Ashvamedha

The Ashvamedha, or the horse-sacrifice is one of the most important royal rites from Vedic India, described in the Yajurveda. It involved freeing a horse and then making war on the principalities into which the horse ran.

In vedanitc interpretations, it is understood as a rite to get connected to the "inner Sun". In this tradition, it is claimed that the ashva of the Ashvamedha was originally the Sun, but in medieval times this original meaning was lost and the rite degenerating into the sacrifice of a living horse.

fr:Sacrifice du cheval