Ashvamedha

's Jaimini Bharata. The Ashvamedha could only be conducted by a powerful victorious king (rājā). Its object was the acquisition of power and glory, the sovereignty over neighbouring provinces, seeking progeny and general prosperity of the kingdom. It was enormously expensive, requiring the participation of hundreds of individuals, many with specialized skills, and hundreds of animals, and involving many precisely prescribed rituals at every stage. The horse to be sacrificed must be a white stallion with black spots. The preparations included the construction of a special "sacrificial house" and a fire altar. 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. The next day the horse was consecrated with more rituals, tethered to a post, and addressed as a god. It was sprinkled with water, and the Adhvaryu, the priest and the sacrificer whispered mantras into its ear. A "four-eyed" black dog was killed with a club made of Sidhraka wood, then passed under the horse, and dragged to the river from which the water sprinkled on the horse had come and set to flow south. The horse was then set loose towards the north-east, to roam around wherever it chose, for the period of one year, or half a year, according to some commentators. The horse was associated with the Sun, and its yearly course. If the horse wandered into neighbouring provinces hostile to the sacrificer, they were to be subjugated. The wandering horse was attended by a herd of a hundred geldings, and one or four hundred young kshatriya men, sons of princes or high court officials, charged with guarding the horse from all dangers and inconvenience, but never impeding or driving it. During the absence of the horse, an uninterrupted series of ceremonies was performed in the sacrificer's home. Every day, three Sāvitreṣṭi rites and one evening Dhṛtihoma would be conducted by the priests. 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. Then a session of pariplavākhyāna took place. The pariplāvana was the cyclical recitation of tales, in which one out of ten topics would be discussed each night, with 36 cycles of the ten topics. The tales were witnessed by an audience of onlookers called the upadrāṣṭṛ, who attended in their free time. After the return of the horse, more ceremonies were performed for a month before the main sacrifice. Twelve days of dīkṣā rites took place, and then twelve days of upasad. Afterwards a sterile cow or eleven other animals are sacrificed. Throughout the entire night, the annahoma was performed at the Uttaravedi (the northern altar). It consists of an oblation of clarified butter, fried rice, fried barley, and fried grain. On the twenty-sixth day, the king was ritually purified, and the horse was yoked to a gilded chariot, together with three other horses, and Rigveda (RV) 1.6.1,2 (YajurVeda (YV) VSM 23.5,6) was recited. The horse was then driven into water and bathed. After this, it was anointed with ghee by the chief queen and two other royal consorts. The chief queen (mahiṣī) anointed the fore-quarters, the favorite wife (vāvātā) the middle, and the discarded wife (parvṛktī) the hindquarters. They also embellished the horse's head, neck, and tail with golden ornaments and 101 or 109 pearls. After this, the horse, a hornless black-necked he-goat, and a Gomṛga were bound to sacrificial stakes near the fire, and seventeen other animals were attached with ropes to the horse. The he-goat dedicated to Agni was attached to the horse's chest. A ewe dedicated to Sarasvatī was attached under the horse's mouth. Two black-bellied he-goats dedicated to the Aśvins were tied to the horse's front legs. A dark grey he-goat dedicated to Soma-Pūṣan was attached underneath the horse. On the two sides of the horse were attached a black goat to Sūrya and a white goat to Yama. Two goats with shaggy thighs were dedicated to Tvaṣṭar. A white goat dedicated to Vāyu was attached to the tail. A cow about to give birth was dedicated to Indra, and a dwarfish cow was dedicated to Viṣṇu. A great number of animals, both tame and wild, were tied to other stakes, according to one commentator, 609 in total. The sacrificer offered the horse the remains of the night's oblation of grain. The horse was then suffocated to death. 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. == Mentions in Hindu epics ==

performing the Ashvamedha ritual; illustration to the Ramayana Mahabharata The best-known text describing the sacrifice is the Ashvamedhika Parva (), or the "Book of Horse Sacrifice," the fourteenth of eighteen books of the Indian epic poem Mahabharata. Krishna and Vyasa advise King Yudhishthira to perform the sacrifice, which is described at great length. The book traditionally comprises two sections and 96 chapters. The critical edition has one sub-book and 92 chapters. Ramayana Balakanda, the first book of the Ramayana by Valmiki, mentions a horse sacrifice performed at the behest of King Dasharatha, the father of Rama. ==On Gupta coins==

