The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c10.36

c10.36

Identification based on equivalences of cosmic and ritual elements is indeed the premier intellectual tool of the Vedic "science" of ritual. It enabled the ritualists to construe a closed mechanistic universe to be controlled and directed by the ritual. Uncertainty and catastrophe were replaced by the fail-safe certainty of ritualism. But the price of excluding uncertainty was internal contradiction. The ritualistic system breaks down on the insuperable obstacle of the transcendent.