The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.32

c11.32

Second, the attempt to encompass the world is well illustrated by the reinstitution in the prestigious agnicayana ritual of a wheeled vehicle for carrying the fire that eventually will be installed on the elaborately constructed fire altar. This rite of carrying the fire clearly harks back to the raiding and transhuming treks of warrior bands carrying their fire and belongings with them—the backdrop of heroic sacrifice, so frequently referred to in arthavāda passages but eliminated from the ritual and replaced with purely liturgical elements. In this case too, the setting out on the trek and the unyoking at the resting places were replaced by taking up the fire in its pot, making three steps, and putting it down again as well as by a particular recitation, the *vātsapra* hymn. There was, then, no need anymore even for mimicking the trek. Generally the texts are content to leave it at that. However, this is exactly what a comparatively late and highly systematized text, the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa*, objects to. After discussing the case, our text enjoins the performance of both the abstract ritual and the actual driving about of the fire on a cart. The reason given for this doubling of the procedure is significant. The abstract symbolization is said to be the divine form, the actual driving, the human form. By performing both, one makes the ritual “whole and entire” and encompasses both the transcendent and the human world.³⁴ The logic is compelling and deeply sincere, but, again, it is no more than arthavāda. The result is an amplification of the ritual as such. But the ritualistic injunction of an aimless “driving about” can only mimic an archaic reality, not give it new life and meaning. The intended encompassment cannot be validly achieved.