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The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s1: 2

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s1

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2

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In order to place the problem in its context, we should look more closely at the conceptual framework of the ancient Indian state. I think we should dismiss the deceptive appearances of a centralized unity held together by a bureaucracy reaching down from the king to the people at large. This certainly seems to be the ideal presented by the *Arthaśāstra*, but its reticence on chains of command and reporting suggests otherwise. Indeed, we find an almost pathetic stress on the necessity of officials' trustworthiness and a concomitant all-pervading spy system, which can only block administrative action and in the end reduce it to chaos. Moreover, it is clear that the realization of a centralized bureaucratic set-up requires objective conditions, such as a high degree of monetization, which would make it possible to separate the functions of government from rights in the soil. As it was, the ruler was mostly forced, like his feudal Western counterpart, to parcel out clusters of his own superior rights. Thus, for instance, Gupta inscriptions seem to suggest that many nominal officials were rather like feudal lords, whose official charges depended less on the ruler's orders than on their own landed power. After all, even France's ancien régime was hardly capable of the centralized bureaucratic control it attempted to achieve.

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Nor should we think of a clearly defined territorial state, internally coherent and closed to the outside. Already the fact that the well-known seven elements, which according to the *Arthaśāstra* form the realm, include the ally indicates the open-endedness of the state. It is equally significant that territory is not included as a separate item. The term *janapada* (or, in some texts, *rāṣṭra*) means the undifferentiated whole of people-cum-territory, in the same way as the French "pays" or the German "Land."³

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I think we should interpret the situation as one where membership of the polity, to a greater or lesser degree, is not primarily defined by residence in a specific well-defined territory, but rather the reverse: differential rights in a territory arise from personal ties of kinship and dependency. Outsiders may be admitted, even welcomed, but their admittance has to be legitimized in terms of personalities or even kinship.⁴ The state, then, is based on a network of personal relations in which rights in the soil are subsumed. This means that power and authority are situated at the crossroads, so to say, of the personal relations which make up the polity. Power is dispersed. If there is a king, he can only be the living expression of the balance of these relationships and their opposing pulls and pushes, which tie him down and prevent his acting on his own. His authority does not transcend the community by divine right or otherwise. At best he is a primus inter pares.⁵ In this respect, cooperation with the brahmin imposes itself.

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Let me try to illustrate the king's position by a consideration of the *ratnins*, the "jewel holders," "the givers and takers of kingship," in the royal consecration ritual (*rājasūya*).⁶ They have been taken to constitute a sort of bureaucracy, and the ceremony connected with them, the ratnin offerings, to indicate a significant advance in administrative organization.⁷ However, as far as I can see, the texts do not indicate anything of the kind. At best the ratnins may be considered household officials, who, of course, according to the needs of the moment, may be entrusted with all sorts of charges not covered by their designations. In fact, the commentators' inventiveness is hard put to explain these designations in terms of specific charges. More significantly, the underlying pattern seems to be connected, not with a rationalized model of the state, but with cognate and affinal kinship.

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The eleven or twelve ratnins take up residence in a half-circle around the place of sacrifice. The king, taking his sacrificial fire with him, visits each ratnin in his residence, where a sacrifice is performed with materials provided by the ratnin. At the end of the whole series of visits (or alternatively, after each visit), the king performs a sacrifice at the central place.⁸ This reciprocal pattern of prestation and counterprestation—we should recall that the underlying model of the Vedic sacrifice in general is that of the generous reception offered to the guest—is indicative of the reciprocal ties binding king and ratnins. The ritual idiom of the ratnin offerings clearly covers the mutual acts of allegiance between each ratnin and the king, who by his return sacrifice makes himself the nodal point of all relationships.

