The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.17

c11.17

If nothing else, the self-defeating violence to which the warrior was in honor bound time and again to expose his life and goods—even if we discount the hypertrophical elaboration in the epic—could not but call forth a radical reaction. The result was the decisive turning point where the warrior’s sacrifice was replaced with the brahmin’s ritualism, which rules out conflict and marginalizes violence. In fact, we are told as much by a brāhmaṇa passage, in which Prajāpati, the Lord of Life, after an age-long sacrificial struggle defeats and subjects his rival, Death, by the abstract means of the new ritualism. Since then, the text triumphantly declares, there is no sacrificial struggle any more.²⁰