Ashvamedha
The Ashvamedha (Sanskrit: अश्वमेध, romanized: aśvamedha)[1] was a horse sacrifice ritual followed by the Śrauta tradition of Vedic religion.
In the territory traversed by the horse, any rival could dispute the king's authority by challenging the warriors accompanying it.
After one year, if no enemy had managed to kill or capture the horse, the animal would be guided back to the king's capital.
[2][3] Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, seeking progeny and general prosperity of the kingdom.
Before the horse began its travels, at a moment chosen by astrologers, there was a ceremony and small sacrifice in the house, after which the king had to spend the night with the queen, but avoiding sex.
[8] The escort had to prevent the stallion from mating with any mares during its journey, and if he did, an oblation of milk was performed to Vāyu.
In the evening after the Dhṛtihoma, two Brahmin and two Kshatriya bards and lutists would praise the patron king's generosity, who gave 4,000 cows and 400 gold coins to the priests on the first day of the sacrifice.
The priests then partook in the drinking of the soma and the twelve oblations to the seasons, and the sacrifice of a goat to Agni.
The midday pressing was similar and dedicated to Indra, and dakshina was also distributed on that day to the priests consisting of a varying multitude of cows.
[14][29] The chief queen then had to spend the night beside the dead horse in a position mimicking sexual intercourse and was covered with a blanket.
Krishna and Vyasa advise King Yudhishthira to perform the sacrifice, which is described at great length.
[39][40] Balakanda, the first book of the Ramayana by Valmiki, mentions a horse sacrifice performed at the behest of King Dasharatha, the father of Rama.
The reverse shows a standing figure of the queen, holding a fan and a towel, and is inscribed "Powerful enough to perform the Ashvamedha sacrifice".
[42] Many Indo-European branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a Proto-Indo-European ritual.
[citation needed] Most appear to be funerary practices associated with burial, but for some other cultures there is tentative evidence for rituals associated with kingship.
The Ashvamedha is the clearest evidence preserved, but vestiges from Latin and Celtic traditions allow the reconstruction of a few common attributes.
A similar ritual is found in Celtic tradition in which the king in Ireland conducted a rite of symbolic marriage with a sacrificed horse.
[47] Following the vast empires ruled by the Gupta and Chalukya dynasties, the practice of the sacrifice diminished remarkably.
Historian N. Venkataramanayya theorized that Prithvivyaghra was a feudatory ruler, who unsuccessfully tried to challenge Nandivarman's Ashvamedha campaign.
Following Dayananda, the 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 s the Sun.
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.
[74] Such modern performances are Sattvika Yajnas where the animal is worshipped without killing it,[75] the religious motivation being prayer for overcoming enemies, the facilitation of child welfare and development, and clearance of debt,[76] entirely within the allegorical interpretation of the ritual, and with no actual sacrifice of any animal.
The earliest recorded criticism of the ritual comes from the Cārvāka, an atheistic school of Indian philosophy that assumed various forms of philosophical skepticism and religious indifference.
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.
[81] Rick F. Talbott writes that "Mircea Eliade treated the Ashvamedha as a rite having a cosmogonic structure which both regenerated the entire cosmos and reestablished every social order during its performance.
