The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s9: 9
The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s9
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c4.s9.1
The thread that holds the following essays together is the inner conflict of tradition. This conflict is not a peculiarity of Indian civilization. One is, of course, accustomed to the distance, even the opposition, between ideal and reality. But we still tend to view the ideal in a direct line with reality even if at an unreachable distance. India, however, shows us a sharp break in which the two are, as a matter of principle, incompatible. The "axial breakthrough" decisively split the unitary order of the world into two principles; the turbulent order of conflict and the static order of transcendence. The broken connection can be restored, not by somehow forcing or faking unity, but by man, who has the freedom to turn his back on the order of the world and to opt for transcendence. The only connection is in man's voluntary decision.
c4.s9.2
From this perspective, we may reformulate the relationship between "great" and "little tradition." The "great tradition" proposes the separative and conflict-free order of transcendence that denies society and its web of relationships. The "little tradition," on the other hand, is the lived-in order of society characterized by conflict and interdependence. It is therefore not exclusively geared to the "little community" of, say, the narrowly circumscribed village. While the renunciation-oriented brahmin is the exemplar of the ultramundane great tradition, the protagonist of the mundane little tradition is the king. The little tradition, then, is the king's order of conflict and connectiveness. Together king and brahmin bear the brunt of the unresolved conflict of civiliation.
c4.s9.3
Though the two orders impinge on each other, there is no process through which they can merge. Nor does the great tradition gradually supersede the little tradition, as the well-known phenomenon of "Sanskritization" (or "brahminization") seems to suggest. These terms imply not so much a process as a structure—a structure that is determined by the unbridgeable gap between the two traditions.
c4.s9.4
Here, however, a third "tradition" has intervened, the "tradition of modernity," exemplified by the modern state. Its distinctive feature is the principled denial of the gap between the two orders and the total identification of the mundane with the transcendent order. As the sovereignty ascribed to it makes clear, the modern state cannot be transcended. It is itself transcendent and so is its universalist order. Hence the similarity of the brahmanical and the modern tradition. However, the difference is equally obvious. There is no more room for a countervailing order. Modernity, then, means the integration of the mundane and the transcendent orders into one explosive reality.