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If we now look at the mixed group of ratnins, the kinship character can be discerned. First, there are the two or three consorts of the king who represent in a direct way his affinal links with the people, whose "husband" he is sometimes said to be. A similar relationship obtained in the case of brahmin (or the *purohita*, the royal "chaplain") and king. Notwithstanding the later strictures against the brahmin's bonds with the king, the brahmin could not be left out from the circle of the ratnins. As we already saw in the *Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka* passage, the brahmin represents in the rājasūya the "womb" or origin of kingship, which explains his presence among the ratnins. His part, like that of the royal wives, falls in line with affinal relations. In the same way, the relation between the king and his purohita is represented as a marriage-like bond. It may also be recalled that this relationship has its counterpart in the king's acting as bride-giver to the officiating brahmins at the horse sacrifice—this being, in my opinion, the original meaning of the prescript that the king should give his wives to the chief officiants. More generally, the Soma sacrificer can by way of dakṣiṇā give his daughter in marriage to one of the officiants. Next come the *senānī*, or army leader, and the *rājanya* or *rājan*. The senānī seems to represent the cognate kin, to wit, the king's brother.⁹ Possibly the rājanya or rājan is also a cognate.¹⁰ He seems to correspond to the *bhrātṛvya*, the paternal cousin and rival, who at first sight, somewhat surprisingly, is one of the four anointers—a point to which we shall have to return.

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The brahmin, senānī, rājan (or rājanya), and the consorts form the first group in this and similar lists.¹¹ The distinctive feature of the second group is that they form pairs: *sūta*-*grāmaṇī*, *kṣattṛ*-*saṃgrahītṛ*, *akṣavāpa*-*govikarta*, and (with the Maitrāyaṇīyas) the *takṣa*-*rathakāra* pair.¹² As the ritual texts never tire of explaining, pairs mean pairing. That this is equally the case here appears also from a similar group we encounter elsewhere, namely, the twelve “kingdom-bearing” (*rāṣṭrabhṛt*) oblations on the completed fire altar. These twelve oblations are offered in six rounds of two each, one to a male, the other to a female deity. The series is rounded off by a thirteenth oblation on a chariot, whereby the sacrificer is made to encompass the six couples.¹³ The parellelism with the ratnins as regards name, numerical arrangement, and intention is obvious. Moreover, the rāṣṭrabhṛt oblations are also associated with an unction. I think we shall not be far amiss when we interpret the ratnin and rāṣṭrabhṛt pairs as a representation of two moieties connected by the king who, as the third, is “born” from and dependent on their connubium.

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This two-three scheme may also be at the root of the first group, but here another, related numerical principle seems to have disturbed the arrangement, to wit, the four-five scheme, used in the horse sacrifice to organize a similar set of personages. There we find four groups of guardians designated as ratnins¹⁴ round the royal horse which represents the king, to wit, *rājaputras*, *ugras* (or *rājanyas*), *sūta*-*grāmaṇīs*, and *kṣattṛ*-*saṃgrahītṛs*. Furthermore, four royal consorts prepare the horse for immolation. Each of them is accompanied by a group of attendants, who are the female counterparts of the horse’s guardians. These female attendants act again as partners of the four brahmin officiants in the exchange of obscenities which further the sham copulation of the chief consort and the immolated horse.¹⁵ This numerical arrangement is also clearly expressed in the unction ceremony of the rājasūya. The king, in the center, is anointed by four officiants standing round him in the four quarters; interestingly, these anointers are an affine (*janya-mitra*) in the east, the brahman officiant in the south, a vaiśya in the west, and the already mentioned rival cousin (*bhrātṛvya*) in the north. Here again we find kinship as a basic principle of organization.¹⁶

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It is interesting that the scheme of the four varṇas, though at first sight an obvious principle of classification, does not enter the picture of the ratnins. Only the *Śatapatha* half-heartedly tries to introduce the four varṇa scheme. Nor does it play a significant role elsewhere in the rājasūya, except in the dicing ceremony, where, according to some texts, the four players represent the four varṇas; but other texts mention, instead of them, kinsmen or sūtagrāmaṇī and kṣattṛ-saṃgrahītṛ as participants in the game.¹⁷ The fourfold scheme here would seem to be a different, earlier conception of the four classical varṇas. The four parties are not varṇas in the classical sense of rigidly separated “castes” shunning intermarriage, but on the contrary, marriage classes, whose essential unity is expressed by a circulative marriage system. It is interesting that the *sūta*, the *kṣattṛ*, and the *ugra* are in the dharma literature considered as the offspring of "mixed" marriages, and as the texts state, after a number of such marriages, the fifth generation returns to the original varṇa.¹⁸

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¹⁸ *Manu* X: 64-65; cf. above, chap. 8, note 6.

