Note 14 — Chapter IV · ANIMAL-WORSHIP.

The horse is regarded as a lucky and exceedingly pure animal. When a cooking vessel has become in any way defiled, a common way of purifying it is to make a horse smell it. In the Dakkhin it is said that evil spirits will not approach a horse for fear of his foam.14 In Northern India, the entry of a man on horseback into a sugar-cane field during sowing time is regarded as auspicious. This taking of omens from horses was well known in Germany, and Tacitus says, “Proprium gentis equorum praesagia ac monitus experiri, hinnitus ac fremitus observant.”15 There does not appear to be in India any trace of the idea prevalent in England that the horse has the power of seeing ghosts, or that it can cure diseases such as whooping cough.16 But, like the bull, the stallion is believed to scare the demon of barrenness. In the Râmâyana, Kausalyâ touches the stallion in the hope of obtaining sons, and with the same object the king and queen smell the odour of the burnt marrow or fat of the horse. The water in which a fish is washed has the same effect on women in Western folk-lore. With the same object, at the Asvamedha, the queen lies at night beside the slain sacrificial horse.17