cardemaister: > OMG: ashvamedha! > So, the 'Ashvamedha', which is Sanskrit for 'horse sacrifice', is mentioned in Rig Veda 1.162-163. Gawd!
Since there is no evidence for horses in pre-Vedic India, we can assume that horses were introduced into India by the Sanskrit speakers that migrated INTO India (1500 BCE) after the domestication of the horse. That's long before the composition of the Vedas by the Sankrit-speaking Indo-Europeans. It is a well-known fact of history that the Indo-Europeans invented the horse-drawn chariot, the spoked-wheel, and probably the plough. The earliest evidence for the use of horses are found in chariot burials (circa 2000 BCE). This makes sense, because some of the earliest evidence for horse domestication (4000 - 3500 BCE) are found in the Eurasian Steppes. So, based on the evidence, the rite of the horse sacrifice probably originated in Europe somewhere in the Northern Caucasus (4000 BCE. Ratha is the Sanskrit name for chariot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratha <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratha> Read more: 'Archaeology and Language' The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins By Colin Renfrew Cambridge University Press, 1990