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In short, the rājasūya in general and the ratnin ceremony in particular do not present the picture of a "state" in our sense, but of a clan system based on connubium.

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The analysis of the ratnins shows that kingship is constituted by the network of personal relations; it cannot transcend it. Indeed at least one school includes the king himself—namely the *rājan* mentioned above—in the list of the ratnins. The basic paradigm of the network seems to be kinship and connubium spanning the whole quadripartite community. The king is only a primus inter pares who, even when consecrated, needs the concurrence of the ratnins for making a land grant to the brahman officiant.¹⁹

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¹⁹ Eggeling, *Satapatha-Brāhmaṇa* 2:417 note (quoting ŚB 7.1.1.4: "for he is not the master over it to give it away, but the ratnins are").

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Hierarchy in the classical brahminic sense hardly comes into the picture. But this does not imply an egalitarian system. On the contrary, as is already perfectly clear from the status difference between the consorts and the ratnin categories with whom they are associated, we can discern two, three, or four hierarchical tiers. The interesting point is that hierarchy does not imply the absolute separation of the hierarchical groups, as in the classical varṇa theory. The hierarchy finds expression in kinship and marriage, like differences between older and younger, between the offspring of different wives, or between bride-givers and bride-takers. But here we come up against a difficulty. Hierarchy based on circulative connubium (or "generalized exchange") turns on a contradiction. As Lévi-Strauss observed about the Kachin, "L'échange généralisé suppose l'égalité et il est source d'inégalité".²⁰ This contradictory situation is reflected among the Kachin in two opposed orders: the aristocratic *gumsa* order and the egalitarian *gumlao* order, analyzed by Leach.²¹ Though shifts from one order to the other are represented in local history as the result of historical events, it appears from the analysis that the two orders are actually complementary. Alone each is unstable and incomplete, tending to shift into the other. A comparable situation has been analyzed for Minangkabau by de Josselin de Jong. There the aristocratic adat Katumanggungan and the egalitarian adat Parapatih exist side by side, while the followers of both orders can be considered as two opposing "phratries" (respectively, Bodi-Tjaniago and Koto-Piliang).²² Though the two phratries are each conventionally associated with a particular territory, while the third territory, that of the king, holds them symbolically together, the two adats are in fact "fairly evenly scattered over all Minangkabau".²³

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²⁰ Lévi-Strauss, *Les structures élémentaires de la parenté*, 308.

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²¹ Leach, *Political Systems of Highland Burma*, 288.

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²² de Josselin de Jong, *Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan*, 12, 13, 70, 72.

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²³ Ibid., 14.

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It would seem that the complementarity of the two orders also underlies the opposition of monarchy and "republic" in ancient India.²⁴ But not only in ancient India, for the same opposition between the aristocratic and democratic orders seems to underlie present-day communities. We may cite Dumont's exemplary study of a Kallar community as an example. The Kallar sum up their unity in a conventional numerical formula: four chiefs (*tevar*), eight provinces (*nādu*), twenty-four secondary villages (*upagrāma*). One of the four chiefs, sometimes styled rāja, is the highest in rank. The other three (or four, since some informants enumerate five chiefly lineages), considered as "ministers," characteristically derive their prestige in descending order from connubial relations with the first lineage. But at the same time, all members of the community are styled *tevar*, chief. As Dumont aptly observes: "la notion de chef en tant que transcendante au groupe n'existe pas".²⁵ Under these circumstances, the decline of the first chiefly lineage into near obscurity is perfectly understandable even without the intervention of external factors. At any rate, it would seem that the case of the Kallar illustrates the interplay of the hierarchic or "aristocratic" and the egalitarian or "democratic" principles.

