[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985) › c14 # The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14: 10 Power, Priesthood, and Authority The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c14 - **Language:** English ## Contents - [c14.s1 2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1) — 39 parts - [c14.s2 8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2) — 12 parts ### 10 Power, Priesthood, and Authority ### [c14.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.1) The triad of the title forms a closely knit whole. Power, in order to be legitimate, must be sanctioned by authority, and authority in its turn must be validated by priesthood, which provides the channel to the divine or transcendent source of authority. The problem is how this bill should be filled. The divine or transcendent source of authority is, by definition, beyond man's reach. This leaves two functions to be filled, power and priesthood. There are many ways in which these two functions can be intertwined or separated, collapsed into one, the priest-king, or diffused throughout the community. Indian tradition, however, offers a clear and, to all appearances, self-evident bipolar pattern, namely, that of \*kṣatra\* and \*brahman\* or, in terms of their representatives, king and brahmin. Their relationship is well known, but perhaps not so well understood. The pair of king and brahmin stands for temporal power and spiritual authority. That the brahmin's spiritual authority stands above the king's temporal power is hardly surprising. It has, however, weighty consequences. How is the preeminent holder of spiritual authority to serve the temporal power of the king? The brahmin's preeminence bars him from being the king's servant. Or, conversely, how is the king to acknowledge the superiority of the brahmin, which impairs or even threatens to invalidate royal power? ### [c14.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.2) The problem has often been seen as the outcome of a historical struggle in which the brainy brahmins would have bested their illiterate kṣatriya masters in an all-embracing \*Kulturkampf\*. Here I should at once mention the views of Louis Dumont, who has placed the problem in its proper perspective. Rejecting the conjectural historical struggle for preeminence as an explanation, Dumont proposed to look at the problematic relation between ### [c14.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.3) This is an expanded version of an essay that first appeared in \*Tradition and Politics in South Asia\*, edited by R. J. Moore (Vikas, 1979). ### [c14.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.4) king and brahmin “as a necessary institution.” “In approximate, Western, terms the situation results from the distinction between spiritual and temporal being carried out in an absolute fashion.”¹ ### [c14.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.5) The king-brahmin formula takes care of power and authority, distinguished from each other “in an absolute fashion.” However, it is exactly with this absolute distinction that the problem lies. The formula leaves the middle terms, the mediating function of the priesthood, vacant. Understandably Dumont, following time-honored practice, views the brahmin as a priest and uses the two words interchangeably. But, as we saw, it is logically inconsistent for the brahmin to be both preeminent and a priest. As a priest in the service of king and community, he would derive his position from them and so jeopardize his claim to represent ultramundane authority. Indeed, the texts are perfectly clear on the point that he should not be a priest and especially not the king's priest.² Yet it is equally obvious that power and authority should complement each other and that king and brahmin therefore must cooperate. ### [c14.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.6) The absolute distinction between power and authority or between their representatives, king and brahmin, involves a fundamental contradiction, which should not be explained away but made central to the argument. The well-known tales of the struggle between king and brahmin—for example, when the earth has to be returned to the care of the kṣatriyas after they have been completely defeated by that curious combination of warrior and brahmin, Paraśurāma—do not relate historical events; they give expression to the contradictory relationship. It is on this contradiction that I want to focus the discussion of power and authority. ### [c14.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.7) The ambiguity of the king-brahmin relationship is expressed in the words of the \*Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad\* 1. 4. 11, where the kṣatra is said to have emanated from the brahman as the latter's foremost form: “Therefore nothing transcends the kṣatra; therefore the brahmin sits below the kṣatriya at the royal consecration (\*rājasūya\*); he bestows this honor only on the kṣatra. But the brahman is the womb of the kṣatra; therefore, though he attains the highest status, he finally rests on the brahman, his own womb; if he (the kṣatriya) hurts him (the brahmin), he hurts his origin; in the same way as when attacking a superior, he is worsted.” I think this contradictory statement, which alternately makes the king or the brahmin supreme only to deprive each again of his supremacy, sums up the problem of the dual dominium. ### 2 ### [c14.s1.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.1) 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. ### [c14.s1.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.2) 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 ### [c14.s1.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.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. ### [c14.s1.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.4) 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. ### [c14.s1.