Daśaratha’s Horse Sacrifice in the Rāmāyaṇa

Abstract

This article discusses Daśaratha’s horse sacrifice at 1.8–16 in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa. Daśaratha’s rite seems to be a horse sacrifice, then a son-producing rite, then a porridge-eating rite. The text has been seen as composite, but it works as a unit, using poetic registers and narrative symbols alive in the textual world of its historical location – that is, in the Rāmāyaṇa alongside the Mahābhārata, Harivaṃśa, and earlier texts such as the Upaniṣads. The brahmin Ṛśyaśṛṅga, key officiant at Daśaratha’s rite, is predisposed, by the narration, to inseminate Daśaratha’s wives. This article discusses Daśaratha’s rite gradually, with digressions and examples. Topics include Draupadī’s conception, the putrikā or ‘appointed daughter’, the horse sacrifice and the human sacrifice, the niyoga or ‘appointment’ (of a man to inseminate a woman), the ways in which the texts present sex, semen, and the masculinity of the inseminator, and the ways in which they present gods taking human form.