The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c5.21

c5.21

In fact the Mughal Empire reflects on an enlarged scale the cycle of the segmentary polity. Such a polity continually alternates between total dispersion of power among the segments that balance each other in an ever-shifting pattern of rivalry and alliance and the effort on the part of particular segments to rise above the mêlée, centralize part of the power available, level down the other segments, and replace them with an administrative apparatus.²¹ In the case of total dispersion, there is a potentially unending concatenation of overlapping centers interconnecting wide areas. Such a situation seems to be reflected in the geographical extension of “a regional network of hypergamy which links dispersed and often socially disparate groups within a generalized marital exchange pattern,” as have been observed for the North Indian rajputs.²² The poor man’s solution to empire, one is tempted to conclude. Its strength is exactly the dispersion of power so that it can in no one place be attached and finally broken, while at the same time, the continual open or latent conflict between the segments is managed through diffusion without the need for any easily overstrained central institution.