The manipulation by the practitioners of the second oldest profession in the world can be seen as early as the Rig Vedic times. Hoodwinking of the public by invoking pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo traditions can be seen even here. The unholy union of the warrior class and the educated class seem to legitimise the ritual of horse sacrifice to appease the divine powers to prosper the kingdom.
A white horse is let to run loose in the wild for a whole year under the hawk-eyed scrutiny of the kings men and officials. The animal would graze with impunity on peasants’ land. Any form of resistance or resentment would be a good enough reason for the ruling clansmen to rage war and take over possession of the property. Sure, this ritual smells prosperity from the word go.
During one of these God-name invoking expansion exercise, King Rama met his long lost twin sons Luv and Kush. The scriptures tell of the fate of Sita, who was rescued by Ram and his Tamilian friends down south. Doubts about her chastity forced Ram to send his wife, whom he had hardly spent much of his wedded life in a palatial environment, back to the jungles to stay with the sage who wrote Ramayana, Valmiki. Fate had it that the twins had to retaliate to protect their land and to fight valiantly to defeat the henchmen.
Cut the long story short, Ram discovered the true identity of the twins. Nectar (amrit) was used to treat the wounded and nurse them back to health. Drops of nectar fell on the land which was eventually named Amritsar!
What happens to the sacrificial horse? If it could talk in the after-life, it would speak volumes of the ceremonial carving of the torso with lessons of symbolism imbibed in the funeral ceremony graced with liberal usage of intoxicating effect of the some plant and tinge of beastiality thrown in for good measure!
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