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²⁴ On the "republics" (*gaṇa*, *saṅgha*), see Sharma, *Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India*, chaps. 6 and 7.

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Although the two orders are in the classical Indian texts represented as separate systems—monarchy as against "republic"—in actual fact the difference is rather a matter or degree, since each of the two, as we saw, is ambiguous. On one hand, the egalitarian order needs must lead to differences of rank. The king, on the other hand, cannot be an autocrat; his position remains embedded in the constituent relations of the community, whose unity he should represent. Power and authority are therefore not exclusively the king's; they are diffused throughout the community. In this connection, it seems significant that, for instance, in the Minangkabau example there is not one king but three *radjo*, each having a third part of the seat of kingship, Pagarrujueng, as his residence. This and similar forms of multiple kingship can best be interpreted, not in terms of differentiation of specific, well-defined functions—this seems to be a later and a particularly modern development—but in the sense of a basic diffusion of power and authority.

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The principle of multiple kingship can already be noticed in the Vedic texts. Thus the *Taittirīya Saṃhitā* says that the two kings of the gods, Agni and Soma, are honored in the sacrifice in the midst of the gods in order, as the text explains, to keep the gods apart.²⁶ This statement recalls the two-three scheme discussed above. Indeed the parallel passage in the *Śatapatha* mentions Indra as the third god. This text then makes the interesting point that these three gods and the other gods reciprocally participate in each other so that "the gods came in a threefold way to consist of one 'deity' "; "he who knows thus becomes singly the chief of his people".²⁷ Thus the single king or chief can only be so on account of reciprocal relations with his people. But, so as to take away, as it were, any illusion about the privileged position of the king as the connecting third, the text then continues paradoxically with the statement: "Twofold in truth is this, there is no third",²⁸ thus stressing the essential ambiguity of the situation.

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So far the analysis has led us to the conclusion that both power and authority, whether in the egalitarian or in the aristocratic order, are dispersed. They are enclosed in the network of personal relations. Their exercise is therefore bound up with the fluctuations of these relations and with the corresponding shifts in the actual distribution of power. The difficulty this involves is clearly reflected in Kauṭilya's advice on the number of councillors the king should have. If only two, they may combine against the king or they may fight each other; in both cases they will ruin him. Kauṭilya's advice therefore is for the king to have three or four councillors—recalling the four-five scheme we noticed with the first group of ratnins—but he concedes that even then disastrous combinations or divisions are still possible.²⁹ In fact, there appears to be no definitive solution. The problem is that the exercise of power and authority is beset with factional strife. In other words, it would seem that the state is not based on harmony but on conflict; not on the horizontally layered order of varṇa, but on the shifting vertical lines of faction.

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Multiple kingship and diffusion of power and authority have as their corollary pervasive conflict, which takes care of their periodical rearticulation. The temporal order, then, turns on the institutionalization of conflict, not on its elimination. What this entailed can still be seen in the original pattern that underlies the Vedic śrauta ritual. Its central institution was the periodic sacrificial contest, which was no less violent for being ceremonial.³⁰ Not surprisingly, it is especially in the rituals connected with kingship (rājasūya, vājapeya, horse sacrifice) that the contest has left its clearest traces, in the form of chariot races, mock cattle raids, games of dice, and verbal contests. It is not without interest that, as we saw, many of the ratnins in the rājasūya are connected with chariot racing and fighting. But agonistic features and myths run through the whole corpus of ritual texts. Thus, notwithstanding the exclusive stress on the single sacrificer, his enemy, the *dviṣat* or the rival cousin (*bhrātṛvya*) is well-nigh ubiquitous in the ritual explanations, even though he has no locus standi on the place of sacrifice anymore and is dealt with in abstracto. Occasionally, however, he does still emerge from the limbo of abstraction and so we even saw him take part in the unction ceremony of the royal consecration. Generally the ritual texts do not tire of referring to the continuously recurring battles between the gods and their rivals, the asuras. This agonistic pattern is brought to a high level of all-embracing destructiveness in the epic war of the *Mahābhārata*, which has been called by Marcel Mauss "l'histoire d'un gigantesque potlatch." It is significant that this war between the Pāṇḍavas and their cousins, the Kurus, was set off by the rājasūya sacrifice of the Pāṇḍāva leader, Yuddhiṣṭhira.

