The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c6.s4.2

c6.s4.2

The interiorization of the ritual is made fully explicit in *Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad* 1. 4. 17 in the description of the completeness of the self (*ātman*), which is at the same time the completeness, the self-sufficiency, of the one who "knows thus": "(Thus is) his completeness (*kṛtsnatā*): mind (*manas*) is his self; voice his wife; breath (*prāṇa*) his offspring; the eye his human property because through the eye he becomes aware of it; the ear his divine (property) because he hears it with the ear; the self is his act, because he acts with the self. This is the fivefold sacrifice; fivefold is the victim, fivefold is man, fivefold is all this. All this he obtains, who knows thus." Thus one who "knows" the equivalences based on the number five resumes in himself the universe and performs in himself and by himself the sacrifice without any outside intervention.