The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c30.s15.17

v2.c30.s15.17

The original force of the rite is somewhat obscure. The possibility of comparison with the October horse at Rome² is obvious, and the eating of the horse, the fertility rite in which it appears, and the obscenity of the conversation, point to a vegetation ritual, but the absence of any suggestion that the horse was a vegetation spirit, or that its body was in part used for a direct vegetation magic, is against that theory. In the view of von Negelein,³ the offering was one made to the sun conceived as a steed, in order to strengthen him for his course in the heaven. As Indra with his steed defeats the Asuras, so the earthly king by the horse sacrifice, uniting himself mysteriously with the sacrificial horse and its magic power, defeats the Asuras. Indra's horse is the thunderbolt which slays Vṛtra, and so the human horse aids the king to defeat his enemies. Varuṇa then, and later Prajāpati, were given by tradition the ownership of the horse, first connected with Indra. The difficulty of this theory is to see exactly why the horse is connected with Indra. He is not the sun in Vedic and probably not even in pre-Vedic myth. On the other hand Varuṇa is the god of the waters *par excellence*: the waters in many lands are conceived as horses, both sea and fresh waters being so regarded: to rivers and the sea horses are offered as in Greece: Indra would then not be the primary figure in the myth as von Negelein holds, but a natural intruder in the rite. The most attractive alternative to this view is undoubtedly the acceptance of the sun as the sun horse,⁴ offered originally to the sun as a spell to strengthen it, and the chief difficulty in that view is merely the fact that the sun is not the recipient of the offering, in any measure. If he were actually offered to, it would be easy to understand the place of Indra: that Indra should have completely superseded him is odd, but on the whole the explanation of the horse as the sun steed seems the most plausible. It is at least certain that in the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā the steed was regarded in the rite as identical with Dadhikrāvan whose sun character is not to be doubted.¹ Perhaps the true solution lies in the view that two rites are confused, the offering of a horse to the sun and of a horse to Varuṇa as god of the waters. Prajāpati must in any case be deemed to be a later addition to the rite. It is of course possible that the position of Varuṇa was not won until after he had become prominent in the ritual of the final bath, and that then he appropriated in part the sacrifice of the steed.