CULTURAL TRANSACTION AND EfAkLY INDIA 2fi should include a recognition of its social reference point. In our present-day recognition of the idiom we frequently neglect the institution which it gives rise to and interpret the signal in too narrow a way. An understanding of the signal involves more than just an appreciation of its religious or aesthetic form. In the three examples which I have discussed patronage in each case picks up a seminal form and develops it almost to the point of losing the original. It encapsulates within it a relationship of exchange which not only relates the patron to the object of patronage but introduces a further relationship between the object and society. This relationship has many manifestations and often goes beyond what may originally have been the purpose of the object. Each of these three examples also support three distinct notions of authority which were prevalent in the Indian past and which it has been argued are among its civilisational symbols. The eulogy focuses on political authority. The stvpa draws on the institution of bhikkhus or renouncers who on joining the order discontinued their normal social obligations but created an alternative society. The temple symbolises the authority of the priestly function. These notions of authority were distinct but there was some overlap in the practice of this authority : the bard had in part a status similar to that of the renouncer inasmuch as he was often seen as outside the normal hierarchy of caste and at the same time evolved a ritual which gave him a special sanction : the alternative society of the renouncer gave rise to a kind of moral authority which could impinge on social behaviour and political action : the priest drew strength from investing political authority with elements of divinity and used the sanction of ritual and worship to control social action. These were civilisational symbols whose outer forms varied somewhat when dynasties changed or new religions were introduced or when new kinds of political action were required. But the message of the symbol rather than its literal form constituted a continuity in Indian history. Such symbols reach out to many manifestations of social and individual life. To confine them to merely the aesthetic or the religious or the purely formal is to fail to comprehend them in their totality. I have tried to show that a cultural form has its own history and that its mutation is related to changing historical contexts. To see it as part of a historical continuum provides nuances which introduce a variety of insights into the form. I have given only a partial view of such insights. Added to this, the redefinition of the concept of culture encourages an emphasis on the social context in which a cultural form is placed. This povides fresh perspectives and reinforces the significance of the historical process to the understanding of cultural traditions and symbols. The keepers and recorders of the past are in greater demand when groups, communities and societies are searching for identities. For each of these there are critical points in time when for various reasons idepUti^s