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.5) 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. ### [c14.s1.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.6) 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. ### [c14.s1.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.7) 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. ### [c14.s1.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.8) 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 ### [c14.s1.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.9) 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 ### [c14.s1.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.10) ¹⁸ \*Manu\* X: 64-65; cf. above, chap. 8, note 6. ### [c14.s1.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.11) 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. ### [c14.s1.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.12) 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 ### [c14.s1.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.13) 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"). ### [c14.s1.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.14) 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 ### [c14.s1.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.15) ²⁰ Lévi-Strauss, \*Les structures élémentaires de la parenté\*, 308. ### [c14.s1.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.16) ²¹ Leach, \*Political Systems of Highland Burma\*, 288. ### [c14.s1.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.17) ²² de Josselin de Jong, \*Minangkabau and Negri Sembilan\*, 12, 13, 70, 72. ### [c14.s1.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.18) ²³ Ibid., 14. ### [c14.s1.19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.19) 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. ### [c14.s1.20](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.20) ²⁴ On the "republics" (\*gaṇa\*, \*saṅgha\*), see Sharma, \*Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions in Ancient India\*, chaps. 6 and 7. ### [c14.s1.21](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.21) 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. ### [c14.s1.22](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.22) 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. ### [c14.s1.23](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.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. ### [c14.s1.24](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.24) 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. ### [c14.s1.25](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.25) 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. ### [c14.s1.26](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.26) 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 ### [c14.s1.27](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.27) 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. ### [c14.s1.28](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.28) 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. ### [c14.s1.29](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.29) 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. ### [c14.s1.30](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.30) 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. ### [c14.s1.31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.31) 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. ### [c14.s1.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.32) 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. ### [c14.s1.33](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.33) 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. ### [c14.s1.34](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.34) 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. ### [c14.s1.35](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.35) 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. ### [c14.s1.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.36) 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. ### [c14.s1.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.37) 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 ### [c14.s1.38](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.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. ### [c14.s1.39](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s1.39) 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. ### 8 ### [c14.s2.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.1) It may be objected that the Vedic śrauta ritual provides sacrificial ceremonies that are ostensibly an effective link between the king's order and the order of the brahmin. In the first place, there is the rājasūya, consisting of a series of sacrificial rituals during which the king is anointed or, rather, profusely showered with the consecratory waters (\*abhiṣeka\*). There are, moreover, other royal rituals as well, including the prestigious horse sacrifice, the aśvamedha. However, these royal rituals are just modifications of the extrasocial, individualized Soma sacrifice and equally require that their single sacrificer, even though a king, stand outside the social world. The Soma ritual has no place for the community. The ratnins have no part in it, but are accommodated in a separate series of non-Soma offerings, each of which has again the form of an individualized, single-sacrificer ritual. There is no common ground between the ritual universe and the social world. ### [c14.s2.