The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.7

c12.7

It is tempting to explain the conflicting views as the ambivalence that naturally goes with the awe-inspiring numinosity of kingship. Thus the king is likened to a fire which, when approached carelessly, burns not only the single transgressor, as a normal fire would, but destroys his whole family together with his cattle and other properties.¹³ The restrictions on the consecrated (*abhiṣikta*) king,¹⁴ which in fact make him a sacred person—or, more precisely, a consecrated sacrificer (*dīkṣita*)—point in the same direction, as does the *Atharvaveda* when it says that the king protects the realm by *brahmacarya* and *tapas*,¹⁵ that is, by the ascetic practices that are proper to the *dīkṣita*.