The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.2

c10.2

Now sacrifice is indeed a conspicuous theme in Indian religious and social thought. The Veda, the revealed knowledge, focuses almost exclusively on sacrifice, while the universal order, the *dharma*, is said to rest on or even to be contained in the sacred lore of Vedic sacrifice.¹ It is thus tempting to view Hinduism in terms of sacrifice, which seems to promise us a unifying theme to organize the confusing richness of Hindu religious thought and practice. In a stimulating essay, Madeleine Biardeau has taken just this approach.² Even though no longer purely Vedic, sacrifice is singled out as the organizing principle of religion and society. In this way, Professor Biardeau aims at establishing a unitary picture of Hinduism in all its variety, integrally based on and unified by the concept of sacrifice. The idea is undoubtedly persuasive. Yet caution is in order. It is certainly important to try to overcome the atomizing tendencies to which the bewildering variety of phenomena that go under the single name of Hinduism seems to condemn our studies. The attempt to strike out toward a more coherent picture is to be welcomed, but it is questionable whether the concept of sacrifice offers the right angle of vision.