The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c5.23

c5.23

Under these circumstances, there can hardly be any form of organization except one that is almost exclusively based on comprehensive personal relations. For, since even the source of power—the rights in the soil and its produce—is diffused throughout, power cannot be broken down in separate, specific functions but is parceled out in total, undifferentiated packages. The participants in the network can only be differentiated as to the greater or lesser amount of power—and this too may be fluctuating—but not as to the kind of power. The ruler is, therefore, no more than a primus inter pares; his functionaries are in fact his cosharers in the realm, and there is practically no room for specific impersonal relations as a basis of the polity.