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.2) Still one might be tempted to view the episode where the royal sacrificer is acclaimed \*brahmán\* as the decisive junction of the temporal and the transcendent. But in the first place, not only the king but also the commoner is proclaimed a \*brāhmaṇa\*, a representative of the \*bráhman\*, at his consecration for the Soma sacrifice (\*dīkṣā\*). The king's brahman proclamation fails to distinguish him from his subject, and this brings us back again to the diffusion of power and authority. More serious, indeed decisive, is another point. Though the proclamation originally conferred connective sacrality in this and the other world on the king, it can now, in the reformed, “postaxial” ritual, only have meaning within the strictly limited time and place of the ritual. After its conclusion, about to leave the ritual enclosure, the sacrificer, whether king or commoner, returns to his normal, unchanged self in society: “Here I am just the one I am,” as he has to declare in his concluding mantra.⁴² Nothing has changed. ### [c14.s2.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.3) Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the dharma authors do not seem to attach practical value to the rājasūya. Though they require a brahmanic sacrament (\*brāhmaḥ saṃskāraḥ\*), there is no agreement as to what this ceremony should be.⁴³ It may even be no more than the \*upanayana\*, which opens the period of pupilage with the teacher and so gives the king access to the Veda but which is also required for all “twice-born” commoners. Again it does not distinguish the king from, say, the vaiśya. In fact, the ritual texts themselves appear to concede the point that the rājasūya does not make the king. “A king who desires to win heaven should perform the rājasūya”,⁴⁴ that is, he is already a king. His desire for heaven is a strictly individual matter that has no bearing on his royal function. ### [c14.s2.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.4) Whatever the śrauta ritual may achieve for the strictly personal gratification of the king, it can not confer its authority on him. Nor can there be a priesthood to bridge the gap. The king, like any other sacrificer, can of course engage brahmin experts to officiate in his sacrifices, but the king's link with this priesthood does not extend beyond the sphere of the ritual's strictly limited time and place. More important, however, is the individualization of sacrifice, which makes the brahmin's participation in a patron's, and especially in the king's, sacrifice intensely questionable. Even if the close relationship between patron and officiant lasts only for the duration of the ritual—but the rājasūya, for one, spans a couple of years—the brahmin has to accept the food and gifts of his patron during that period. The sharp dividing line between the ritual universe and the social world tends to be blurred, if not obliterated, and the brahmin’s authority to be fatally impaired by involvement in worldly relationships. In this respect, we can readily understand that the sacrificial gifts to the officiants are viewed as a “salary” (\*vetana\*) for a well-defined, specific service. Once the salary is paid, the relationship is ended and, in theory at least, there are no further personal bonds of obligation and reciprocity.⁴⁵ Nonetheless, the distinction may easily turn out to be too sophisticated, and the texts have harsh things to say about the brahmin who serves the king.⁴⁶ Such service cannot, of course, be ruled out, be it only for the fact that the brahmin cannot live on his spiritual authority alone. But insofar as he is allowed to serve the kṣatriya, he loses his brahmanic value and becomes the kṣatriya’s equal (\*kṣatrasama\*), even if he serves in the specifically brahmin capacity of an \*ṛtvij\*, an officiant, in the śrauta ritual. The position of the king’s purohita, in what is an enduring and close relationship, can therefore only be an utterly ambiguous one. He precedes the king but is at the same time held in contempt. No wonder the king’s confidant and jester in the Sanskrit theater, the \*vidūṣaka\*, is typically a brahmin. ### [c14.s2.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.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. ### [c14.s2.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.6) It was not the brahmin who by some obscure stratagem wrested sacrality and priesthood from the king. It was the other way round. Not the king, but the brahmin was emptied of magic and sacrality. The brahmin was “desacralized,” and the burden of connective sacrality came to rest all the more heavily on the king. This sacrality weighs him down and enmeshes him in the constricting web of conflictive relationships. It cannot raise him to a level of authority transcending society. Even when the Hindu king is viewed as a god, it should be remembered that the gods do not transcend the world of \*saṃsāra\*. They are like humans, only more so. The king’s sacrality does confer on him a measure of authority to the extent that he fulfills the connective function amid the relationships that constitute society. But for the same reason, his authority lacks ultimate validity. It is not derived from a transcendent source but is rooted in worldly relationships. The king's sacrality is the exact opposite of transcendence. Access to the transcendent and the ultimate authority it bestows are the exclusive prerogative of the brahmin, but only so long as he keeps free from worldly involvement. ### [c14.s2.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.7) The king's connective sacrality is incompatible with the brahmin's separative authority. For the king and the brahmin to meet each other, it would be necessary that the brahmin, instead of stepping down from his ultramundane stand, steps up to a level from which he can enter the king's world of pervasive conflict without being affected by it. That is, the brahmin must be absolutely disinterested. This is indeed the image of the ideal brahmin. But it is hard to see how such a paradoxical stance could be realized and maintained in actual practice. It would, in fact, require a similarly detached king, who would rise above the restrictive bonds of personal relationships. This quality is recommended by the \*Arthaśāstra\* where it stresses the need for "victory over the senses" (\*indriyajaya\*)—a victory won, not by means of magic, but through science and discipline (\*vidyā\*, \*vinaya\*).