Study on the concept of dharma

K. SRINIVAS

This anthology of 19 well-researched articles examines the concept of dharma from semantic, cultural, and religious points of view. ‘Dharma’ is considered the fulcrum of Indian civilisation, since it is not affected by any linguistic, sectarian, or regional differences. The term itself is “untranslatable” for it has several connotations. Paul Horsch, in his article, attempts to examine the evolution of the term ‘dharma(n)’ from its Indo-Aryan origin to the position it occupies in the intellectual history of India, tracing the various phases it has gone through.

Place of dharma
Discussing the place of ‘dharman’ in the Rig Veda, Joel P. Brereton says the term is not considered central to the lexicon, although it occurs as many as 63 times. There are Indo-European parallels to ‘dharman.’ Its Iranian equivalent in old Persian is “remedy”, which is totally different from the Indo-Aryan conception. Patrick Olivelle, who looks at the semantic history of the term, concludes that “it is likely that dharma was part of the specialised vocabulary associated with royalty, especially because of its frequent use within the royal consecration (râjasûya).”

Rupert Gethin seeks to understand the concept of ‘dhamma’ (of early Buddhism) mentioned in the Nikâyas. He is of the view that it stands for something sublime, peaceful, subtle, and trans-rational. Collett Cox discusses how the term “dharma” is used in ‘Sarvastivada Abhidharma,’ highlighting its relationship with other terms such as bhâva, svabhâva, dravya, and svalaksana in the inter-traditional context. The Buddhist scholasticism shows that the concept is, at once, stable enough for any sectarian debate and elastic enough for further refinements.

In Jaina literature, Olle Qvarnström says, dharma is interpreted as virtuous behaviour, behaviour in accordance with intrinsic nature, and behaviour in terms of activity (pravritti) and non-activity (nivritti), and cosmic order. Richard W. Lariviere’s article titled “Dharmasastra, Custom, Real Law and Apocryphal ‘Smrtis’” attempts to establish that “the whole of dharma corpus can be viewed as a record of custom.” Albrecht Wezler maintains that, since dharma is the power of supporting the cosmos and sustaining life, it is a common feature in all ritual and socio-ethical spheres and, for that reason, the diachronic changes in custom and convention are often overlooked.

Dharma in Ramayana
John Brockington is of the opinion that, in the Ramayana, the meaning of dharma changes according to the attitudes of the “transmitters.” But, in a majority of cases, the term connotes a sense of propriety or morality. James Fitzgerald argues that, in the Mahabharata, the term is chiefly associated with action. Ashok Aklujkar examines the ramifications of dharma in terms of socio-linguistics of ancient India and of assumptions and predilections of current Indology by taking into account Patanjali’s Vyakarana-mahabhasya and Bartruhari’s Trikandi.

Johannes Bronkhorst explains how the expression ‘dharma’ is used in a variety of senses in the Indian philosophical systems in general and in the Visesika system in particular. How dharma is treated variously in the Mimamsa Sutras is discussed by Francis X Clooney, S.J. However, there is a reasonably well established definition which holds ‘dharma’ is an injunctive verbal force (codanâ), a Vedic “enactment” that has to be “judiciously implemented.” Taking a look at ‘dharma’ in the context of Appayya Dikshita’s discourse of the refutation of a unified knowledge system of the Purvamimamsa and the Uttaramimamsa, Sheldon Pollock tries to establish that both the Mimamsas accept that, in the mantra, the word ‘dharma’ is used only to refer to action whose end-result is perishable.

Donald R. Davis, Jr. argues that ‘dharma’ is derived not from the Vedic literature but from acâra. As a concept and idea, it is different from Dharmasastra, which contains the textual reflections on the concept of dharma. Dominik Wujastyk is of the view that Dharmasâstra not only regulates the conduct of individuals in society but also sets out the objectives of the traditional system of medicine, ayurveda.

Frank J. Korom examines the family resemblance between ‘ethnographic’ Dharmarâj and ‘textual’ Dharmarâj, although there is hardly any evidence to show that contemporary traditions have anything to do with medieval textual tradition. John Taber provides some invaluable reflections on William Halbfass’ study of Kumârila’s ahimsa and Dharma purely from the philosophical point of view. In an interesting article, Paul Hacker observes that Hinduism is the religion of Aryan cultural community and it is often denoted by the word ‘dharma,’ which encompasses all those practices that represent Aryan-ness.

