The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.29

c16.29

Where does this leave us? The institution that stands out clearest is, not caste or village, but the sharing brotherhood. While *jāti* is obliged to derive a surreptitious legitimacy from its irreconcilable opposite, *varṇa*, the brotherhood is ideologically neutral and therefore can safely raise its ensign. On the other hand, the brotherhood institution is by its nature strictly limited in its capacity to order society. But its formal sharing arrangements point at and exemplify a different order that is directly relevant to peasant society, namely, a jural order of rights. It is this order to which old-regime documents refer and which enables them to bypass the dubious order of jāti and varṇa. While jāti expresses—and varṇa denies—hierarchical exchange and interdependence, the jural order speaks of rights that are independently "eaten" and are free of obligation and reciprocity. Thus at harvest time, the "division of the grain heap" among the participants—including the king and the brahmin as well as the untouchable—may be, and usually is, interpreted in the sense of hierarchical exchange and interdependence.³⁵ To the participants, however, it seems to signify something else, namely, the realization of well-defined, independent, and inalienable rights in the soil and its productivity. These rights may be shared among brothers, or they may be differentially divided among unequal participants, as at the "division of the grain heap," but the essential point is that this is not viewed as a matter of gifts and obligations but of rights and shares.³⁶