The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.30

c12.30

This state of affairs does not look very promising, and some have even concluded that it is impossible to obtain a clear picture of the proceedings.⁶⁵ Indeed, when we start from a preconceived idea of what kings and kingship should be like and assume that the royal ritual should be a single once-and-for-all accession to the throne, we can only conclude that the brahmanic ritual has garbled the matter beyond recognition. If, however, we accept that kingship is an open problem and that the ritual tries to handle the problem by means of a cyclical succession of opposite phases, the garbled pieces fall into an intelligible pattern.