Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

the sacrifier is the sacrifice. Thus, in funerals the
principal and the victim were the same individual.
Funerals are installation ceremonies by which the
principal and the victim are the same. The main problem
is obviously how a funeral can become a royal ceremony
if there is no king? The question can be rephrased – how
was the royal status of the king initially constructed?
(Hocart 1954:77). The power and the status had to be
raised to this level by certain means before it could be
transferred back to the society. Political rituals construct
power. Political rites are elaborate and efficacious
arguments about power and how it is made. The rites
create divine legitimacy because when rituals are the
principal medium by which power relationships are
constructed, the power or the material embodiment of
the political order is usually perceived as coming from
divine sources. The ritual creates and raises the ruler
above normal human interaction (Bell 1997:129-130).
This is the consequence and outcome of sacrifice.
Hocart’s answer to the problem is that the first kings
must have been dead kings (Hocart 1954:77). This is
possible if we accept that the kings were not only chiefs
and governors of societies, but more importantly that
they did not necessarily have to govern at all. People
would often have gods as their main principals
governing the societies, and consequently there would be
no need for an earthly king. For Christians Jehovah was
their King, Buddhists had Buddha, and Hindu priests
originally refused to accept the king because Soma was
identified as their king. “The fictitious death of a king at
his coronation is thus a mitigation of a real death. He is
supposed to die because once, in order to be king, he
really did die”, and consequently, “the coronation
ceremony is a substitute for killing, and that a king was
originally made by killing a man as a human sacrifice”
(ibid:77-78). The highest status is achieved when the
dead as an initiate through the funeral, which is a
sacrifice, sacrifices himself on behalf of society. The
ritual killing of a divine king is the original sacrament, or
in other words, the killing of a man to make him a king
was the earliest sacrament. Man is identified with the
universe and sacrifices, whereby parts of his body create
heaven and earth, sun and moon and so forth (ibid:79).
Hocart concludes that on logical grounds the earliest
sacrament was the ritual killing of the king because
otherwise it is difficult to see how men could establish
the doctrine that the sacrifier and the victim were
mystically one unless they actually had been one (ibid).
If a king becomes a king only by dying, what was his
social status before his death? Creation stories speak of
the victims not as kings but as Man, meaning mankind as
a whole. Manu – the Indian creator – etymologically
means Man, but more in the sense of mankind or the
”true man”, a title that was later applied to Buddha.
Thus, “the Man is the personage destined to be killed to
ensure prosperity. By his death he becomes a king”
(Hocart 1954:81). The ritual killing eventually turns into
a symbolic killing, which enables the king to reign alive.
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The line of reasoning in Hocart’s hypothesis goes like
this: The Man or human mankind is killed ritually, and
so he subsequently becomes the King. The kingship
passes on to a child born later, who becomes the ritually
killed Man or progenitor when he grows older, and this
circle continues. Except from the killing, this circle is
evident among the Northern Buddhists who have
incarnations of the Buddha. A Buddha is the true
incarnation the Great Man, and when a Buddha dies,
they find the child who succeeds him, and in which the
Buddha is incarnated into. There is consequently a
succession of killed Great men, who, when killed,
become Gods, but also succeeded by their posthumous
sons. Therefore, the rituals that effect the rebirth of the
king can be carried out in the king’s own lifetime. When
the king’s death has been transformed into a sacrament,
such sacraments can be multiplied at will (Hocart
1954:82).
The Vedic king is Indra for two reasons; firstly because
he is noble, and secondly because he is a sacrifier
(Hocart 1969:11). Kings are inevitably connected to
justice, and the sacred king should bear the title of Lord
of Law, a title which still exists in Bhutan (ibid:53).
Being truthful is a moral act because “either the court
must not be entered, or the truth must be spoken; a man
who either says nothing or speaks falsely, becomes
sinful” (Manu VIII, 13). In ancient India the priests were
equally divine as the kings, both went through a
consecration process but with various ritual
consequences afterwards. Kings and priests were both
supposed to serve the people and bring welfare and
prosperity to the society. The dual structure of being a
Great Man, either as king or priest, is best illustrated in
Buddhism. Prince Siddhartha was born of the Sakya
tribe, and he was predestined to become either Emperor
or Buddha. His parents tried to persuade him to become
king and lead him onto a worldly carrier, whereas
Buddha himself chose the path of the renouncers and
escaped from the palace. A Great Man is a prince who is
predestined to attain universal rule, whether this rule is
secular or sacred (Hocart 1969:121).
Castes and cosmos – cremation and cosmogony
According to Manu, “for the sake of the prosperity of the
world, he caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the
Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his
arms, his thighs, and his feet” (Manu I, 31). Thus, the
cremation of the king is a ritual by which he becomes
god, whereby he distributes his body to the prosperity of
the world. On earth, the king is above the caste structure,
he is not a Ksatriya in the normal sense, because he is
part God and part Man, he is in between Man and God,
he is everything. He is the protector of the society in its
broadest sense, not just as a common warrior in the
army. Cremation is a redistributive practice; a sacrifice
by which cosmos and society are recreated and
maintained. The king’s body is transformed through the