Facts and Values
Philosophical Reflections from Western and
Non- Western Perspectives
edited by
M.C. Doeser
I.N. Kraay
1986 MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBLISHERS ~.
a member of the KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP • •
DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LANCASTER .~
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 dhCirmik (righteous) indicates the highest
commendation. Whether one ought to be dharmik 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 Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and Upanishads. Their contents range from
instructions as to how sacrifices should be performed to meditative works
which are philosophico-poetic in nature. Sruti (what was heard) and snvti
(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 J'ta 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 dharma 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 matters 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 di1.r 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
Mahabharata and Ramayana, 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 kama (desire), the three known jointly as the Trivarga (three-fold
principles). 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 matters having to do with the 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,,1 (at man 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 relation of the so-called puru~arthas (goals
of man) to each other and to this we must now turn.
THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA 179
In 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 ••• 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 to 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:
Kama 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 puru~arthas, 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 sadharm;w-dharmas (literallY"or-
dinary" dharmas, or those obligatory on am, varr;w-dharmas (those varying
with one's station in life) and asrama-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 etta 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 which
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 should 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 asramas (stages of
life) are described as brahmacarya, garhasthya, 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 continence.
The second or householder stage is where the facti city 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 Ramayana tells how Sita was looked after by Valmiki in his
hermitage when she was alone in the forest. But since each stage can be
regarded as a preparation for the next the forest-dweller's stage gives
way to that of sannyosa 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 sannyasin (the one practicing
sannyasa) 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~artha,
moksha, to which we turn next.
If dharma means righteousness, moksha is usually translated as freedom
or liberation. It might be useful at this point to compare the four purU{ar-
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 sensible 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 dianoia. Comparison with the
purU{arthas 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 satchitananda (truth, consciousness and
bliss). Both express in different ways how the ultimate 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 I can 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 dimension 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
THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA 183
presumably beyond description; how to commend as a supreme terminus of
the human quest what is supposed to be beyond the sphere of human judge-
ment; and how to prescribe action in conformity with an ideal whose inner
meaning connotes the very cessation of action since all actions bind? The
concept of moksha in Indian thought represents an extreme form of the urge
to "get away from fact."
Hindu thought takes the web of human obligations to be, then, intricately
structured indeed. A more person-centered philosophy makes room for the
ebb and flow of activities respecting others. The ancient Hindus retained
what they regarded as the "privilege" of opting out of these activities for
exceptional individuals whose special gifts (and this included inclinations)
allowed them to leave aside normal social duties before they had been
through the traditional sequence of stages of life. The rest of humanity,
however, was in a sense "condemned not to be free," or at least constantly
reminded of the extent to which the world of getting and spending is ever
with us. There was also a concept of jivanmukti (freedom within this life)
which some systems made room for, but this was envisaged in terms of de-
tachment rather than anything else. The only route to moksha is through
dharma, since freedom is seen, on this view, not as a presupposition of
action but as the CUlmination of life. It requires a switch in thinking to be
able to regard freedom as in opposition to responsibility - freedom being
attained after responsibilities are over (on the extreme form of the theory
as against the jivanmukti form). This shows how different the Indian treat-
ment of freedom is from what we may be accustomed to in other philosoph-
ical traditions. It all springs from the conviction (or more properly. pre-
supposition, for it does not seem to have been radically questioned except
by the Carvakas and a few others whom orthodoxy probably suppressed)
that the wheel of facti city must revolve and that it is possible for man to
acquit himself creditably in the ascesis which ordinary living involves, but
that the ultimate desideratum could be a state of being where empiricality
would be completely overcome. There are branches of the Indian cluster of
philosophies, Jainism and Hinayana Buddhism, where the highest value is
placed on incorporeal existence, that is a state of being after the death
of the body. Hinduism at least had the merit of allowing the possibility of
liberation during one's lifetime. If one recasts the idea of detachment which
goes along with this as a near Stoic refusal to be overwhelmed by the dev-
astating effect of circumstances, one perhaps comes close to what the con-
cept might have meant in the life-world of a people who are distant in time
and whose way of life has in large part to be reconstructed imaginatively.
The theory of separate karmic lines prevented the Hindus from having an
"Atlas-complex" (seeing themselves as called upon to remedy the ills of the
world). But that very karma theory did not stand in the way of the Mahayana
Buddhist's compassionate concern to alleviate the suffering of humanity.
