[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985) › c5.37 # The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c5.37 The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c5.37 - **Language:** English ### [c5.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.37) This dual dispensation had the great advantage of giving a previously unknown measure of reality to the dream of a universalistic order. But its failure was that it could not come to grips with the comprehensiveness and diffuseness of the traditional order. It could only refuse full access to the center's power so that the traditional order could not gain strength at the expense of the center; the most that the center's reservation of power could achieve with regard to the "little kingdom" was to freeze it and thereby reduce its peculiar efficacy, which lies in its fluidity. But in this way, no fundamental change could be brought about in the traditional order. - [Previous: c5.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.36) - [Next: c5.38](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.38) - [Up: c5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.37) · Pramāṇa