Ashvamedha

(“horse sacrifice”) Vedic sacrifice performed to display and prove royal power.
In this sacrifice a specially consecrated
horse was released to roam as it wished,
followed by an armed band of the king’s
servants. When the horse wandered into a
neighboring ruler’s territory, that king had
two choices: He could either acknowledge
subordinate status to the king who
had released it, or he could attempt to
steal the horse, and do battle with the
king’s servants.
After one year of wandering, the horse
was brought back to the royal capital and
killed by suffocation or strangulation, so
that its blood would not be shed. After the
horse had been killed, the chief queen
would lie down next to it and simulate sexual intercourse. When the instructions for
this ritual were first translated in the nineteenth century, this simulated intercourse
generated considerable horrified interest
among European scholars, even though it
was clearly a subsidiary part of the ritual.
The rite’s major emphasis was a celebration of royal power, since the king performing it was able to control the territory
covered in a year by a free-roaming horse.
The queen’s role, in contrast, seems aimed
at symbolically assuring the fertility of the
land. Historical records indicate that the
ashvamedha was performed until the
tenth century C.E. As with all other cases of
animal sacrifice, concerns about the
karmic consequences of slaughtering a
living being has been an important factor
in its discontinuation. See also karma.