184 MARGARET CHATTERJEE
Dharma and moksha in fact are concepts which cannot really be divorced
from a host of other terms with which we cannot deal here. Among these
the self, karma, samsara, and Brahman are the most important. Dharma is
a concept which has much bearing on the way in which the empirical self,
which is particularistic, is distinguished from the Self seen in a transcen-
dent manner, that is, as identical with ultimate reality or Brahman. Not all
systems make this conflation. But the Vedantic way of thinking does, and it
is this approach which has perhaps been philosophically the most influential
in India to this day. Karma (which shares the root for the verb "to do")
is the law of action according to which whatever we do is retrospectively
conditioned and prospectively determinative. It is not as cast-iron and
deterministic a concept as it sounds, for it accommodates the presence of
unfulfilled potencies which permit lee-way for choice. If it were not so
there would have been no place for the concept of dharma which is clearly
concerned with what one ought to do. This part of the theory can well be
compared, for example, with Sartre's tandem affirmation of facticity and
freedom, of course just at the level of analogy. Samsara refers to the on-
going course of change to which human beings are subject in a chain of
births. It is a concept which in many ways takes the place of evil, for it
is seen as something which is inexorable, terrifying and yet challenging (if
all of these are mutually compatible). Dharma is really the mitigating factor
in a world governed by samsara, but from which moksha or liberation was
believed to be both desirable and possible. The ancient Hindus were deeply
conscious of the binding force of actions in the sense that whatever we do
affects both ourselves and others. This being "condemned not to be free" at
the empirical level is the form which finitude takes in Hindu thought. The
causes of this condition are further spelled out in terms of factors such as
cosmic ignorance and inordinate craving - the language varies. In any case
it is taken for granted that man is destined for something else in spite of
this vast cosmic trap, and this without benefit of a concept of an overriding.
Providence who has a design for each of His creatures.
It is this long-term prospect (which is the nearest to hope that one can
get to in Hindu thinking) that poses a problem regarding the relation be-
tween dharma and moksha. If moksha is what is valued supremely this seems
to relegate dharma to what is to be finally transcended, and this looks very
much like a philosophy of "beyond good and evil" which would give us pause.
We can move from this to certain other difficulties.
Dharma, as has been shown, is a cosmic principle of ontological status, a
principal of individual growth (svadharma, or one's own dharma which is
not a matter of choice but of discovery), and a regulative principle in the
face of our relations with others. The sources of dharma are not confined
to philosophical and legal texts, but also include customs, the habits of good
men and the conscience of the enlightened. The last of these sources is
especially relevant in modern times, when reformist thinkers like Mahatma
THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA 185
Gandhi have advocated a rethinking of dharma in order to bring about desir-
able changes in Hindu society. This is to say that the concept has been ap-
pealed to in recent times in order to justify change rather than to legitimize
the status quo. Purely secular thinkers, however, have doubted the wisdom
of invoking a concept which on the whole has had conservative connotations
and, in their view. is associated less with evaluating prevailing states of
affairs than with perpetuating them.
To what extent is dharma concerned with adjustment to a life of bondage
and to what extent does it take us beyond it? The answer may need to com-
bine both alternatives. In this respect once more we have an analogy with
other traditions which insist on the autonomy of the ethical and yet conceive
it as a path to the spiritual (if this unexamined distinction can be pardoned).
It certainly looks as if the concept of moksha takes us beyond the distinc-
tion of "is" and "ought" to being. but in the sense of being-beyond-good-
and-evil. And yet the liberated man is often referred to as one in whom the
sattvik (which can be variously translated as purity, goodness and the like)
and gUlJa (quality) prevails. Now the three gUlJas (the other two being rajas,
energy. and tamas, inertia) operate at the empirical level. It should be men-
tioned. however. that this way of putting it is more characteristic of the
Sankhya system than of any other. The "realized soul" according to the
Upanishads. is gw;wtlta (beyond the gw'}-as). The matter. of course. needs
to be taken historically (never an easy thing to do in inquiring into Indian
philosophy), noting the early connection of dharma with sacrifice in the
Vedic era. the later. less ritualistic ways of relating the temporal and the
eternal, and its use as a ground for questioning norms and values. Although
the etymological meaning of dharma is tied up with conservation4, insights
into what needs to be conserved evolve as time goes on. This shows the fer-
tility of a concept which. although avowedly referring to what transcends
space and time (what is sanatana or eternal). yet requires human agency
to manifest it. This can be restated something like this: the man of moral
integrity articUlates Being in his daily activities. This I believe to be an im-
portant insight in the context of relating authenticity both to adjudication
between possibilities and therein plumbing an ontological stratum which must
be accessible to us in some sense. clouded though our vision must needs
be. In other words, in Heideggerian terminology dharma (rather than the
"concept of dharma") straddles the ontological and the ontic.
