Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government c2.s1.44

c2.s1.44

Just as the King assumes a Priestly character which he again relinquishes, so "In that he is aspersed (*abhiṣicyate*) in the Rājasūya, he ascends to the world of heaven, (but) if he did not descend again he would either depart thither beyond human beings (i. e. he would die) or would go mad" (PB. XVIII. 10. 10), a condition of equal application to any other Sacrificer (TS. VII. 3. 10. 3, VII. 4. 4. 2, AB. IV. 21, etc.); the ritual deification which prefigures an effective deification *post mortem*—cf. *Harṣacarita* 215, *devabhūyaṁ gate narendre*, "Now that the King has assumed his Godhead," i. e. has died, and the representation of Kings as deities in funerary chapels—would be presently fatal, as is indeed implied by the rule: "No one becomes immortal in the flesh" (ŚB. X. 4. 3. 9). The royal Sacrificer's Himmelfahrt is nevertheless of profound significance: for the descent, a sort of *avataraṇa* comparable to the Buddha's at Saṅkisa, and to Plato's return of the Philosopher to the Cave, is "by that stairway which, save to reascend, no one descendeth" (Dante, *Paradiso*, X. 86-87). It cannot be wondered at that in D. II. 227, where Brahmā Sanaṁkumāra ("The Eternal Youth," i. e. Agni-Bṛhaspati, *devānām brahmā*, cf. AV. X. 8. 44 *ātmānam . . . ajáraṁ*