The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.23

c11.23

However, this did not lead to the disenchantment of the world postulated by Weber. The social world was in no way divested of its mythical and magical meaning and values. It did not become a world where everything just "is" or "happens" but has no "meaning" anymore.²⁸ Such a world, denuded of meaning and therefore desperately looking to the transcendent sphere for a new and, this time, rational order and meaning, did not arise. What happened was that ultimate value and legitimation, as it was realized and activated in the warrior's sacrifice, was taken out of the mundane sphere. Henceforth, ultimate legitimation could only come from the transcendent ritual that took the place of sacrifice. For that reason, the whole of the dharma had to rest on or even had to be contained in the śruti—a necessary fiction, but a fiction all the same—for the śruti is patently devoid of use or meaning for the world's affairs and it is so as a matter of principle. Closed upon itself, it has no meaning other than the self-contained rationality of its system. Even if it may be supposed to offer an exhaustive pattern for life regulated by the law of ritual, it is for the life of the single yajamāna who chooses to spend his life in ritual and can afford to do so.