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The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.s5: 14

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c12.s5

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English

14

c12.s5.1

How, then, could the newly won concept of authority be put to work in society? Here the classical king-brahmin formula comes into its own. A short digression may elucidate the meaning and origin of this formula. Originally, in the cyclical scheme, king and brahmin do not seem to have belonged to separate, mutually exclusive groups. On the contrary, at the unction festival of the *rājasūya*, the king—like any *dīkṣita*—is proclaimed to be a brahmin. That is, when he is about to go out into the wilds, he exchanges his royal quality for that of a brahmin. In other words, kingship and brahminhood are qualities that are exchanged in accordance with the cyclical paradigm.⁹⁶ In this way, we can also understand that, conversely, a brahmin—namely, the *adhvaryu* priest—takes over the royal function from the king at the beginning of the *aśvamedha*, when the expedition with the sacrificial horse is to begin.⁹⁷

c12.s5.2

It may at first sight cause some surprise that the brahmin should be associated with the violent raiding and transhuming phase. Indeed, from the classical point of view this is forbidden, except in case of dire need. Nevertheless, the disconcerting figure of the *ātatāyin*, or aggressive brahmin (“with bow drawn”), still turns up regularly in the classical dharma texts when they deal with the question of whether such a brahmin may be slain in contravention of the brahmin’s general immunity. This brahmin is not thought to be utterly depraved and forgetful of his duties, for it is considered possible that he is at the same time an austere and learned Veda scholar.⁹⁸ It seems clear that we have here a remnant of the original situation where we meet the warrior-brahmin. This warrior-brahmin we know as the *vrātya*, later to be deprecated but in the *Atharvaveda* a highly respected figure.⁹⁹

c12.s5.3

The wilderness was not only the extrasocial sphere of the warrior and his violent way of life. It was equally the sphere of esoteric knowledge, which is the substance of ultimate authority. To this knowledge the term *brahman* refers. The two—violent contest and esoteric knowledge—are intimately connected. The brahman seems, in fact, to have been originally the winning enigmatic “truth formulation” in a verbal contest, the *brahmodya*.¹⁰⁰ Though seemingly a peaceful pastime, the violence involved in it should not be underrated, for, as the oldest Upaniṣads tell us, the unsuccessful contestant might have to pay for his imprudence with his life. After all, what was at stake was no less than the mastery of the cosmic enigma. To qualify for such contests, one had to go out into the wilderness and commend oneself as a pupil to a teacher in order to obtain the esoteric knowledge from him. Thus we are told of one Hṛtsvāśaya Āllakeya, known equally as a king, who went out as a dīkṣita and while wandering abroad found a teacher who was willing to impart to him the “knowledge of the year.” This knowledge, it is said, made it possible for Hṛtsvāśaya to reach “the end of the year” safely or, in other words, to pass unharmed through the full cycle—no small prize indeed, when we consider the danger involved.¹⁰¹ This procedure—going abroad, commending oneself as a pupil, and obtaining the esoteric knowledge—is explicitly given as a general one for a *rājanyabandhu*, that is, a nobelman.

c12.s5.4

One more detail of this procedure is noteworthy: when commending himself, the would-be pupil should offer his teacher a *sāmūlājina* (possibly a sort of carpet), a jewel, and a golden ornament. These items are elsewhere called the king’s ornaments (*rājñaḥ pariṣkāra*).¹⁰² The meaning seems to be clear: in accordance with the cyclically alternating pattern, king and teacher exchange their qualities, the king becoming a *brahmacārin*, the teacher receiving the royal ornaments.

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