The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s2: 2
The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s2
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- English
2
c4.s2.1
Tradition is characterized by the inner conflict of atemporal order and temporal shift rather than by resiliance and adaptiveness. It is this unresolved conflict that provides the motive force we perceive as the flexibility of tradition. Indian civilization offers a particularly clear case of this dynamic inner conflict.⁵ The conflict is not just handled surreptitiously by way of situational compromise. Once we look beyond the hard surface of the projected absolute order, it appears subtly, but no less effectively, to be expressed by the same scriptures that so impressively expound the dharma’s absoluteness.
c4.s2.2
Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the Vedic ritual texts and their curiously contradictory place in Indian civilization, at once hallowed and neglected, like the king who is honored by all and obeyed by none. They are the scriptural repository of the revealed *śruti* and as such purport to be the core and foundation of the dharma. Therefore the conduct of the *śiṣṭa*—that is, one who is fully instructed in Vedic lore—is the only guideline in the confusion of dharma and adharma. The dharma essentially proclaims itself to be the ritualistic order of Vedic sacrifice. It stands to reason, then, that we take our cue from an investigation of Vedic śrauta ritual. Most of the following essays are therefore concerned specifically with the śrauta corpus or refer to it.⁶
c4.s2.3
Now it is in the consideration of the śrauta ritual that the unresolved dilemma of the dharma's traditional order stands out most clearly, for the revealed śruti has nothing to say about the world, its concerns and conflicts.⁷ It proposes, on the contrary, a separate, self-contained world ruled exclusively by the comprehensive and exhaustive order of the ritual. It has no meaning outside its self-contained system of rules to connect it with the mundane order.⁷ This is already clear from the conspicuous absence of *sacra publica*. Therefore the conduct of the *śiṣṭa* who finds his fulfillment in the śruti is, by definition, free from worldly attachment. The ritual is *adṛṣṭārtha*, without visible purpose or meaning other than the realization of its perfect order, be it only for the duration of the ritual and within the narrow compass of the ritual enclosure. After completing the ritual, the sacrificer formally divests himself of his ritual persona, quits the enclosure, and returns to his worldly life.
c4.s2.4
The ritual holds out to man the prospect of a transcendent world he creates himself on condition that he submits to the total rule of the ritual injunction. But at the same time, the open gap between the transcendent order of the ritual and the mundane ambivalence of conflict and interest is all the more obvious.