The Concept of Dharma

Margaret Chatterjee

The concept of dharma (roughly translated as "righteousness'") is one of

the most challenging in Indian philosophical thought. It seems to cut across
so many conceptual distinctions - legal, social, moral, religious - that to
those attaching importance to these divides it may appear to be less chal
lenging than confusing. And yet there is something fascinating about a term
whose usage spans millennia and which gives evidence of a sustained effort
to come to grips with the friction of fact and meaning, institution and ideal.
To this day, to say that a man is dhãrmik (righteous) indicates the highest
commendation. Whether one ought to be dhrmik or not is something which
could be paralleled by whether one should be moral or not. In both cases,
to pose the query is to reveal that the speaker has asked a question which
does not strictly make sense.
The vast period of time over which the concept of dharma developed
needs to be recalled. The early Vedic period dates from around 1500 B.C.
when the Aryans invaded India from the north-west and settled in the
plains of Punjab. The Rig-Veda, consisting of hymns in praise of the gods,
might have been composed around 1200-1000 B.C. This is the period when
the concept of rta (cosmic order) was born. Rta is both the law of right
eousness and of cosmic equilibrium and combines in itself the notion of an
integrated whole in which gods, men and nature participate. The whole thing
Doeser, M. C. and Kraay,. J. N. (eds) Facts and Values. ISBN 90.247.3384.7.
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
178 MARGARET CHATTERJEE

was kept going by an intricate web of religious ceremonial which centred

on various sacrifices to be made. The Vedas, whose message was believed
to have been revealed to rishis or seers, were followed by elaborations
called Brhmanas, Äranyakas, and Upanishads. Their contents range from
instructions as to how sacrifices should be performed to meditative works
which are philosophico-poetic in nature. `ruti (what was heard) and smyti
(what was remembered) were regarded as sanatana-dharma (eternal law)
and passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth. The concept
of dharma evolved out of rta and encapsulated the basic meanings of the
latter - a proper course of which the natural powers of sun, earth, the sea
sons etc. were exemplars (cf. "the harma of water is to flow"), parallelism
between the functional distinctions among the deities and their counterparts
in society, and the role of both men and gods in preserving the balance
of parts of all that is. That human beings live in families, clans and other
settled communities, that land and cattle have to be tended, and that what
people do makes a difference to how things are, are all perceived as of the
very nature of existence, but as nonetheless mat ters which are accompanied
by certain ingrained responsibilities. The intermeshing of the natural and
the normative is taken for granted. Maybe an agricultural people is well
situated to grasp this. Etymologically the root dhr means "to hold, have or
maintain." Dharma is an ontological principle, but is no less regulative.
From about the sixth century B.C. to the twelfth century A.D. the lit
erature concerning dharma proliferated into law books, the epic works
Mahbharata and Rmayana, the mythology of the Puranas, and eventually
the political thinking of the modern era. The ethico-religious concepts of
a traditional hierarchical society understandably concerned themselves in
large part with relations of values and institutions rather than with per
sonality, based as the latter is on a principle of individuality. Dharma is a
social concept. It did not function in isolation but along with artha (wealth)
and kkma (desire), the three known jointly as the Trivarga (three-fold
principies). Whatever brief later speculative thinkers came to hold in favour
of moksha (liberation) or apavarga (a principle beyond the Trivarga) it
was the threefold values of artha, kama, and dharma which governed the
lives of the majority. Early Indian thinking was frankly this-worldly and
concerned with practical mat ters having to do with thé pursuit of prosperity
(a matter which after all the rest of us do think of when the New Year comes
round). Meditative philosophic thought added what has been called the
"atman-centric predicament" (atman meaning noumenal self), the idea that
there is not merely an attunement between the self and ultimate reality but,
as the Advaita Vedantins would say, an identity between them. To bring in
the concept of moksha (liberation) is to claim that man has a trans-social
destiny which, while not cancelling out dharma, takes a man beyond it. This
raises the whole question of the relat ion of the so-called puru_rthas (goals
of man) to each other and to this we must now turn.
THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA 179

