish the horse's head, neck, and tail with golden ornaments. The sacrificer offers the horse the remains of the night's oblation of grain.

After this, the horse, a hornless he-goat, a wild ox (go-mrga, Bos gavaeus) are bound to sacrificial stakes near the fire, and seventeen other animals are attached to the horse. A great number of animals, both tame and wild, are tied to other stakes, according to a commentator 609 in total (YV VSM 24 consists of an exact enumeration).

Then the horse is slaughtered (YV VSM 23.15, tr. Griffith)

Steed, from thy body, of thyself, sacrifice and accept thyself.

Thy greatness can be gained by none but thee.

The chief queen ritually calls on the king's fellow wives for pity. The queens walk around the dead horse reciting mantras. The chief queen then has to mimic copulation with the dead horse, while the other queens ritually utter obscenities.

On the next morning, the priests raise the queen from the place where she has spent the night with the horse. With the Dadhikra verse (RV 4.39.6, YV VSM 23.32), a verse used as a purifier after obscene language.

The three queens with a hundred golden, silver and copper needles indicate the lines on the horse's body along which it will be dissected. The horse is dissected, and its flesh roasted. Various parts are offered to a host of deities and personified concepts with cries of svaha "all-hail". The Ashvastuti or Eulogy of the Horse follows (RV 1.162, YV VSM 24.24–45), concluding with:

May this Steed bring us all-sustaining riches, wealth in good kine, good horses, manly offspring

Freedom from sin may Aditi vouchsafe us: the Steed with our oblations gain us lordship!

The priests performing the sacrifice were recompensed with a part of the booty won during the wandering of the horse. According to a commentator, the spoils from the east were given to the Hotar, while the Adhvaryu a maiden (a daughter of the sacrificer) and the sacrificer's fourth wife.

The Shatapatha Brahmana emphasizes the royal nature of the Ashvamedha:

Verily, the Asvamedha means royal sway: it is after royal sway that these strive who guard the horse. (ŚBM 13.1.6.3 trans. Eggeling 1900)

It repeatedly states that "the Asvamedha is everything" (ŚBM 13.4.2.22 trans. Eggeling 1900)

Known historical performances

Pusyamitra Sunga is said to have performed the Ashvamedha rite after he toppled Mauryan rule in 185 BC.

A historically documented performance of the Ashvamedha is during the reign of Samudragupta I (d. 380), the father of Chandragupta II. Special coins were minted to commemorate the Ashvamedha and the king took on the title of Maharajadhiraja after successful completion of the sacrifice.

There were a few later performances, one by Raja of Kannauj in the 12th century, unsuccessfully, as Prithviraj Chauhan thwarted his attempt and later married his daughter. The last known instance seems to be in 1716 CE, by Jai Singh II of Amber, a prince of Jaipur

Performances in Itihasa

Performances of the Ashvamedha feature in the epics Ramayana (1.10–15) and Mahabharata.

In the Mahabharata, the sacrifice is performed by Yudhishtira (Book 14), his brothers guarding the horse as it roamed into neighbouring kingdoms. Arjuna defeats all challengers. The Mahabharata says that the Ashvamedha as performed by Yudhishtira adhered to the letter of the Vedic prescriptions. After the horse was cut into parts, Draupadi lies beside the slain animal (14.89).

In the Ramayana, Rama's father Dasharatha performs the Ashvamedha, which is described in the bala kanda (book 1) of the poem. The Ramayana provides far more detail than the Mahabharata. Again it is stated that the ritual was performed in strict compliance with Vedic prescriptions (1.14.10). Dasaratha's chief wife Kausalya circumambulates the horse and ritually pierces its flesh (1.14.33). Then "Queen Kausalya desiring the results of ritual disconcertedly resided one night with that horse that flew away like a bird." [1-14-34]. At the conclusion of the ritual Dasharatha symbolically offers his other wives to the presiding priests, who return them in exchange for expensive gifts (1.14.35).

The ritual is performed again towards the end of the poem, but in very different circumstances. It figures centrally in the uttara kanda (book 7) where it leads to the final major story in the poem. In this narrative, Rama was married to a single wife, Sita, who at the time was not with him, having been excluded from Rama's capital of Ayodhya. She was therefore represented by a statue for the queen's ceremony (7.x). Sita was living in Valmiki's forest ashram with her twin children by Rama, Lava and Kusha, whose birth was unknown to Rama. In its wanderings, the horse, accompanied by an army and Hanuman, Rama's monkey-devotee enters the forest and encounters Lava, who ignores the warning written on the horse's headplate not to hinder its progress. He tethers the horse, and with Kusha challenges the army, which is unable to defeat the brothers. Recognising Rama's sons, Hanuman sends them to Ayodhya where they are reconciled with their father, who also accepts Sita back at court. Sita, however, no longer wishes to live, and is absorbed by the earth. It is never stated whether the sacrifice was completed, but after Sita's death Rama is said to have repeatedly performed the Ashvamedha using the golden statue as a substitute for his wife.

Some historians believe that the bala kanda and uttara kanda were latter interpolations to the authentic form of the Ramayana, due to references to Greek, Parthians and Sakas, dating to no earlier than the 2nd century BCE

Indo-European comparison

Many Indo-European branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a PIE ritual. The Ashvamedha is the clearest evidence preserved, but vestiges from Latin and Celtic traditions allow the reconstruction of a few common attributes.

The Gaulish personal name Epomeduos is from *ek'wo-medhu- "horse+mead", while ashvamedha is either from *ek'wo-mad-dho- "horse+drunk" or *ek'wo-mey-dho- "horse+strength". The reconstructed myth involves the coupling of a king with a divine mare which produced the divine twins. Some scholars, including Edgar Polomé, regard the reconstruciton of a PIE ritual as unjustified due to the difference between the attested traditions (EIEC s.v. Horse, p. 278).

