The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c7.2

c7.2

The Vedic śrauta ritual presents a highly rationalized system of abstract symbols expressing the relations governing the cosmos and purporting thereby to enable the specialized operator, "who knows thus," to manipulate the universe, or rather to make his own universe.¹ This system finds its clearest expression in the arrangement of recitation and "laud" (*śastra* and *stotra*); their effectiveness does not depend on the content of the verses recited and sung, but on their abstract numerical arrangement. In other words, the ritual is divorced from the world of concrete reality. In the śrauta ritual, man strikes out on his own, free from ties with friend and foe, creating his own abstract universe. Leaving his friends behind and overcoming his foes, he obtains heaven all to himself. The divorce from reality does, however, involve him in contradiction. He remains of necessity tied to the concrete world, which he wants to control from the abstract ritual plane.