ABSTRACT
Traditional rulers and leaders were responsible for enforcing dharma, but the problem of defining and explaining its nature was the duty of religious leaders and the institutions they controlled. The dissemination of basic religious and world-view concepts at all levels of society was the primary function of the guru, or religious preceptor. Some political figures may have wished for a larger portion of the harvested grain than that decreed by dharma, there is an obvious advantage to rituals that make the payment of taxes a religious obligation. Religious institutions also disseminate information about the proper conduct of ritual activities. Rituals at the individual, family, community, or regional level restore dharma and thus guarantee the proper functioning of all things. In the Elephant region, rituals are important and frequent but seem to have little to do with the regulation of conflict, most of which is adjudicated directly by the Svamiji.