The editor of this anthology, Patrick Olivelle, needs to be congratulated on having provided the posterity with a treasure of knowledge on the concept of dharma.

DHARMA — Studies in its Semantic, Cultural and Religious History:
Edited by Patrick Olivelle
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited
41, U.A. Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar
Delhi-110007.
Rs. 1195.

Book Review: The Madras School of Orientalism

Edited by Thomas R. Trautmann; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 875

The book is an anthology on Madras School of Orientalism (MSO), an expression the editor uses to designate the historical, cultural, and linguistic scholarship that accrued in the early 19th century Madras through the archival initiatives by Colin Mackenzie and the academic interaction between a scholarly team of Indian teachers and a body of civil servants led by F.W. Ellis around the College of Fort St. George. The author delineates the MSO as a distinct intellectual out put, which embodied modernity that “cast the record of the past into new moulds and prepared it for a new future.”Biographical account

The anthology has 12 essays grouped under four heads: projects; Indian intellectuals; language in south India; and objects of study. Of the first three essays under ‘projects’, two are on Colin Mackenzie — one by Nicholas Dirks and the other by Jennifer Howes. The third is by Sylvia Vatuk on ‘Islamic learning at the College.’ Dirks provides an excellent, even if brief, intellectual biographical account of the Mackenzie archive. For her part, Howes gives an intimate reading of Mackenzie’s explorations of Mahabalipuram and adjacent villages, drawing, incidentally, on the relationship between Mackenzie and Ellis. Vatuk’s essay is outstanding for its analysis of the largely self-contained Islamic scholarship centred on the court of the Nawab of Arcot that supplied Persian, Urdu, and Hindi teachers to the College in the British Madras as a participant in the MSO process.

The second section, on “Indian intellectuals,” consists of four essays. The first by A.R. Venkatachalapathy on the Tamil headmasters at the College of Fort St. George is significant for the convincing argument that the practice of hiring Pandaram and Vellala headmasters by the College was a deliberate attempt to make brahminical texts of Hindu law accessible to non-brahmin pleaders.

The next is by R.S. Mantena on the intellectual life in early colonial Madras. The third, by Lisa Mitchell, is on “enquiries, points, and poets in the construction of knowledge and power in early 19th century southern India.” And the last is by P.B. Wagoner on the “Mackenzie collection and later Telugu literary historiography.” Like Wagoner, Mantena has made a good assessment of the contributions of the Kavali brothers — Mackenzie’s leading assistants as history gatherers — to the intellectual life of British Madras. Wagoner develops on the Mackenzie collection— “often viewed as if it were a natural outgrowth of the survey of Mysore Wars by the military engineer and surveyor Colin Mackenzie” — as “a large, complex, and now scattered archive of texts relating to the history of South India, divided mainly between London and Chennai.” Tamil philology

The third section comprises two essays dealing with the substance of the knowledge produced — of the south Indian languages at the outset, and then of other objects of study such as law, religion, and land. The first one by B. Raman dealing with Tamil Munshis and Kacceri (cutcheri) Tamil under the Company’s Document Raj in early 19th century Madras; and the other is by S. Ebeling, looking at the College of Fort St. George and the transformation of Tamil philology during the 19th century. Raman argues that the Document Raj turned into a rupture with the traditional mode of accounting and record-keeping. Ebeling’s essay seeks to determine the nature of the extensive changes that came about in Tamil philology in the wake of the introduction of printing technology and allied instituted practices.

The last section has three essays: one by L.C. Orr on “Orientalists, Missionaries, and Jains”; another by D.R. Davis Jr on the “MSO and Hindu Law”; and the third by T.R. Trautmann, editor of this volume, on the “Riot over Ryotwari.” Orr shows how the MSO entertained new ways of looking at the history of religion in south India, in the light of Tamil classics and Jainism. Davis recounts ‘the tale of two cities,’ Calcutta and Madras, showing the former paradigmatically dissolving into the latter.

In his brilliant essay, Trautmann discusses the massive but unsuccessful struggle against the imposition of Munro’s Ryotwari system of direct tax on the individual farmer. As the editor himself says — justifiably so — what the book “at the most basic level” demonstrates is that “the MSO contributed greatly to the formation of an improved knowledge of South Indian history, language and literature, law, and religion, extending the body of new knowledge that emanated from Calcutta, as it concerned the South.” One wonders how Edward Said and anthropologists of “the crisis of representation” would have reacted to this work.

Courtecy: The Hindu