The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.1

c14.1

The triad of the title forms a closely knit whole. Power, in order to be legitimate, must be sanctioned by authority, and authority in its turn must be validated by priesthood, which provides the channel to the divine or transcendent source of authority. The problem is how this bill should be filled. The divine or transcendent source of authority is, by definition, beyond man's reach. This leaves two functions to be filled, power and priesthood. There are many ways in which these two functions can be intertwined or separated, collapsed into one, the priest-king, or diffused throughout the community. Indian tradition, however, offers a clear and, to all appearances, self-evident bipolar pattern, namely, that of *kṣatra* and *brahman* or, in terms of their representatives, king and brahmin. Their relationship is well known, but perhaps not so well understood. The pair of king and brahmin stands for temporal power and spiritual authority. That the brahmin's spiritual authority stands above the king's temporal power is hardly surprising. It has, however, weighty consequences. How is the preeminent holder of spiritual authority to serve the temporal power of the king? The brahmin's preeminence bars him from being the king's servant. Or, conversely, how is the king to acknowledge the superiority of the brahmin, which impairs or even threatens to invalidate royal power?