The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c9.7

c9.7

The point here is not the one-to-one identification of the separate cosmical elements of the question with the sacrificial ones in the rejoinder, but rather the antithetical relations governing both sets of elements. The opposites, farthest limit and energizing center, coincide as do the *vedi*, the place where the offerings are placed, and the creative activity of sacrifice. The seed of the stallion is the soma, but the point is that the soma is "killed" (pressed) to deliver its juice, as the stallion has been,¹⁰ thus doubling and thereby heightening the expression of the mysterious life-death relationship.¹¹ To put it briefly, question and rejoinder here turn on the mysterious *coincidentia oppositorum*, which is finally clinched by the statement "I, this *brahmán* (i.e., speaker of *bráhman*) am the highest extension of speech," which for all its assertiveness offers no more explicit explanation.¹²