The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.15

c10.15

For all the mechanistic security of the classical conception of sacrifice, the original danger and insecurity still shine through the cracks, as it were, of the professed risk-free system. Thus we are told, albeit metaphorically, of the dangers of "the wilderness of sacrifice".¹⁵ Elsewhere the awareness of terror and mortal danger is more clearly felt, as, for instance, in the story of Śunaḥśepa, which is to be recited at royal consecrations. King Hariścandra desperately seeks to obtain a son. Finally, through rigid ascetism, he moves the god Varuṇa to grant him a son, but his wish is granted only on the contradictory condition that he sacrifice this son to the deity. The story takes a fortunate turn: the king finds a young brahmin, Śunaḥśepa, as a substitute for his son. The substitute victim manages by means of his mantras—that is, through his expertise in sacrificial lore—miraculously to release himself as well as the king and his son. But this is not the end of the story. After his sacrificial experience, Śunaḥśepa must again find a place in the human world. To that end, he is adopted by the brahmin Viśvāmitra. The adoption, however, creates a rift between the sons of Viśvāmitra, one party siding with their father, the others rebelling against his authority. The evil of death is in this way transferred and shifted to another area—significantly, the area of brahminhood—without there being a definitive solution.¹⁶ The problem of sacrifice and death cannot be solved; it can only be shifted round. But what the story clearly shows is the terror and contradictoriness of the confrontation with the transcendent in sacrifice.