Асвамедха: Ежелгі үнді патшаларының жылқы құрбандығы ритуалы

Horse sacrifice ritual followed by the Śrauta tradition of Vedic religion

The Ashvamedha was a horse sacrifice ritual followed by the Śrauta tradition of Vedic religion. It was used by ancient Indian kings to prove their imperial sovereignty: a horse accompanied by the king's warriors would be released to wander for a year. 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. It would be then sacrificed, and the king would be declared as an undisputed sovereign. The ritual is recorded as being held by many ancient rulers, but apparently only by two in the last thousand years. The most recent ritual was in 1741, the second one held by Maharajah Jai Singh II of Jaipur. The original Vedic religion had evidently included many animal sacrifices, as had the various folk religions of India. Brahminical Hinduism had evolved opposing animal sacrifices, which have not been the norm in most forms of Hinduism for many centuries. The great prestige and political role of the Ashvamedha perhaps kept it alive for longer.

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. On the next morning, the priests raised the queen from the place. One priest cut the horse along the "knife paths" while other priests started reciting the verses of Vedas, seeking healing and regeneration for the horse. The horse's epiploon along with soma are offered in an oblation, and the priests dismember the horse and other animal victims with an oblation of their blood. On the third day an Atirātra was performed.

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 2 sections and 96 chapters. The critical edition has one sub book and 92 chapters.

Balakanda, the first book of the Ramayana by Valmiki, mentions a horse sacrifice performed at the behest of King Dasharatha, the father of Rama.

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".

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. Horse sacrifices were performed among the ancient Germans, Armenians, Iranians, Chinese, Greeks, among others.

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.

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."