The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14.s2.5

c14.s2.5

Ironically, the king who has successfully enticed the brahmin to serve him only obtains an empty husk, for the brahmin then loses his special quality that was the reason to engage him and becomes equal to a kṣatriya. The truth is that the ideal brahmin should cultivate the Veda and its ritual by himself, in himself, and for himself. The ideal brahmin, like the ideal sacrificer, is a renouncer. Only in this way can the hard-won view of the transcendent that was gained out of the violence of the ancient sacrificial battle be saved from corruption by the world’s powers and conflicts. The sacrificial battle for the transcendent is over, leaving worldly power without authority, transcendent authority without power, and ruling out priesthood as a mediator.