In Sumba, a horse is not merely livestock.
In the Marapu faith, the ancestral belief system that lived in Sumba long before the major religions arrived, the horse is the vehicle of the soul. It is not literally buried alongside its master; what truly happens is that the horse's spirit is offered to become a mount in Prai Marapu.
When a noble dies, the soul is believed to make a long journey to Prai Marapu, the land of the ancestors, the eternal heaven of Sumbanese cosmology. On that journey it must not travel alone.
The horse that is sacrificed must belong to the deceased, never borrowed or taken from another. Because in the ancestral realm, only a horse that already knows its master can be a faithful guide.
The offering of a horse after a death is a declaration that the bond built over a lifetime, in the fields, at the Pasola, on every stony journey, does not end when life departs.
In the customary language of Sumba, when a male noble dies the expression is "Na Njorunyaka Njara, Na mbatanyaka Landu". It means: fallen from the horse, the crest on his head broken.
Today most Sumbanese are Christian or Catholic. Yet the Marapu tradition has not vanished. It walks alongside, beyond the boundaries of formal faith, because it is rooted too deeply in the Sumbanese soul.
Few cultures in the world have a relationship like this with an animal. Sumba is one of them. That is not ordinary; it is an extraordinary heritage.
