The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.15

c16.15

The interpenetration of rights and holdings is abundantly attested by the surviving documentation.¹¹ For our purpose, the conventional idiom in which these dealings are expressed is particularly interesting. The fact that the proceedings often boil down to a sale of rights under pressure of indebtedness and distress—or even, we may surmise, a measure of duress—is not veiled or glossed over, but it is embedded in a language that stresses "brotherhood": "As we are now two brothers in the office of muqaddamī (headmanship), you shall be the third brother and we will equally enjoy all the rights, privileges etc. of the office and perform the duties"; "he fell upon your neck begging of you to become his brother and received 200 rupees and a mare, for which he gave you his third share of the muqaddamī"; or again, "and of his third share he had given three parts to the above-mentioned Powar (a well-known powerful family), making him his brother." The purchase of a share in a hereditary right is not viewed as an incidental market activity but as establishing a permanent and comprehensive relationship of brotherhood. The sharing brotherhood also is the institutional form for resolving conflict, integrating the contending parties into a corporate unity and thus restoring the wholeness (instead of excluding one of the contenders): "Formerly you damaged and injured the muqaddamī; we now have made you our brother and so let it be."¹² Viewed in this way, the parcelling out of rights and even offices is not a matter of mere atomization, but the means for recombining the actors and restoring the wholeness of society inside and outside the village.