Hindu thought four goals of life-values are spoken of, the three values
that make up Trivarga, plus moksha, which is of later origin. The definition
of the first, artha, is given by Vatsyayana as follows:
Artha is the acquisition of arts, land, gold, cattle, wealth .e. and friends.
It is also the protection of what is acquired, and the increase of what is
protected,2
The arts referred to here are those of politics, commerce, techniques of
survival and sO on. The connotation of artha indicates what people in an
cient India associated with prosperity. It includes the degree of indepen
dence involved in economic well-being and the ability to protect oneself.
It is the realm of "having" where this is regarded as the legitimate base
for all other activities. To have land and cattle but no friends is be poor
indeed. Ritual activities were largely concerned with this dimension of life,
and we find in fact a dual criterion of legitimation offered as far as artha
is concerned, the religious and the pragmatic. The notion that wealth was
"profane" would have been quite unintelligible to the ancient Hindu. An in
teresting gloss on the legitimacy of worldly pursuits was provided by Jnana
deva, the saint from Maharashtra, who asked a religious aspirant how he
could attain moksha if he could not succeed in a lesser task, namely, looking
after himself and his family.
The pursuit of kama, or the satisfaction of desire, is no less appropriate
than the pursuit of artha. Vatsyayana wrote the Kama Sutra around A.D. 400
and it is clear that he thinks of desire in an extended way:
Käma is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hear
ing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling assisted by the mind together
with the soul.3
To say that kama concerns the erotic is to recognize its involvement with
the fine arts. But as soon as we use the word "appropriate" in the context
of both the acquisition of wealth and the satisfaction of desire (in their ex
tended connotations) the need for a regulative principle becomes apparent
and this is where dharma comes in. Although much of the literature on
dharma suggests a rather frigid canonical model of precepts which must
not be infringed upon, there is another side to the story, the one which
legitimates what we in fact value while recognizing the need for a principle
of regulation. Dharma is the third of the purusrthas, and vis-a-vis the
first two, appears in the form of moral law. This is where the plot thickens,
for dharma is not a monolithic concept but differentiates itself into the
sorts of dharmas to be followed through over the lifetime of man.
The various dharmas are classified into sadhärana-dharmas (literally "or
dinary" dharmas, or those obligatory on all), varFa-charmas (those varying
with one's station in life) and a[rama-dharmas (those varying with stages in
life). Manu, about whose dates there is much disagreement among scholars,
180 MARGARET CHATTERJEE

summarizes the ordinary or general dharmas as harmlessness, truth, integ

rity, purity and control of the senses, these being rough translations of
the original terms. Varna-dharma was in ancient times identified with caste
duties, the original idea behind this being much the same as the principle
of "my station and its duties, " The implication is that, general duties apart,
many obligations vary in relation to one's function in society. The duty
of the teacher, for example, differs from that of the soldier. The kind of
crisis that Arjuna faces in the Bhagavad Gita illustrates the clash of the
general duty of harmlessness or non-violence and the caste duty of the
kshatriya (member of the warrior caste), namely to fight. The problem of
the conflict of duties remains as baffling as it does in any other system of
thought, except that Indian reflection adds the injunction to examine one's
true nature and proper course of action in keeping with one's true nature
and to discover an overriding consideration therein.
The message of the epic literature, however, might well be taken to be
something like this. No matter how sincere the effort may be to do the best
in the circumstances, there is a momentum in events and a destiny hich
shapes our ends and which leaves behind much that is disastrous. It is in
order to set up a kind of protective barrier against this that the ancient
Hindus laid such stress on equilibrium in society. The chaos that they en
visaged was not of the cosmic kind that Greek imagination conjured up, but
the nightmare possibility of a society where anything goes. It is almost as
if they had glimpsed in idea the cut-throat style of living of a competitive
society and opted for a stratified society in which each man had his allotted
place. The factual and the prescriptive are mutually involved in an interest
ing way on such a model. Diversities of function are factual matters and out
of these a set of obligations arises. There is also, along with such a view,
the belief that traditional roles shouid be perpetuated on the ground that
it is good to do what one can do best. Modern thinking would at this point
come up with a query as to the role of judgement in all this. Are prescrip
tions to be read off, as it were, from roles? We need, I feel sure, to bear
in mind the context of a traditional society whose economic life centered on
crafts which, for centuries (and this used to be the case in many parts of
the world) were perfected through skills handed down from father to son.
Radical questioning and self-searching held full sway in a different context,
that of metaphysical thought. At the everyday level fact and evaluation re
mained bound together in Hindu ethical thinking through appreciation of the
components of situation and circumstance.
This comment can be further borne out with reference to the third type of
dharma, that which varies with stages in life. The four a[ramas (stages of
life) are described as brahmacarya, grhasthya, vanaprastha and sannyasa.
The first (student life) is typified in the life of preparation and self-disci
pline. The full connotation goes beyond the narrower meaning of cont inence.
The second or householder stage is where the facticity of the pursuit of
THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA 181