One type of the gold coins of the Gupta Empire kings Samudragupta (reigned c. 350–370 CE) and Kumaragupta (reigned c. 415–455 CE) commemorates their Ashvamedha sacrifices. The obverse shows the horse anointed and decorated for sacrifice, standing in front of a Yūpa sacrificial post, and is inscribed "The king of kings who has performed the Vajimedha sacrifice wins heaven after protecting the earth". 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". File:Dinar of Samudragupta LACMA M.84.110.1 (1 of 2).jpg|Samudragupta, Ashvamedha horse File:Dinar of Samudragupta LACMA M.84.110.1 (2 of 2).jpg|The queen, reverse of last File:Samudragupta circa 335-380 CE Ashvameda type.jpg|Samudragupta File:Gold coin of Kumaragupta I.jpg|Kumaragupta ==Similar sacrifices elsewhere==

Many Indo-European branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a Proto-Indo-European ritual. 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. The Roman October Horse sacrifice was an annual event, and apparently the only time horses were sacrificed, rather than cattle or smaller animals. Horse sacrifices were performed among the ancient Germans, Armenians, Iranians, Chinese, Greeks, among others. == List of performers ==

Sanskrit epics and Puranas mention numerous legendary performances of the horse sacrifice. For example, according to the Mahabharata, Emperor Bharata performed a hundred Ashvamedha ceremonies on the banks of Yamuna, three hundred on the banks of Sarasvati and four hundred on the banks of the Ganga. He again performed a thousand Ashvamedha on different locations and a hundred Rajasuya. Following the vast empires ruled by the Gupta and Chalukya dynasties, the practice of the sacrifice diminished remarkably. The Udayendiram inscription of the 8th-century Pallava king Nandivarman II (alias Pallavamalla) states that his general Udayachandra defeated the Nishada ruler Prithvivyaghra, who, "desiring to become very powerful, was running after the horse of the Ashvamedha". The inscription does not clarify which king initiated this Ashvamedha campaign. Historian N. Venkataramanayya theorized that Prithvivyaghra was a feudatory ruler, who unsuccessfully tried to challenge Nandivarman's Ashvamedha campaign. However, historian Dineshchandra Sircar notes that no other inscriptions of Nandivarman or his descendants mention his performance of Ashvamedha; therefore, it is more likely that the Ashvamedha campaign was initiated by Prithvivyaghra (or his overlord), and Nandivarman's general foiled it. ==In Hindu revivalism==

's commentary on Ashvamedha, 19th century, Maharashtra 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) According to Dayananda, no horse was actually to be slaughtered in the ritual as per the Yajurveda. Following Dayananda, the Arya Samaj disputes the very existence of the pre-Vedantic ritual; thus Swami Satya Prakash Saraswati claims that He argues that the animals listed as sacrificial victims are just as symbolic as the list of human victims listed in the Purushamedha 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. ==Reception==

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. A quotation of the Cārvāka from Madhavacharya's Sarva-Darsana-Sangraha states: "The three authors of the Vedas were buffoons, knaves, and demons. All the well-known formulae of the pandits, jarphari, turphari, etc. and all the obscene rites for the queen commanded in Ashvamedha, these were invented by buffoons, and so all the various kinds of presents to the priests, while the eating of flesh was similarly commanded by night-prowling demons." According to some writers, ashvamedha is a forbidden rite for Kali Yuga, the current age. 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. Scholar Manohar L. Varadpande, praised the ritual as "social occasions of great magnitude". 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." ==See also==