A Red Horse Consecrated to the Khan of Heaven
explained by ANJANG SANYSHKAP
One consecrates a red horse to Qan Deñir, the Khan of Heaven. On its back, one may not put a dirty saddle-cloth. Nor can one carry putrid meat on its back.
Women may not mount it. After she has mounted it - it is desecrated. A red horse is the beast of burden of the Khan of Heaven, the deity.
If we men mount it, we use to mount it after we have purified our body. If a person is unclean, he falls ill.
If the horse dies, or one sells it off, one again takes a horse that resembles the other one, and again consecrates it thus.
A Red Horse Consecrated to the Khan of Heaven was explained by Anjang Sanyshkap, 22 January 1911, and published in Malov, S. E. 1967. Jazyk zheltyx ujgurov. Teksty i perevody. Moscow. 139, no. 123.
A short explanation in Russian appeared in Malov, S. E. 1912a. Ostatki shamanstva u zheltyx ujgurov. Zhivaja Starina 21. 73. Sint-Petersburg.
According to this sketch, the Khan of Heaven was especially pleased with a red horse having a white blaze, which the Yugur call çolwan a't, starred horse, or qïshtïgh a't, blazed horse.
If one did not replace a consecrated horse after it had died or had been sold, one would be punished by the deity. Malov relates how a Yugur man's wife as well as her twin babies died in childbirth, all because, so the explanation of the Yugur, he had sold a consecrated horse and failed to replaced it.
Have a look at some pictures of the consecration of a horse.
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