The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c7.16

c7.16

It was to break this deadlock that the classical system seems to have been developed. By excluding the rival, the need for actual death and destruction was eliminated from the ritual. The cyclical exchange between the two parties was broken and everything brought under the single denominator of the sacrificer. The single sacrificer incorporates alone the whole universe, articulating by himself the cosmic process, like his prototype Prajāpati, who is at the same time sacrificer, victim, and recipient of the sacrifice. If Makha and his like represent the agonistic festival, Prajāpati is the personification of the systematized ritual. The contradiction between system and reality is obvious if we consider that the abstract ritual has to be explained by a mythology which stresses violence. The violence excluded from the ritual is relegated to mythology. The ritual can only picture the restoration; its counterpart, destruction, can only be expressed mythologically.³⁴