The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s1.3

c14.s1.3

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.