artha and kama comes into full play. The dharma of the householder also
sets a value on links with the past in various ways, ceremonies for the
benefit of ancestors, perpetuation of family lines, and the following of the
teachings of sects and sages. The householder, situated in the present as he
is, is bound by invisible but strong cords to the past and the future. These
are the facts of his being-where-he-is. His recognition of this as good, and
as indicating his role at this particular stage in life, bears him up in this,
the busiest, part of his pilgrimage.
The third stage, vanaprastha, retreat to the forest, is analogous to what
we mean today by retirement, and significantly, in industrialized societies it
often takes the form of a shift from the city to the country. The difference
is that whereas in our day we think of retirement as a time for new activi
ties, especially new forms of sociality, the ancient Hindu thought in terms
of gradual withdrawal from society, assimilating, as he did, societal bonds
to "bondage." The texts go into detail concerning change of diet and habits
at this stage, much of which makes good sense. It is also worth remembering
that Indian philosophy tends to blur the distinction between means and end,
so that, to take an example, fasting is looked on both as instrumental to
health and self-purification and as discipline as an end in itself. The retired
man, free of familial obligations, is still within society and has obligations
towards it. The Rmkyana tells how Sita was looked after by Valmiki in his
hermitage when she was alone in the forest. But since each stage carn be
regarded as a preparation for the next the forest-dweller's stage gives
way to that of sannysa or complete renunciation. The ascetic is free of
all possessions and also free from the practice of rituals. He has shed all
attachment. While from one point of view the sannysin (the one practicing
sannysa) has gone beyond the bounds of society, from another point of
view a societal system that sanctions sannyasa is in fact making room, al
most as a safety.valve, for those who serve society best by "being a friend
to all. "
The discipline of the four stages is a discipline of growth, of progressive
non-attachment. Even the house-holder, who may be supposed to be attached
to his family and his possessions, needs to learn that the time will soon come
when all these will have to be given up. The value put on detachment in the
Indian tradition can also be seen as a determination not to be submerged by
fact. Facticity was usually seen by Indian thinkers above all in the preva
lence of suffering in the human condition. Buddha began his meditation on
the condition of man with what suddenly struck him as most crucial about
this condition - the inevitability of the facts of old age, sickness and death.
Was it out of a rare courage or forgetfulness that longevity was neverthe
less regarded as good? Death was never regarded as a bourn from which no
traveller returned, for the soul would return again and again until all po
tencies had been worked out. The longer the life the more the opportunity
to fulfill positive karmas and the less need for too many rebirths - such
182 MARGARET CHATTERJEE

may be the implicit motive behind this way of thinking. To phrase it like this
is to see how the four asramas are connected with the fourth puru_rtha,
moksha, to which we turn next.
1f dharma means righteousness, moksha is usually translated as freedom
or liberation. It might be useful at this point to compare the four purusr
thas with Plato's distinction between eikasis, pistis, dianoia and noesis.
Plato's is a noetic ladder of ascent where, so the Divided Line analogy tells
us, there is a coherence between the first and the second and between the
third and the fourth. The first two deal with the sensíble world and the
latter two with the intelligible world. Plato is very clear on the point that
there is no route to noesis other than through ianoia. Comparison with the
purusrthas is suggestive. The bottom two are worldly. There is no route to
the fourth other than via the third. But the progression is not a cognitive
one. Moreover the highest term is not spoken of in terms of the good but
rather incorporates the insight that freedom from the bondage of suffering
is at first sight the highest state to which a human being can aspire. The
metaphor of ascent in Plato is here paralleled by the metaphor of a journey
within. Phenomenologically, no doubt, the triad of truth, beauty and good
ness is not the same as the triad satchitnanda (truth, consciousness and
bliss). Both express in different ways how the ult imate was conceived by
two remarkable, ancient cultures. The Platonic return to the cave resembles
the Mahayana Buddhist position rather than the Vedantic one. And yet the
Platonic and the Vedantic viewpoints show considerable similarity of in
sight in their quest for the transcendent and their conceiving of this as an
ethico-metaphysical endeavour.
But whereas the shift from dianoia to noesis is a shift within the over
arching framework of the intelligible, the transition from dharma to moksha
seems more radical and this now has to be elucidated. Even though the word
dharmik serves in common Indian usage for both "righteous" and "religious"
(equating these almost in the Judaic manner) there is a tendency among
scholars to stress that religion strictly speaking goes beyond the realm of
morality into the realm of "realization. " The nearest analogy to this position
that Ican think of would be regarding a "holy will" in the Kantian sense as
a realizable ideal for the human being. On Kant's view, of course, it is no
such thing. To proceed, we have already noticed that there is a profoundly
ontological imension about dharma. Dharma both is and ought to be. There
is probably a similar tangle involved in discussions about value in some
other systems of thought too in that values, qua ideals, are in a paradig
matic sense. What is required, from our own human perspective, is an ac
tualization of them in the course of life. The trouble is that if the supreme
value is seen as beyond good and evil (apart from the difficulty of giving a
connotation to "supreme" divorced from "good"), as the concept of moksha
has it, we are in the paradoxical position of lifting it out of the context of
living altogether. Other problems include these: how to describe what is