The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s5.1

c4.s5.1

Although the axial breakthrough that split the unitary order did not change or reform the world, it did take away the ultimate validity and legitimacy of the mundane sphere. This is particularly relevant for kingship and the state. Three of the following essays are therefore concerned with the king and his order, viewed not so much as given institutions but rather as a problem, and an essentially insoluble one at that.¹⁵ Briefly, the problem is the universal one of authority and legitimacy. These were originally provided by the outcome of the periodic "battle of sacrifice." It can be shown that the so-called royal consecration (*rājasūya*), like other such Vedic rituals (*vājapeya*, *aśvamedha*, or horse sacrifice) and even the standard Soma sacrifice (*agniṣṭoma*), hides an original cycle of setting out after the monsoon harvest on transhumance and conquest and returning again.¹⁶ The turning points of the cycle, at the setting out and at the return, were marked by agonistic sacrificial festivals still apparent in the rājasūya’s series of sacrifices strung out over a couple of years. In his unremittingly repeated circuit, the king joins two opposite and complementary worlds, the peaceably settled community (*grāma*) and the wilds (*araṇya*), where the consecrated warrior band has its being. In this way, the king (or would-be king) vindicated his power and authority over both worlds—or lost out to his rival partners in the cycle of violence. The king’s position of power and authority, dependent on the uncertain outcome of the circuit, was as a consequence unstable and constantly endangered. The ritualistic reform, however, broke the cycle of violence and restructured its disjointed parts into mechanistically devised rituals performed separately by the unaided and unopposed single sacrificer. It is significant that even the royal śrauta rituals are not *sacra publica* but strictly individual affairs in which the royal sacrificer is no different from the commoner. But for the same reason, the realities of the king’s world were unchanged. The king’s order remained the order of conflict and violence. Even as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, we come across the conquering and tribute-gathering circuit then known as *mulkgīrī*, “grasping the realm.” But although institutionalized, it lacks the ultimate legitimizing value the original cycle held out.