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The outcome of the contest was never fixed once and for all. When Yuddhiṣṭhira as a result of his victory has won the earth and, disgusted by the internecine violence, wants to renounce the world, he is sternly exhorted to stake again in further rounds of violent sacrificial contests the "material sacrifice" (*dravyamayo yajñaḥ*). It is therefore no matter for surprise that the rājasūya, though ostensibly meant to be a once-and-for-all consecration of the new king, appears in fact to be based on a yearly recurring festival, as is already clear from the fact that it consists of a long series of sacrifices stretched out over a couple of years. Wealth and with it power and authority must periodically be staked again so as to be redistributed anew. The king is not consecrated for his whole lifetime, but has to submit himself time and again to the sacrificial contest. This would seem to be the background for the frequent mention of the "exiled king" (*aparuddho rājā*), who must win back his position in yet another sacrifice, as also the epic heroes had to do after their exile. These few but telling indications may illustrate that the diffusion of power and authority found its sanctioning and organizing principles in the sacrificial contest.

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It might be objected that the nexus of the sacrificial contest belongs to the mythic imagination of Veda and epic and has no direct bearing on the realities of realm and kingship. However, the same pattern of diffusion and institutionalized conflict is illustrated and elaborated in "secular" fashion in the ancient Indian lore of statecraft, the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭilya. I am referring to the sixth book, which deals with the so-called circle of kings (*maṇḍalayoni*).³¹ Kingship and realm consist of seven constituents (*prakṛti*): king, minister, country, fort, treasury, army, and ally. I mentioned already the inclusion of the ally, which shows that the modern conception of the unambiguously bounded territorial state does not apply. Kauṭilya's realm is open-ended and tied in with other such realms. This open-endedness goes even further, for immediately after the seventh constituent, the text discusses the enemy as an unnumbered eighth constituent.³² The analysis continues, enumerating the kings that constitute the circle. In the first place, there is the would-be conquering king, the *vijigīṣu*, who is taken as the center. He has his ally and the ally of his ally. The enemy is, of course, similarly constituted, and so are the neutral king (*madhyama*) and the uninvolved one (*udāsīna*), each with his ally and ally's ally. We then get a "circle" of twelve kings, each with his five other prakṛtis, which makes a total of seventy-two constituents organized in overlapping groupings.³³

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The total "circle" can perhaps best be viewed as a schematization of a continually shifting and unstable factional system. The *Arthaśāstra*'s intention is, of course, to let the conqueror-king win through to universal dominion, but even then he would still be tied down by the crisscross of factional relationships that constitute the total polity of the "circle of kings." The ambivalence of the conqueror-king's position—on the one hand pretending to universal rule, on the other hand tied down by the diffusion of power and authority throughout the "circle"—comes out even clearer when we consider that the maṇḍala configuration is based on two different, in fact incompatible, principles that have been conflated in the seemingly unitary scheme, namely, a concentric and a linear principle. The concentric principle places the conqueror-king in the "hub of the wheel," surrounded by rings of enemies and allies. The linear principle, on the other hand, does not have one conqueror-king in the center; instead the center is formed by two kings, the conqueror and his enemy, with the various allies and rivals aligned behind each of the two, the conqueror's ally being placed at the back of the enemy and so on.³⁴ In the first case, the conqueror forms the center, supported by his allies and subduing his rivals; the second configuration is a dualistic scheme which continually pits the conqueror against his rival in never-ending conflict (if it ended, the whole configuration would collapse). Where the concentric scheme still seems to leave open the possibility of the conqueror's eventual universal rule, the linear alignment definitely precludes that eventuality. But in neither case does the king rise above the maṇḍala; his position remains dependent on the changing outcome of the perennial contest.

