The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.33

c11.33

So either way, we end in a stalemate. The chasm between transcendent ritualism and mundane reality remains unbridgeable. The world, once unified in the agonal violence of sacrifice, has been irreversibly broken. Society is left unhinged. Its arrangements are permanently undermined by the withdrawal of ultimate legitimation, which in the final analysis requires no less than the dissolution of society. By the same token, the source of ultimate legitimation itself cannot escape doubt and controversy.