The treatise which. to my mind, presents the whole question of the content
of dharma in the most poignant way is the epic Mahabharata. The Bhagavad
Cfta which is part of this. links up the imperturbability of the dharmik man
with faith in God. An element of grace enters what is otherwise rather a
Pelagian model. The argument of the CTta passes over what would strike us
today as a crucial matter, the role of individual conscience in situations
where prima facie duties seem otherwise to be clearly indicated. and pre-
sents bhakti (devotion) as the route to freedom. The medieval bhakti cults
186 MARGARET CHATTERJEE
expectedly had far less to say about dharma than, say, Manu did. More illu-
minating, in my view, is the stance taken by Yudhishthira in the Mahabhara-
ta, his realization that not only adharma (that which is contrary to dharma)
brings sorrow, but so also does dharma itself; this is a deeply paradoxical
insight for one who was said to be dharmarai (the king of dharma or dharma
incarnate). We reach here a central theme in all epic literature, the apparent
futility of human efforts, the devastation left behind after heroic deeds, the
terrible solitude of the one who enters fully into the infinite extent of human
suffering. The Mahabharata is believed to describe events which took place
around 1000 B.C. and was written somewhere between 200 B.C and A.D. 400.
The original was called Jaya, which means victory. Victory can be hollow
and apparent failure can be heroic. And this is but one of the many layers
of meaning that can be discovered in this striking work.
Another thing which the long history of the concept of dharma seems to
me to show is that the clogging effect of fact on human ethical endeavour
arises less from the bondage imposed by the physical world than from the in-
tractable nature of human institutions. Both the legalistic aspect of dharma
and its more general concern with the pattern of a life which is worth living
brings out the intransigent character of those structures which man has
made for himself. The structure of kingship and its responsibilities, familial
obligations, and other societal frameworks seem to get snarled up in such a
fashion that the path of duty is alternately unclear, hazardous, or, an even
deeper insight, productive of catastrophes unintended by the agents. And
yet the regulative function of dharma is inevitably mediated through institu-
tions. An epoch and a generation which struggles to recast institutions is in
a position to appreciate this. Even so, a modern critic will certainly react
against the non-egalitarian bias of some of the attendant concepts, the idea
of caste duties for example. The non-Hindu will find strange the notion of
duties being performed with an eye to the merit believed to be built up
thanks ~o proper performance. How was this concern for the accumulation
of good karmas reconciled with the advocacy of disinterestedness? Was it a
kind of Weltschmerz that gave rise to the stress on moksha by later Hindu
thinkers?
Whereas moksha was a concept reserved for some of the philosophical
systems it was the concept of dharma which retained its hold over popular
thought and practice. Almost every innovator in social thinking in the
modern era in India has appealed to dharma in the service of a critique of
social factuality. Under the influence of various liberating tendencies in
society, for example, it is commonly pronounced that caste is no longer
associated with dharma. On the other hand, it is only fair to grant that
dharma is also appealed to in defence of regressive positions.
In conclusion, to my mind the literature reveals not only a verite de cul-
ture but a verite de la condition humaine. It takes the form of a strangely
poignant grappling with the matters with which this volume is engaged - the
THE CONCEPT OF DHARMA 187
contrast between the facti city which enables and the facti city which em-
broils; the need for roots and the need for branches; the temptation to soar
beyond the values embodied in everyday life and seek an empyrean beyond
it. Here etymology is suggestive. The sphere of fire, the sun, was as potent
a symbol for the ancient Hindus as it was for the Greeks. What beckons is
a light which is blinding in its intensity. It is tapamya (the austerity which
sears) which leads us in this direction. In the meantime we are tried in the
refiner's fire - the daily round and common task - the realm of dharma.
Notes
1. Daya Krishna, Social philosophy, pp. 12-13.
2. Kama Si1tra, I, 1.
3. Loc. cit.
4. Cf. Abel Bengaigne, La religion Vedique d'apres les hymnes du Rig- Veda,
I II. Paris: 1963, p. 210.
Selected bibliography
Zaehner, R.C. Hinduism, Oxford: University Press, 1966, ch. 5.
Karve, Iravati Yuganta, Delhi: Orient Longman Ltd., 1974.
Banerjee, N. V. Studies in the dharmasastra of Manu, Delhi: Munshiram Ma-
noharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1980.
Swami Prabhavananda The spiritual heritage of India, London: George Allan
& Unwin, 1962; New York: Doubleday, 1964
Gonda, J. Les religions de l'Inde, Paris: Payot, 1962, pp. 344-357.
Radhakrishnan, S. Religion and society, London: George Allan & Unwin,
1947.
Mukherjee, Radhakamal The social structure of values, New Delhi: S. Chand,
1965.
Krishna, Daya Social philosophy: Past and future, Simla, Indian Institute of
Advanced Study, 1969.
See also bibliography appended to articles on this theme in Philosophy East
and West, Vol. XXII, no. 2, April 1982.
