The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.16

c12.16

It is a stereotyped phrase that the king is "the maker of the age" and that is depends on him whether the age is the *kṛta*, *tretā*, *dvāpara*, or *kali age*.³³ These terms, however, cannot be dissociated from the dicing game, which we also see the king play in the *rājasūya*, and it is hard to miss the implication that kingship is in more than one way a gamble. Now this gambling may be considered an agonistic divinatory rite at the opening of a new age or era—a gambling for the future, as it were—and so would fit perfectly in a theory of sacral kingship. But the essential point is the fact that the outcome does not depend solely on the king, for the game and its outcome are equally if not predominantly determined by the other participants, variously given as representatives of the four varṇas, household functionaries, or relatives.³⁴ In fact, some rājasūya texts seem to suggest that the king does not even take an active part in the game.³⁵ At any rate, he is not at all a free agent but part of a web of intersecting relationships that hem him in on all sides. The same impression is conveyed by those brāhmaṇa passages which make the kṣatriya dependent on the people (*viś*). Thus the king is said to need the people's consent, to be "propped up on both sides" by the people and to be capable of showing strength only through the people.³⁶ That this dependence is, of course, mutual does not alter the fact that the king is tied up in a closely meshed web.