Wait, there are supposed to have been 400 men on duty at all times watching one horse? In one of a series of small pastoral kingdoms? I feel like this ritual instruction is more aspirational than descriptive. This seems true of some of the more baroque descriptions of sacrifices in the previous section as well. Eliade fairly casually tossed out the idea of a ritual where 1,000 cattle were sacrificed. I don’t think he stopped to consider the wealth that such a thing would require, or even the logistics of carrying it out. I have had some long days, but I have never been asked to kill 1,000 large mammals with only hand-held man-powered tools. Where would you even put the carcasses?
