The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.26

c10.26

No less important is another point. The ritual, according to its own statements, is obviously of great importance to the life of the community and to the universe at large. Nonetheless, its performance is left to the decision of a single individual. One would expect that such a weighty matter would be a collective concern, involving the support and participation of the whole community. However, communal or collective rituals are absent from the Vedic *corpus rituale*. They are even rejected.³⁰ The yajamāna, assisted only by his brahmin experts, performs the ritual alone, at his own cost and for his own benefit. There is clearly an unresolved tension here between universal order and individual enterprise. That this tension is not resolved should not be understood as a marginal defect. Rather, it bears witness to the seriousness and honesty that somehow resists the temptation to solve the insoluble by sleight of hand.