The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.37

c11.37

Nevertheless, mention of the chariot is interesting. In the first place, it recalls the emergence of the mobile *Streitwagenvölker* and their breaking into the old world at the end of the second millennium B.C. Their climactic appearance is the only possible explanation—which Jaspers, following Alfred Weber, cites but finally rejects—for the otherwise inexplicable simultaneity of the Axial Age in areas as far apart as China and the Eastern Mediterranean. Indeed, our text show an enduring fascination with the war and racing chariot to the point where the whole of the ritual is identified with it.⁴⁰ But—and this is the second point—the chariot itself is clearly a thing of the past. Its use and technique are no longer clearly understood by the ritualists. The ritual, which is now stationary and confined to the narrow limits of its emplacement, has symbolized the chariot away. Having lost its reality, the chariot has gained a grandiose afterlife in ritualistic imagination.