Ashvamedha

The Ashvamedha, or the horse-sacrifice is one of the most important royal rites from Vedic India. The Ashvamedha is the rite of the annual renewal of the Sun at the New Year and the corresponding renewal of the king's rule. At the spiritual level, it is a rite to get connected to the inner Sun.

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. At other, earlier times, the rite involved freeing a horse and then making war on the principalities into which the horse ran.