The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13.s1.28

c13.s1.28

It seems to be possible to translate these mythological statements about disobedience, strife, and the eating of Varuṇa’s barley into terms of social reality. After the vaiśvadeva festival, at the end of the cold season when the harvest reaped in autumn after the monsoon was exhausted, people had to leave their homesteads in search of food and pastures, this food being mainly the winter crop of barley. That is, the appropriated "Varuṇa's barley." As the *Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā* explains: "Varuṇa is the cold season, therefore these two (barley and the *śamī* tree) do not wither in the cold season."⁴⁴ Now a precious text gives us exactly this picture when it describes the cycle of activities round the year of the Kurupañcālas: in the cold season they start out toward the east; there they seize the barley crop, feed their men and animals, and finally, at the end of the hot season before the onset of the monsoon, they return to the west to work their fields and harvest the monsoon crop.⁴⁵ So the year is divided in two parts with contrasting patterns of conduct: the time starting from the end of the hot season that one spends at home in the settled community to work one's fields and the time of the year, starting with the cool season, that is marked by transhumance, forays in search of food, and razzias. This latter half of the year, the lean season, is characterized by violence and conflict, as against the quiet and peaceful season of the settled community. In short, it is the season of the *vrātya* expeditions and of the aggressiveness and disobedience of the *praghāsya*, or greedy, Maruts.⁴⁶