पुरुषार्थाः
Puruṣārthas (Goals of Life)
The four goals — dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa — their hierarchy and interrelation.
73 paragraphs across 4 volumes
Volume I: Part I 2 paragraphs
1. Meaning of Dharma
Dharma is one of those Sanskrit words that defy all attempts at an exact rendering in English or any other tongue. That word has passed through several vicissitudeṣ The dictionaries set out various me...
Volume II: Part I 11 paragraphs
# CHAPTER I
THE TOPICS OF DHARMAŚĀSTRA
Manifold are the topics that have been included under dharmaśāstra from very ancient timeṣ The Dharma-sūtras of Gautama, Baudhāyana, Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha deal in greater or less detail principally w...
A glance at the above list will convince anyone how the conception of dharma was a far-reaching one, how it embraced the whole life of maṇ The writers on dharmaśāstra meant by dharma not a creed or re...
From this standpoint various divisions of dharma were suggesteḍ Dharma was divided into śrauta and smārta. The first comprised those rites and ceremonies with which the Vedic Saṁhitās and Brāhmaṇas we...
Before embarking upon any treatment of varṇas it would not be out of place to say a few words about dharmas common to all humanity. Our dharmaśāstra works do not enter into any subtle or detailed exam...
( Continued from last page ) this hypothesis in well-known works on Ethicṣ To expose the fallacies in Principal McKenzie's work would require a volume. But a few words must be said here. What particul...
The Mitākṣarā on Yāj. I. 1. remarks that *ahiṃsā* and other qualities are the dharmas common to all including even *cāṇḍālas*. The qualities are variously enumerated and emphasis is laid upon differen...
The foregoing discussion establishes that all dharmaśāstra writers attached the highest importance to moral qualities and enjoined them upon all with all the emphasis they could command; but as their...
Āryāvarta — One important question that is very much canvassed in works on dharmaśāstra is about the country or territory which should be called āryāvarta or which was a fit habitation for those who c...
All smṛti writers and commentators generally restrict themselves to the duties of varṇas and āśramas as practised in Āryāvarta or Bharatavarṣa, though in very rare cases (as in Yaj. II. 192) they prov...
Volume III 5 paragraphs
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY OF RĀJADHARMA AND THE ENDS OF THE STATE
In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to present a picture of the theory and practice of Government and state-craft as delineated by ancient and mediæval Indian writers on dharmaśāstra and a...
It may be asked : What in these days is the use of the study of the theory and practice of Government in ancient India? It may be argued that the world is now hoping, as promised by the great leaders...
At the end of this section on rājadharma, a question may be asked: what were the ends or purposes that the State in ancient India placed before itself or the dharmaśāstra and arthaśāstra writers said...
Volume V: Part II 55 paragraphs
Fundamental and leading characteristics of Hindu culture and civilization
It is necessary to gather together the threads scattered over six thousand pages of the History of Dharmaśāstra and to emphasize the fundamental and leading characteristics and conceptions of Hindu cu...
The words 'culture' and 'civilization' are used as synonyms by some writers, while some others regard them as quite distinguishable. These two are defined in various ways by scholarṣ A few definitions...
Dr. Tyler states (in 'Primitive Culture' vol I p. 1, Murray, London, 1871) 'Culture or civilization is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capab...
Prof. Toynbee in 'Civilizations on trial' (1948) states (p. 223) 'I mean by a civilization the smallest unit of historical study at which one arrives when one tries to understand the history of his ow...
Archibald Robertson (in 'Rationalism in theory and practice', London, 1954 p. 62) says "when we use the word 'civilization', we mean a society with enough command over nature to raise it above savager...
It is unnecessary to cite further definitionṣ We may accept any one of these for a working hypothesiṣ If a distinction is to be made between the two words, one may say that the word 'culture', being n...
During the last 6000 years of human history, several cultures and civilizations rose and fell. Spengler, a militarist and anti-rationalistic author, who does not rely on religion, morality or politics...
