valmikiramayan.net Prose Commentary

Desiraju Hanumanta Rao's prose rendering with embedded explanatory notes

The source explains that four officiating priests -- brahma, hota, adhvaryu, and udgaata -- each receive a symbolic donation of one of the king's four wives (by rank: mahiSi/chief queen, parivR^itti/neglected wife, vaavaata/concubine, paalaakali/goblet-maid), later redeemed through a barter of valuables rather than an actual transfer of persons. The source flags an alternate, more literal reading of the phrase used (hastena samayojayan, 'brought into contact by hand') as meaning the priests merely brought each woman into ritual contact with the dead horse, and separately notes -- without fully endorsing it -- a further non-violent reading in which a medicinal plant (ashvagandha) is substituted symbolically for the horse's actual body parts, though it calls this reading unclear.