The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c6.s4.3

c6.s4.3

It would seem to me that here we touch the principle of world renunciation, the emergence of which has been of crucial importance in the development of Indian religious thinking.⁷³ The renouncer can turn his back on the world because he is emancipated from the relations which govern it. He is a world unto himself, or rather, he has resumed the oppositions of the world in himself; there is no duality for him anymore.⁷⁴ "He sees himself (or, the self) in all creatures and all creatures in himself (or, in the self)."⁷⁵ He has resumed the sacrificial fires in himself,⁷⁶ and so he is able to perform the ritual in himself and by himself. Thus it is said of the renouncer: "After the *ādhāna*, the solemn installation of the (interior) fires, the five (sacrificial) fires are contained in the sacrificer: his prāṇa is the gārhapatya fire, his apāna the southern fire, his vyāna the āhavanīya, his udāna and samāna the sabhya and āvasathya fires; he offers only in the self." Our text calls this the *ātmayajña*,⁷⁷ the sacrifice in the self, an internal, mental sacrifice (*mānasa yajña*), which according to *Manu* 2. 85 is a thousand times more efficacious than the normal ritual.