Horse sacrifice
Many Indo-European religious branches show evidence for horse sacrifice, and comparative mythology suggests that they derive from a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) ritual.
Context
Often horses are sacrificed in a funerary context, and interred with the deceased, a practice called horse burial. There is evidence but no explicit myths from the three branches of Indo-Europeans of a major horse sacrifice ritual based on a mythical union of Indo-European kingship and the horse.[1] The Indian Aśvamedha is the clearest evidence preserved, but vestiges from Latin and Celtic traditions allow the reconstruction of a few common attributes.
Some scholars, including Edgar Polomé, regard the reconstruction of a PIE ritual as unjustified due to the difference between the attested traditions.[2]
Etymology
The Gaulish personal name Epomeduos is from ek'wo-medhu- ("horse + mead"), while aśvamedha is either from ek'wo-mad-dho- ("horse + drunk") or ek'wo-mey-dho- ("horse + strength").
Mythology
The reconstructed myth involves the coupling of a king with a divine mare which produced the divine twins. A related myth is that of a hero magically twinned with a horse foaled at the time of his birth (for example Cuchulainn, Pryderi), suggested to be fundamentally the same myth as that of the divine twin horsemen by the mytheme of a "mare-suckled" hero from Greek and medieval Serbian evidence, or mythical horses with human traits (Xanthos), suggesting totemic identity of the Indo-European hero or king with the horse.
Comparative rituals
Vedic (Indian)
The Indian Ashvamedha involves the following:
- the sacrifice is connected with the elevation or inauguration of a member of the warrior caste
- the ceremony took place in springtime
- the horse sacrificed was a grey or white stallion
- the stallion selected was one which excelled at the right side of the chariot
- it was bathed in water
- it was sacrificed alongside a hornless ram and a he-goat
- the queen underwent "mock-coupling" with the stallion
- the stallion was dissected and its portions awarded to various deities
[citation needed]
Roman
The Roman Equus October ceremony involved:[3]
- the horse was dedicated to Mars, the Roman god of war
- the sacrifice took place on the Ides of October, but through ritual reuse was used in a spring festival (the Parilia)
- two-horse chariot races determined the victim, which was the right-hand horse of the winning team
- the horse is dismembered: the tail (cauda, possibly a euphemism for the penis) is taken to the Regia, the king's residence, while two factions battle for possession of the head as a talisman for the coming year
Irish
Geraldus Cambrensis recorded a ceremony among the Irish:
There is in a northern and remote part of Ulster, among the Kenelcunil, a certain tribe which is wont to install a king over itself by an excessively savage and abominable ritual. In the presence of all the people of this land in one place, a white mare is brought into their midst. Thereupon he who is to be elevated, not to a prince but to a beast, not to a king but to an outlaw, steps forward in beastly fashion and exhibits his bestiality. Right thereafter the mare is killed and boiled piecemeal in water, and in the same water a bath is prepared for him. He gets into the bath and eats of the flesh that is brought to him, with his people standing around and sharing it with him. He also imbibes the broth in which he is bathed, not from any vessel, nor with his hand, but only with his mouth. When this is done right according to such unrighteous ritual, his rule and sovereignty are consecrated.[4]
The major points of comparison involve:
- The king (most likely; Geraldus is somewhat indirect) couples with the mare to be sacrificed;
- The horse is dismembered and cooked in a cauldron, and consumed by the king who is also sitting in the cauldron.
Norse
The Norse ceremony according to the description in Hervarar saga of the Swedish inauguration of Blot-Sweyn, the last or next to last pagan Germanic king, c. 1080:
- the horse is dismembered for eating
- the blood is sprinkled on the sacred tree at Uppsala.
The Völsa þáttr mentions a Norse pagan ritual involving veneration of the penis of a slaughtered stallion.[5] A freshly cut horse head was also used in setting up a nithing pole for a Norse curse.[6]
Archaeology
The primary archaeological context of horse sacrifice are burials, notably chariot burials, but graves with horse remains reach from the Eneolithic well into historical times. Herodotus describes the execution of horses at the burial of a Scythian king, and Iron Age kurgan graves known to contain horses number in the hundreds. There are also frequent deposition of horses in burials in Iron Age India. The custom is by no means restricted to Indo-European populations, but is continued by Turkic tribes as the cultural successors of the Scythians.
See also
- Animal sacrifice
- Domestication of the horse
- Epona
- Horse worship
- Horse burial
- Kurgan hypothesis
- Parilia
- Proto-Indo-European religion
Notes
- ↑ Mallory & Adams (2006:437).
- ↑ Dearborn (1997:278, article "Horse").
- ↑ Frazer ( 553-557).
- ↑ Est igitur in boreali et ulteriori Vltoniae parte, scilicet apud Kenelcunil, gens quaedam, quae barbaro nimis et abhominabili ritu sic sibi regem creare solet. Collecto in unum universo terrae illius populo, in medium producitur, iumentum candidum. Ad quod sullimandus ille non in principem sed in beluam, non in regem sed exlegem, coram omnibus bestialiter accedens, se quoque bestiam profitetur. Et statim iumento interfecto, et frustatim in aqua decocto, in eadem aqua balneum ei paratur. Cui insidens, de carnibus illis sibi allatis, circumstante populo suo et convescente, comedit ipse. De iure quoque quo lavatur, non vase aliquo, non manu, sed ore tantum circumquaque haurit et bibit. Quibus ita rite, non recte completis, regnum illius et dominium est confirmatum: English translation from Jaan Puhvel, "Aspects of Equine Functionality," in Analecta Indoeuropaea (Innsbruck, 1981), pp. 188–189.
- ↑ DuBois (2006:76).
- ↑ Mallet (1847:155-157).
References
- Dearborn, Fitzroy (1997). J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams (eds.), Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture.
- DuBois, Thomas A. (2006). "Rituals, Witnesses, and Sagas". In Andrén, Anders; Jennbert, Kristina et al. Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives: Origins, Changes, and Interactions. Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press. pp. 74–78. ISBN 978-91-89116-81-8.
- Frazer, James George (1922). The Golden Bough. New York: Touchstone. ISBN 0-684-82630-5.
- Hoernle, August Friedrich Rudolf; Stark, Herbert Alick (1906). A History of India. Cattuck: Orissa Mission Press.
- Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-928791-0.
- Mallet, Paul Henri; Percy, Thomas (trans.) (1847). Northern Antiquities: or, An Historical Account of the Manners, Customs, and Laws, Maritime Expeditions and Discoveries, Language and Literature, of the Ancient Scandinavians. London: George Woodfall & Son.