文档介绍：Solar aspects of papers
Vol. 10, No. 1 Asian Profile February 1982
Sons of the Sun: The Solar Genealogy of a
Chola King
E W. SPENCER
Associate Professor of History
Northern Illinois University
For traditional Hindu society, the reality of upward social mobility posed an ideological dilemma.’ In any hierarchical society in which ascribed social roles are alleged to be divinely ordained, the fact of social change must be explained and, moreover, accounted for in a manner which sustains, rather than discredits, the static social model. In recent years it has e apparent to historians and anthropologists that in the Hindu social order genealogical fabrication has long been an essential part of this rationalizing process, an activity as relevant to the ritual legitimation of medieval kings as to the social-uplift campaigns of munities in our own
Although genealogical myths naturally ‘differ in detail, their import is consistent: Group X, of apparently modest social origin or even presently degraded ritual status, is in reality descended from prestigious Group Y, and is therefore fully entitled to the high status which it now claims. Thus the rationale for a status claim is expressed in the idiom of kinship, and an edited version of the past is invoked to sustain that claim. Often the claim is coupled with an anecdotal explanation of how the family or caste happened to descend to its present, humble position as the result of an error or “accident” which must now be rectified if the social order is to be set aright. In the case of princely houses which have already managed to rise to a position of power from obscure tribal or peasant origins, a similar explanation may be invoked to demonstrate that the apparently humble origins are misleading, on the grounds that the rulers are in reality descended from gods and heroes. monly have been employed for the purpose of “discovering” such ancestral connections. Invoking ancestral claims serves to reconcile the rea