The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9.32

c9.32

These passages suggest a rudimentary scenario, question-answer, affirmation-denial, possibly further heightened by vituperation and finally subsiding when Indra manifests himself with one of the two contending parties (meaning that one of the parties has subdued the other). This pattern seems still to subsist in the classical ritual, where the consecrated sacrificer, often identified with Indra, may be said to act Indra’s part, going from concealment to resplendent manifestation. He is symbolically reduced to the embryonic state and speaks, if at all, only in veiled language. He recalls somewhat the *śreṣṭhin* who silently presides over the banquet while the participants strive to know his silent voice (vāk).⁵¹ In fact, the sacrificer is the counterpart of the brahman officiant, with whom he originally exchanges his role.⁵² It stands to reason that in the nonagonistic ritual no ill should be spoken of him, his evil (*aślīla*, *pāpman*) should not be mentioned; but the fact that he is considered to be possessed of evil is sufficiently significant. Though the blame, the mention of evil, will in any case have been reserved for a certain (probably advanced) stage of the proceedings—the reviling at the mahāvrata takes place in the midday service—it seems unlikely that the sacrificer would originally have escaped the lot of his prototypes, Indra and Prajāpati. Finally, at the culminating point of the ritual he manifests himself, is proclaimed brahmán, and distributes the dakṣiṇā, wealth.⁵³