The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9.12

c9.12

At this p discussion reflection,¹⁶ threshold o has broken the impulse by the aspi antithetical must either other. In th completely objective, impersonal argument, the actual solution in the ancient verbal contest is a purely subjective, personal one. Actually this is what we should expect, as the problem is in a way acted out by the contestants. Thus we saw in the aśvamedha brahmodya that the prevailing party concludes the contest by simply asserting himself: “I, the brahmán (or, who have proved myself to be a brahmán), am the highest extension of speech.” The respondent, finally, assured of his authority, gives himself as the embodied solution, the personified bráhman.¹⁴ Perhaps such subjective solutions are nearer to our own everyday reality than our ideology prepares us to admit, as anybody with any experience of meetings may have had occasion to realize. Anyway, the brahmodyas of *Śatapatha* 10 and 11 are characteristically concluded by the prevailing party asserting himself and imposing silence; the dénouement is again a personal, subjective one. By the stereotype act of offering firewood, the loser becomes his conqueror’s pupil, or *brahmacārin*, the alternative being death for one who “questions beyond this point” (*ati-pṛcchati*), as happened to Śākalya at the outcome of his contest with Yājñavalkya.¹⁵