The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.34

c11.34

If the Vedic scriptures reflect the axial breakthrough, the question of the historical conditions which led to it imposes itself. The question is the more pressing for the unexplained parrellelism and simultaneity of the phenomenon in different areas of the ancient world. The answer must be disappointing at best. As Jaspers has already warned us, it is a historical mystery that the progress of research can only amplify but not solve.³⁵ If, however, we do not immediately expect to find valid causes but only try to fill in some of the historical backdrop, we can take advantage of frequent and telling indications scattered throughout the Vedic ritual texts. These indications seem to center on the transhuming and cattle-raiding warriors and the violence of their sacrificial encounters as they desperately strove for a way out of *aṃhas*, the narrows of want and insecurity. It seems safe to surmise—as indeed we have—that the self-defeating violence of giving and receiving death must have brought on a crisis. But we can only see this in the effect it had of eliminating conflict, violence, and destruction from the sacrificial ritual. The actual historical circumstances of an axial crisis escape us.