The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c6.s4.1

c6.s4.1

The development of brahminical theory, set off by the individualization of the ritual, did not stop at the point where the host-guest, protagonist-antagonist complementarity was fused into the single unit of yajamāna and officiants. It had to advance to its logical conclusion, that is, the interiorization of the ritual, which makes the officiants' services superfluous.⁷² In fact, the classical doctrine of ritual has already concentrated the ritual in the person of the single yajamāna. His prototype is the cosmic man, Prajāpati, who is at the same time the primordial sacrificer, victim, and officiant. Thus the classical doctrine implies—as we have already seen—that the yajamāna, through the knowledge of the equivalences, becomes the integral cosmos, realizing in himself, and thereby mastering, the cosmic alternation of life and death.