The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s1.23

c14.s1.23

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.