The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.18

c10.18

One might, of course, object that the story of Sthūra and his companions is a marginal episode that has nothing much to do with sacrifice and only by accident found its way into the explanations of the ritual. However, we are told in the same context that the gods act in exactly the same way among each other. When the Maruts are engaged in a sattra, the gods Indra and Agni set upon and plunder them.²⁰ Moreover, there is a similar instance of a sacrificer who is killed on his place of sacrifice. Significantly, the misdeed is perpetrated by *ajinavāsinaḥ*, “people clad in antelope skins”.²¹ The antelope skin is the typical attribute of the consecrated sacrificer (*dīkṣita*). If I am right, this means that attacks and disturbances are not accidental intrusions, but belong to the sacrificial scenario. The attackers and the attacked are both consecrated and are engaged in the same sacrificial action, in the same way as the gods Indra and Agni are closely connected with the Marut gods whom they attack. The Sthūra legend, then, is not fortuitously introduced but is intrinsically related to sacrifice. Battle and catastrophe belong to the essence of sacrifice, as we can still see in many passages of the epic, the *Mahābhārata*. Not only do we find many instances of battle and sacrifice being equated,²² but also it would seem that the terrifying sacrificial battle, pitting against each other two parties that are as close as brothers, was the model or prototype of the great epic. It overthrows the order and continuity of the world. And so tradition situates the catastrophe of the *Mahābhārata* war at the end of a world era, on the breach line of time.²³