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The diffusion of power and authority with the ever-renewed sacrificial contest as the mediating and organizing institution would seem to call for a clearly defined priesthood to manage the central institution. In this connection, one will of course immediately think of the brahmin, who is indeed in charge of the Veda and its ritual and owes his preeminence to this charge.

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However, brahmin as a specialized and closed class, or rather "estate," in the sense of the first of the four varṇas, is a late construct and certainly does not belong to the context of the agonistic sacrifice. In general, the *brahmán* or *brāhmaṇa* has no clear counterpart in the old-Iranian evidence but is a specifically Indian development. The brahmán in the Vedic texts is the bearer or representative of the impersonal *bráhman*. Perhaps the best and most comprehensive paraphrase of the latter term is the one given by Renou: "énergie connective comprimée en énigmes." Its context is the verbal contest, the *brahmodya*, where the contestants fight each other with enigmatic formulations—not solutions—of the cosmic riddle that they have "seen" or "found." The contestant who finally manages to reduce the others to silence vindicates himself as the *brahmán* par excellence.³⁵ But this also means that the quality of being a brahman is open and dependent on the outcome of the periodically renewed contest in the same way that power and authority are.

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In the royal consecration, there is an episode where the king, after unction and enthronement, is addressed as *brahmán*. This episode looks very much like a reduced version of the brahmodya scenario. Seated on the throne, symbolically the center of the universe, the king calls out to each of the four chief officiants sitting around him to the four quarters, "O brahman." The addressed officiant answers, "Thou, O king, art brahman," each adding an identification of the king to one of the four deities, Savitṛ, Indra, Mitra, and Varuṇa.³⁶ Though there is no enigma here but only straightforward identification, it seems clear that the king is made to stand out as the cosmic connection holding the universe together. The little ceremony signifies the dispersal and the concentration of the "connection" by the king.

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It is in this sense that we can interpret the later statements about the divinity and the sacral character of kingship. Thus according to *Manu*, the king does not represent a one and only king of the gods; there are eight of them who coalesce in the human king.³⁷ These eight gods recall the eight human magnates or "heroes" (*vīra*) who in a ritual text are said to support kingship. Such statements mean that the king is seen as the connecting link of the manyfold (in this case eightfold), dispersed kingship. The sacrality or divinity of the king resides in his connectiveness. But this leaves little room for an independent and closed priestly class, for the main sacral function is already occupied by the king.

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There are, of course, priestly functions in the sacrifice, but originally these did not require a professional priesthood. This is illustrated by the *sattra*, the sacrificial session (lasting twelve days or longer) in which a number of sacrificers join together and divide among themselves the various priestly functions without there being any question of the participants having to belong to a priestly class. Rather, it would seem that the sacrifice was primarily a concern of warriors competing for the goods of life—material as well as spiritual—in all manner of contests, not in the last place the verbal contest. As we saw, the decisive point in the contest is the inspired "vision" of the cosmic enigma expressed in the victorious riddle formulation. But this vision does not seem to be the monopoly of a priestly class.

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One may, however, think of a specific professional priestly figure—the *purohita* (the one "placed before"), the king's (or magnate's) "chaplain." But here again it would seem that originally his was not a purely priestly function, but was associated with warriorlike activities. The purohitas were charioteers. "In previous times," we are told, "the purohitas used to serve the kings as their chariot drivers",³⁸ the king himself being the chariot fighter. This is certainly not an unimportant function, and its priestly content is clear from the fact that the charioteer in the epic combines this function with that of a bard, as appears from the word *sūta*, which carries both meanings. One is reminded here of Kṛṣṇa's position as the charioteer of the royal warrior Arjuna, who reveals to his master the ultimate truth of the *Bhagavadgītā*. But for all that, it is a subservient role, supporting, not creating, the sacrality of the king's connectiveness, which is expressed in his being proclaimed the brahman par excellence.