⁴⁷ Kauṭilya's ideal is a rationalistic, impersonal, and detached kingship. But kingship based on the renunciatory virtue of indriyajaya would not need the brahmin's authority anymore. Although Kauṭilya reiterates the time-honored idea of the kṣatra fostered by the brahman,⁴⁸ he does not seem to have much use for the brahmin and his authority. For him the purohita is a learned magician, averting calamities and bringing about happy turns of events, but he is not a bearer of authority. More serious, however, is the fact that the king, by virtue of his renunciatory stance, would cut himself off from his field of activity in the middle of personal relationships and conflicting interests. It is significant that the discussion of the king's lofty detachment is concluded by stating the king's dependence on his associates (\*sahāya\*). "One wheel alone does not turn."⁴⁹ Here we are back again where we started. Both the power and authority of the king remain entangled in the web of relationships with his associates, the cosharers in the realm. ### [c14.s2.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.8) Only under the absolute, universal rule of the dharma can temporal power and spiritual authority be fused. The dharma would then realize the revealed order of the Vedic śruti. In other words, the world would have to be transformed into an atomized universe made up of individual sacrificers, each singly submitting to the exhaustive and inflexible order of the śrauta ritual. But as we saw, such a seamlessly ordered universe can only be realized temporarily within the confines of the ritual enclosure. The universal rule of ritual over the world would mean the dissolution of society. ### [c14.s2.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.9) It is, however, possible to think of an approximate analogue. One example would be the Buddhist \*sangha\*, the community of monks individually following the strict ritualistic rule of monastic discipline. It only knows the impersonal authority of the Buddhist dharma. But for that reason, it can only endure in juxtaposition to the temporal power of the king, who must resolve the internal conflicts that the sangha itself has no power to decide, even though outside intervention compromises its integrity.⁵⁰ ### [c14.s2.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.10) The universal rule of dharma, whether Hindu or Buddhist, would withdraw from society, not only all authority, but all power as well, so as to vest them in each individual. This was the situation of mankind’s mythic golden age, the \*kṛtayuga\*. But as the \*Mahābhārata\* tells us, it was exactly this situation which gave rise to confusion and conflict, for men only had the unmediated dharma, vested in each single individual, to maintain order and to protect each other.⁵¹ Universal order succumbs to its inner contradiction. Depending entirely on the individual, it has no room for conflict, for there is no power and authority left for a mediating agency. Monolithic universality breaks down on its unacknowledged explosiveness. ### [c14.s2.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.11) The problem may not be much different from that of the modern polity of the nation-state. In order to save society from dissolving, the nation-state pretends to fuse the individual citizens, each singly subject to the rule of law, into a single monolithic unity. It represents a maximal concentration of both power and authority. Hence its inviolability. But it must then direct its inner conflict outward to other nation-states. The more strongly fusion and unity are stressed, the more explosive is the conflict. We know the catastrophic consequences. ### [c14.s2.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14.s2.12) The seemingly coherent and harmonious triad of power, priesthood, and authority owed its effectiveness to the sacrificial nexus of the contest. In other words, it required and gave sacral sanction to the unsettling violence of conflict. The “axial breakthrough,” on the other hand, dissolved the agonistic nexus. It devalorized sacrality and denied conflict its ultimate legitimacy. Instead it posited the ideal of an absolute transcendent order that is, as a matter of principle, incapable of worldly realization. The triad collapsed under the pressure of the ideal into an irreversible dichotomy of worldly power and transcendent authority that cancelled the mediating capacity of priest or magician. The ensuing problem of power and authority is as insoluble as it is universal. Indian tradition, instead of trying to solve the problem, acknowledges its insolubility. Notwithstanding the deficiencies of the compromises it requires in day-to-day practice, recognition of the dichotomy may still be the most efficacious way to deal with the problem. At the very least, it leaves the future open. ## Linked texts (7) - [Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.upanisad.mukhya.brhadaranyaka.1.4.11) — Sanskrit - [Śatapathabrāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana.satapatha.7.1.1.4) — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit - [Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.artha.kautilya) — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit - [Mānava Dharmaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.dharma.manu) — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit - [Taittirīyasaṃhitā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.samhita.krsnayajur*taittiriya) — Sanskrit - [Mahābhārata](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.mahabharata.vyasa) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Bhagavadgītā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.darsana.all.gita) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c14) · Pramāṇa