The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.25

c10.25

On further consideration, however, we find that Vedic ritual in fact undermines its own claim to be the absolute universal order. In the first place, one can, of course, never be completely sure that one has not unwittingly committed an error in the ritual proceedings, which, if unrepaired, will irretrievably impair the ritual order. Thus there is always an element of uncertainty. Fittingly, the uncertainty about ritual error can be shown to be a transformation of the old uncertainty about the outcome of the sacrificial catastrophe.²⁹