The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.s4.3

c12.s4.3

However, the price for establishing transcendent authority was again a heavy one. Authority was still located outside the community, in *araṇya*, but by the breaking of the cycle that connected *grāma* and *araṇya*, it was irretrievably cut off from the social world. Absolute, transcendent authority therefore could not benefit society's premier agent, the king. It became instead vested in the Veda, which was fixed and codified as the eternal, not man-made, and therefore indisputable knowledge of the ritual. But the Vedic *śrauta* ritual has no relation to society anymore. Its performance is situated outside society, its reward is in itself and its result the metaphysical *apūrva* ("what was not there before") of the *mīmāṃsā* theorists without any social relevance. The price for the Veda's transcendent authority was that society and king were barred from its operation.