Vedanta and Puranas

The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (a mystical appendix to the Shatapatha Brahmana and likely the oldest of the Upanishads) has a creation myth where "Death" takes the shape of a horse, and includes an identification of the Ashvamedha with the Sun:

Then he became a horse (ashva), because it swelled (ashvat), and was fit for sacrifice (medhya); and this is why the horse-sacrifice is called Ashva-medha [...] Therefore the sacrificers offered up the purified horse belonging to Prajapati, (as dedicated) to all the deities. Verily the shining sun [ye tapati] is the Asvamedha, and his body is the year; Agni is the sacrificial fire (arka), and these worlds are his bodies. These two are the sacrificial fire and the Asvamedha-sacrifice, and they are again one deity, viz. Death. (BrUp 1.2.7. trans. Müller)

The Upanishads describe ascetic austerities as an "inner Ashvamedha", as opposed to the "outer" royal ritual performed in the physical world, in keeping with the general tendency of Vedanta to move away from priestly ritual towards spiritual introspection; verse 6 of the Avadhuta Upanishad has:

"Through extreme devotion [] he [the ascetic] performs ashvamedha within []. That is the greatest sacrifice [] and the greatest meditation []."

According to the Brahma Vaivarta Purana (185.180), the Ashvamedha is one of five rites forbidden in the Kali Yuga.

Arya Samaj

In the Arya Samaj reform movement of Dayananda Sarasvati, the Ashvamedha is considered an allegory or a ritual to get connected to the "inner Sun" (Prana) Dayananda in his Introduction to the commentary on the Vedas had to reject the classical commentaries of the Vedas by Sayana, Mahidhara and Uvata as medieval corruptions "opposed to the real meaning of the Vedas" (p. 443) in order to arrive at an entirely symbolic interpretation of the ritual: "An empire is like a horse and the subjects like other inferior animals" (p. 448). Thus, VSM 23.22, literally "he beats on the vulva (gabha), the penis (pasas) oozes repeatedly (ni-galgaliti) in the receptacle" is interpreted not in terms of the horse and the queen, but in terms of the king and his subjects, "The subjects are called gabha (to be seized), kingly power called pasa (to be penetrated)" (p. 454). This interpretation is apparently based on a verse from Shatapatha Brahmana .

Following Dayananda, Arya Samaj disputes the very existence of the pre-Vedantic ritual; thus Swami Satya Prakash Saraswati claims that

"the word in the sense of the Horse Sacrifice does not occur in the Samhitas [...] In the terms of cosmic analogy, ashva is the Sun. In respect to the adhyatma paksha, the Prajapati-Agni, or the Purusha, the Creator, is the Ashva; He is the same as the Varuna, the Most Supreme. The word medha stands for homage; it later on became synonymous with oblations in rituology, since oblations are offered, dedicated to the one whom we pay homage. The word deteriorated further when it came to mean 'slaughter' or 'sacrifice'.

arguing that the animals listed as sacrificial victims are just as symbolic as the list of human victims listed in the Purushamedha (which is generally accepted as a purely symbolic sacrifice already in Rigvedic times). Other commentators accept the existence of the sacrifice but reject the notion that the queen lay down with the dead horse. Thus Subhash Kak in a blog posting suggests that the queen lay down with a toy horse rather than with the slaughtered stallion, due to presence of the word Ashvaka, similar to Shivaka meaning "idol or image of Shiva"

All World Gayatri Pariwar since 1991 has organized performances of a "modern version" of the Ashvamedha where a statue is used in place of a real horse, according to Hinduism Today with a million participants in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh on April 16 to 20, 1994. Such modern performances are sattvika Yajnas where the animal is worshipped without killing it,, the religious motivation being prayer for overcoming enemies, the facilitation of child welfare and development, and clearance of debt, entirely within the allegorical interpretation of the ritual, and with no actual sacrifice of any animal, nor any sexual connotations.

Modern anxieties and propaganda

The mock bestiality and necrophilia involved in the ritual caused considerable consternation among the scholars first editing the Yajurveda. Griffith (1899) omits verses VSM 23.20–31 (the ritual obscenities), protesting that they are "not reproducible even in the semi-obscurity of a learned European language" (alluding to other instances where he renders explicit scenes in Latin rather than English). A. B. Keith's 1914 translationalso omits verses.

This part of the ritual offended the Dalit reformer and framer of the Indian constitution B. R. Ambedkar and is frequently mentioned in his writings as an example of the perceived degradation of Brahmanical culture.

Notes

References

• Ralph Thomas Hotchkin Griffith, The Texts of the White Yajurveda. Translated with a Popular Commentary (1899),
• 1987 reprint: Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, ISBN 8121500478
• 1990 reprint: edited and enlarged by Surendra Pratap, Nag Publishers,11A/U, A,Jawahar Nagar, Delhi, ISBN 81-7081-2127
• Ramavarapu Krishnamurti Shastri (trans.), Krishna Yajurvedeeya Taittiriya Samhita, Book VII, The Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanams, Tirumala Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh (2003).
• Dasaradhi Rangacharya,'Srimad-Andhra Vachana Shukla Yajurveda Samhita' (White Yajurveda Samhita in Telugu), Emesco Books, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh (1999)
• Dayananda Sarasvati, Introduction to the commentry on the Vedas, Meharchand lachhmandas Publications; 1st ed. (1981), Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha; 2nd ed. (1984)

See also

• Purushamedha
• Somayajna
• Ashva