The riotous carnival that regularly punctuated the ordered life of traditional societies was characterized by the collective suspension of religious norms. The licentious eruption of animal instincts was epitomized by universal laughter that embraced all and spared none. The vernacular mock-brahmin, who violated the very norms he embodies, nevertheless had his counterpart in the jester of the classical theater, standing beside in dialectical opposition to the king as pivot of the socio-cosmic order. The literate, refined, and spiritual ethos of India's traditional elite remained continuous with, grounded in, and nourished by "Rabelaisian" popular culture. For the carnival is the temporal projection of a more fundamental, all-pervasive, and ever-present dialectic of order and disorder, interdiction, and violation. The ultimate goal of this alternation was the freedom at the heart of Abhinavagupta's aesthetics. "Creative chaos' within our multiplying conflicts of civilization assumes a quite different meaning within the optic of transgressive sacrality.