The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c11.39

c11.39

There is an interesting parallel as well as a contrast with the axial break-through in ancient Iran. Working under the same or at least under comparable conditions and with essentially the same dismembered material, the outcome was an entirely different one. Both civilizations rejected the cyclical violence and destructiveness of the warrior's circuit between settlement and trekking camp. But while Vedic ritualism started from the menacing mobility of the trekking warrior and chariot fighter, which it transformed into the stasis of the single *yajamāna*'s ritual, the Zarathustrian reform took its stand at the other end of the circuit, in the settled community on which it built its ideal ethical order.⁴¹