Note 56 — Chapter II

अश्वमेध aśvamédha, from aśva, “a horse,” and médha, “a sacrifice.” Colebrooke, in his Essay on the Védas (As. Res., VIII., ed. Calc.) states, that the horse is “avowedly an emblem of Viráj, or the primeval and universal manifested being. In the last section of the Taittiríya Yajurvéda, the various parts of the horse’s body are described as divisions of time and portions of the universe: morning is his head; the sun, his eye; air, his breath; the moon, his ear; etc. A similar passage in the fourteenth book of the Sátapat´ha bráhmańa, describes the same allegorical horse for the meditation of such as cannot perform an Aśvamédha; and the assemblage of living animals, constituting an imaginary victim at a real Aśvamédha, equally represent the universal Being, according to the doctrines of the Indian scripture. It is not however certain, whether this ceremony did not also give occasion to the institution of another, apparently not authorized by the Védas, in which a horse was actually sacrificed.” That this was really the case, we may infer from the frequent mention of such sacrifices, made in the historical poems of the Hindus and from the analogous instances of them found among the Western nations. The Massageti and the Persíans sacrificed horses to the sun; the Magians also to the rivers (see Herod., l. I. VII.; Xenoph., l. VIII. See also upon the sacrifice of a horse, Exposé de quelques-uns des principaux articles de la Théogonie des Brahmes, par M. l’abbé Dubois, ci-devant Missionnaire dans le Meissour. Paris, 1825).—A. T.