The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c7.12

c7.12

Thus, the head is with others. In order to obtain it, one has to go to an agonistic festival to contend for it. The basic pattern of these festivals is dualistic, in principle involving two parties: hosts and guests. This pattern is also manifest, albeit reinterpreted, in the systematized śrauta ritual, which, as Thieme noted, is of the nature of a stylized banquet.²⁶ The classical systematized ritual ignores, of course, the aspect of rivalry since the rival has been eliminated from the ritual, though it is abundantly attested in ritual mythology, as we saw.²⁷ But outside the śrauta ritual, in the rules pertaining to the reception of a guest, we can discern what was involved in the host-guest relation. The host must offer a cow to the guest. This in itself shows that the *arghya* ceremony is not a casual affair but the occasion of a festival at which a great number of people are regaled, especially brahmins, as is expressly mentioned. It is the guest who has to give the order for killing the cow and preparing the meat. Though he need not be the actual slaughterer, he takes, by his order, the responsibility for the killing of the animal upon himself.²⁸ Though this is not explicitly stated—in the language of the systematized ritual this would obviously be impossible—I do not think we can be far amiss in surmising that it is in this way that the guest obtains "the head of the sacrifice."