The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.16

c11.16

If we look for what may have been the original context and content of such visions, there is another instance, where, again in the flattest possible manner, the story of a band of warriors is told.¹⁸ They are attacked and plundered on their place of sacrifice—which is also their camp—apparently by a similar warrior band. Their leader is among the slain, but while the survivors sit in mourning around his remains, one of them has the clear and sudden vision of the slain leader walking along the place of sacrifice to the offering fire at the eastern end and then upward, entering heaven. Here, it would seem, we see the full scenario in abridged and demythologized form: the sacrificial encampment and battleground, risk, defeat, death, and finally the redeeming vision of the hoped for but till the last uncertain access to heaven. At the same time, this explains how the heroic age where these visions were at home came to its end. As Hesiod explains, the heroic race was destroyed by “evil war, some of the heroes before the city of Thebes fighting over the animals of Oedipus and others brought across the sea to Troy because of fair-haired Helen”.¹⁹