The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.28

c12.28

The dilemma of kingship can then be expressed in terms of this basic paradigm: the king must belong to the *grāma*, but his authority must be based in the alien sphere of *araṇya*. Thus, for instance, the god Dharma—the divine representative of ultimate authority—reveals himself, after imposing an ordeal, to his son Yudhiṣṭhira in the jungle.⁶⁰ Generally speaking, there is abundant evidence of the king's special relationship with the jungle—a relationship that is clearly related to transcendent authority.⁶¹ The necessary complementarity of the two spheres can then be ritually expressed as alternating phases in a cycle connecting the two opposites. Since the opposition as well as the complementarity is there all the time and cannot be overcome, the cycle has to go on forever. In its simplest form, the *grāma-araṇya* cycle is expressed in the dictum: "In the *grāma* one undertakes the consecration, in the *araṇya* one sacrifices".⁶² We must now try to determine how this cycle is worked out in the case of the royal rites.