Among the numerous civilizations and cultures that flourished in the world there are only two ( namely, the Indian and the Chinese ) that have survived and kept up a continuity of tradition for four t...
This persistence of Indian culture and civilization for several millennia requires an explanation and a consideration of the fundamental conceptions, values and characteristics of that civilization wo...
During the last four or five hundred years the Western nations professing Christianity started on a career of conquest, exploitation of undeveloped countries and peoples, colonial empires, use of the...
Hinduism is a combination of many systems and religious ideologies including Vedic ritualism, Vedāntic thought, Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism, Śaktism and primeval cults, adapted to the requirements of differen...
Our cultural history shows some central features which may be mentioned in one place here. The first is that there has been an unbroken religious tradition from the Vedic times almost to the present d...
It makes one sad to find that not a single Hindu scholar resembling Alberuni came forward to inquire into the causes of the successful invasions of India by Mahmud of Gazni and later hordeṣ Intellectu...
We must now set out the important characteristics of Hindu culture and civilizatioṇ
**1. The most striking conception** even as early as the Ṛgveda is that there is only one Reality or Essence, in spite of the fact that people speak of it or worship it as Indra, Mitra, Varūṇa, Agni &...
conclusion that the individual self is non-different from the one Essence, that all manifoldness is only apparent, that even fishermen, slaves, gamblers and the inanimate world are non-different from...
The Upaniṣadic teaching is a universal doctrine in which all men of good will can meet and combine, in whatever religion they might have been brought up from their childhooḍ Many illustrations are add...
From very ancient Vedic times one of the fundamental conceptions of our Indian culture has been the idea of three spiritual and religious debts owed by a person to the sages, gods and pitṛs, which he...
Another set of values is contained in the conception of puruṣārthas ( ends or goals of human endeavour ) viz. Dharma ( right conduct ), Artha ( economics, politics and civics ), Kāma ( life of sex, of...
sake of life itself. Dharma is eternal, pleasure and pain are impermanent, the individual self is eternal, but the conditions (under which self works) are impermanent.' The Mahābhārata passages quoted...
Hindu thought on the three goals of human life came to this ‘do your duty, do not fall into temptations, perform duties for their own sake (Gītā II. 47, III. 19 ), do unto others as you would be done...
The 4th Puruṣārtha Mokṣa can be obtained only by a few. It is not a bow which every man or any man can make strung. It was a very difficult path like a razor's edge (Katha Up. III, 14), far more diffi...
VI. Varṇa and caste. The subject of the origin of varṇa classification, the caste system and the duties, privi- leges and disabilities of the four varṇas have been dealt with at length in the History...
A sort of caste system existed in several countries such as Persia, Rome and Japan, but it disappeared and had never attained the complexity of the Indian caste systeṃ
There are now several thousand castes and sub-castes in India. How they arose is, according to the present author, an insoluble probleṃ Sherring in ‘Hindu Tribes and Castes’ (1881, vol. III. p. 231 )...
It is well-known that at least from the 6th century B. C. H. D. 205 onwards India was being invaded by Persians, Kāmbojas,
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A very high ideal was placed before brāhmaṇas ( vide above pp 936–938 ). They were to study the Veda and its subsidiary lores as a duty ( to be discharged ), were to perform sacrifices and make gifts...
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his Autobiography (p. 432) pays in passing a tribute to the Brāhmaṇa ideal as follows: ‘But the West also brings an antidote to the evils of this cut-throat civilization – t...
It should not be forgotten that high spiritual life and mokṣa were not denied to the śūdra. It is true that the Pūrvamīmāṁsā denied to the śūdra the right to study the Veda and to perform Vedic sacrif...
The disappearance of the caste system, when it comes about, will not at all imply the disappearance or destruction of all that for which Hinduism has stood up during several millennia.
