Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government c2.s1.38

c2.s1.38

¹⁶ “Became of one form” suggests the important problem, to what extent the Rājasūya endows the King with a priestly character, as in the Roman Imperial Rite in which the Emperor kneels before the Pope, *who facit eum clericum* and mitres as well as crowns him (Woolley, R. M., *Coronation Rites*, 1915, p. 50). The problem is not an easy one; but certainly the statement by Keith that “the connection of royalty with priestly rank, if it had ever been a motif of the growth of the kingship (in India), had long disappeared before the time of the Saṁhitās” (*Veda of the Black Yajus School*, cxii-cxiii), is far too sweeping. It must be borne in mind, again, that the Rājasūya is an “analogous” rite, and that every Sacrificer, being reborn of the Sacrifice, the Spiritual power (*brahma*), is born a Brāhman (*brāhmaṇa*, patronymic from *brahma*), and the initiate (*dīkṣita*) is for this reason to be addressed as a Brāhman, whatever his caste may have been (ŚB. III. 2. 1. 40): “the Sacrifice is the Sacerdotium (*brahma*), the Initiate is born again of the Sacrifice … he attains to Priesthood” (*brāhmaṇatām upaiti*, AB. VII. 22-23).