The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s1.38

c14.s1.38

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.