We should not be constantly harping on the caste system as the only or most basic cause of our downfall. The Moslems have no caste system and yet most of the Moslem countries in the world have been ba...
VI. Āśramas: Another important characteristic of our culture is the system of Āśramas, which have been in existence for certainly several centuries before the Christian era. The word Āśrama does not o...
The stage of sannyāsa or yati was highly honoured, because it was deemed to lead to mokṣa. The result was that many persons quite unfit to lead the life prescribed for a real sannyāsin only entered th...
The *varṇa* system classified the whole community and was addressed to people in the mass; the *Āśrama* theory addresses itself to the individuals in a community and maps out for them how they should...
VII. The doctrine of Karma and Punarjanma (transmigration or metempsychosis).
This is one of the most fundamental doctrines of the Hindu system of religion and philosophy and is unique in its own way, particularly in its long continuity and immense early literature. It has been...
VIII. Another important doctrine is that of *ahiṃsā*. So far as the Upaniṣads, Mahābhārata, Dharmaśāstras and Purāṇas are concerned the subject of *ahiṃsā* has been dealt with above in pp. 944-947 and...
It was only in Jainism that thoroughgoing ahimsā was preached and practiseḍ Buddha had no objection to eating flesh, provided the animal was not killed specially for doing him honour or treating hiṃ
IX. The three paths, viz. Karmamārga, Bhaktimārga and Jñānamārga. These have already been dealt with above in pp. 964-967, 1463. The Bhagavadgītā expounds the further doctrine of what is called niṣkām...
(XI) Vast Sanskrit literature. India produced a vast amount of Sanskrit literature of a most varied character for at least three thousand yearṣ There is no country in the world that can exhibit contin...
XII. Yoga : Yoga has been treated of above (pp. 1385–1462 ). In the whole world there exists hardly any well thought out and comprehensive system of psychical and moral discipline like Yoga. Mircea El...
XIII. Philosophy : The central point of much of our philosophy is contained in Chāndogyopaniṣad VI.1, where Uddālaka inquires of his conceited son Śvetaketu “Have you asked for that instruction by whi...
XIV. Artṣ Architecture, Sculpture, Painting:
Though the present author has travelled throughout India for over fifty years and seen most of the famous places rich in ancient architecture, sculpture and painting, he lays no claim to being a conno...
Among the most remarkable ancient monuments of India are the stūpa at Sāñchī, the paintings in the Ajantā caves, the Kailāsa temple at Ellora, and the Koṇārka
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Some of the Purāṇas contain information on the above topicṣ The Matsyapurāṇa (chap. 252. 2–4) names 18 expounders of Vāstuśāstra (architecture) such as Bhṛgu, Atri, Vasiṣṭha, Viśvakarmaṇ, Maya, Nārada...
Paintings—The only famous ancient paintings are those in the caves of Ajanta, in the Bagh caves in the former Gwalior State and those in the caves at Sigiriya in Ceyloṇ For reasons of space it is not...
Many modern works deal with all three viz. architecture sculpture and painting or with two of them or with one only Some important works are mentioned here: 1. E. B. Havell's 'Indian Sculpture and Pai...
South Indian Architecture and Sculpture has some peculiarities of its owṇ Some works thereon may be mentioned here viz. Dravidian Architecture by G. J. Dubreuil (1917), ‘Mahabalipuram’ by C. Śivaramam...
Besides, on music also several works have been written: ‘Music of Hindustan’ (Oxford 1914) by A. H. Fox Strangway, Alain Danielou’s ‘Northern Indian music’ vol. I and II (London, 1949, 1954), H. A. Po...
Indian architectonic and iconographic symbolism spread to Java, Bali and other parts of Indonesia and many works have been written on this subject such as 'Barabudur' (Java) by Paul Mus, G. Gorer's 'B...
A few more characteristics could have been mentioned; the present writer desists from adding them since the list is already a long one. It is not claimed that no other culture had or has these charact...