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The purohita's role as a charioteer reminds us once more that the central position of sacrality depended on the changing outcome of the ever-renewed sacrificial contest. As power and authority are subject to dispersal, concentration at the outcome of the periodic contest, and redispersal, so also is the priesthood dispersed. This situation still seems to be reflected in the diffusion of priestly functions throughout local communities, where we may see potters, barbers, washermen, and others acting in priestly capacities at particular occasions, while in some cases, members or branches of families function as sacrificial priests for their cognate and affinal relatives. Nor is it exceptional to see the king at great state occasions as the chief celebrant and sacrificial patron of festivals on which the general well-being depends. In all this, we can still recognize the original basic pattern of the diffusion of power, authority, and priesthood regulated by the institution of sacrifice.

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All this, however, is remote from the strict separation of power and authority where we started our discussion. In fact, it is its very opposite. Coming together in the nexus of the sacrificial contest, power and authority as well as priesthood are inextricably interwoven. The ever-repeated contest decided who should occupy the central position of connective sacrality—till the next challenge.

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Here we may find the origin of the legendary stories of the recurring conflict between kṣatriyas and brahmins. Louis Dumont, as already mentioned, saw in these stories the expression of the strained and conflictive relationship between king and brahmin which he analyzed as "a necessary institution."³⁹ We can now recognize that these stories of conflict indeed reflect a necessary and central institution, namely, the sacrificial contest. However, we also see that these stories cover a contradiction. Though perfectly consistent with their original background where power, authority and priesthood are inextricably interwoven in the sacrificial contest, the legendary conflicts refer explicitly to kṣatriyas and brahmins, not as interchangeable positions, but as distinct and separate groups in the sense of the classical varṇas. They are indeed so distinct and separate that there cannot be any common ground between the two for fighting their battles. A definitive split has occurred between the power of the kṣatriya and the brahmin's authority. The brahmin should not venture into the kṣatriya's realm to try to wrest the control of the earth from him, nor should the king pretend to the brahmin's authority. As we saw, the contradiciton comes out starkly in the story of Paraśurāma, who conquers the earth and defeats the kṣatriyas, for in the end, the warrior-brahmin must return the earth to the control of the kṣatriyas he has so utterly devastated.

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There are, then, two incompatible and competing patterns. The one interweaves, the other separates power and authority, while neither offers a distinct, autonomous place to the priesthood, which either is integrated in the king's connective sacrality or disappears in the gap between royal power and brahminical authority. How should we explain this dual pattern? More specifically, how did the split between power and authority come about—a split that nothing in the originally unitary situation seemed to presage? The answer can be found in the Vedic ritual texts, which reflect a fundamental reorientation of the institution of sacrifice that resembles nothing so much as an "axial breakthrough".⁴⁰

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The ritual texts allow us to reconstruct with comparative ease and clarity the original, preclassical pattern we have discussed. The actual presence of death in sacrificial contests gave access to the ultramundane world of gods and ancestors and thereby sanctified the outcome. Bringing together the human and divine worlds in the sacral nexus of the sacrificial contest, it was a unified pattern. But the pattern was essentially unstable and threatened to collapse through the constant danger of destructive violence. It was at this point that the breakthrough was made. This was done by excluding the rival from the place of sacrifice. In mythological terms, it was the final victory of the Lord of Life and divine representative of sacrifice, Prajāpati, over his rival, Death—a victory that definitively ended the sacrificial contest.⁴¹ By the exclusion of the rival party, contest and violence were banned from the place of sacrifice. The uncertain outcome of the sacrificial battle was replaced by the certainty of the strict and exhaustive order of ritualism. Henceforth the single sacrificer stood outside society in a perfectly ordered ritual universe which was exclusively his own. The sacrifice was desocialized and individualized.

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In this way, a unique view of a perfect order transcending the conflictive order of society was won. But for the same reason this order of ritualism was irreversibly cut off from society. Where once there was the connective nexus of the sacrificial contest there was now a void. The sacrifice was separated from the social world and offered no scope for a priesthood to fill the void. It could no longer function as the channel of ultimate authority. Worldly power and ultimate authority were broken apart. The center gone, the king's social world and the brahmin's ritualistic order came to stand in unmediated opposition to each other.

Linked texts (6)