ಧಧಧ 1 MS 1.116; 10.130 (Cf
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CHAPTER THREE DHARMA Having discussed the intellectual and textual background to general conceptual area denoted by Zpad and related terms in chapter two, this chapter explores the other half of our key term, dharma, one of the more complicated concepts in the history of Indian ideas. The notion of dharma was deeply implicated in the intellectual struggles of the post-vedic to early classical period in ancient India, a period which sees the composition of the epics, the decline of the rauta sacrifice, the rise of the heterodox religions of Buddhism, Jainism and j- vikism, the beginnings of the various bhakti traditions, and the transi- tion from ‘Brhmaõism’ to something closer to what we understand today as ‘Hinduism’. Perhaps most intriguingly, it also sees the begin- ning and rapid growth of the dharma literature, an enormously sig- nificant event in the history of brhmaõic scholasticism. This chapter investigates the history of the word dharma in order to gauge the meaning and significance of the term through its develop- ment into one of the most important concepts in the brhmaõic and Hindu traditions. This analysis provides, firstly, a context in which to explain Yudhiùñhira’s conflict over dharma, especially as it manifests in the opening chapters of the P. This conflict, which is explored in chapter four, forms the narrative frame of the DhP. Secondly, it pro- vides a context in which to explain two related matters: the signifi- cance of the term dharma in the compound paddharma, and the sig- nificance behind the collecting together of a group of texts under the rubric ‘paddharmaparvan’. While on the one hand paddharma denotes behaviour that is in some way exceptional, on the other it also suggests that this behaviour is in some way legitimate. This sense of legitimacy is especially car- ried by the word dharma. The compound paddharma first appears in the MS and the Mbh.1 Its coining was an outcome of the rising signifi- ಧಧಧ 1 MS 1.116; 10.130 (cf. 9.56); Mbh 1.2.64, 198; 97.21, 26; 104.6; 146.26; 149.11; 2.69.19; 5.28.3; 154.6; 7.27.19; 12.80.8; 151.34, 262.18; 13.134.54. 82 CHAPTER THREE cance of the word dharma, a significance that led to it becoming one of the most important concepts in all Indian traditions, and that also led to a concomitant broadening of its application. The central and authoritative place dharma assumes within these traditions gave rise to a tendency for debates over appropriate forms of behaviour to be undertaken in terms of dharma and, accordingly, it became standard practice to accommodate a set of ideas to the concept of dharma. This chapter traces the development of dharma into this central and au- thoritative position. Section 3.1 surveys the development of what I shall refer to as the conservative brhmaõic concept of dharma that crystallised in the dharmastras. Section 3.2 explores challenges to this conservative model mounted by other traditions that we could loosely term ‘as- cetic’, challenges which would have a profound effect on brhmaõic conceptions of dharma already by the time of the MS. Section 3.3 dis- cusses the usage of dharma in the edicts of Aoka, because it repre- sents an important counterpoint to its usage in the brhmaõic tradition, and because it bears useful comparison to the way dharma is asso- ciated with Yudhiùñhira, since in both cases we can perceive the shap- ing influence of the new religious movements. The two usages of dharma traced here—what we might term the ‘conservative brh- maõic’ and the ‘ascetic’—became particularly important for the pres- entation of dharma, and Yudhiùñhira’s relationship to dharma, in the Mbh, a topic explored in the next chapter. 3.1 The origins of dharma: from dharman to dharma It is a curious but important fact that a certain self-consciousness in respect to dharma emerges quite late in the (brhmaõic) Indian tradi- tion. Prior to the period of the dharmastras, for example, there was little effort to describe what exactly dharma designates, though the word has a long history dating back to the »gveda, where it occurs in a slightly different form and with a somewhat different meaning. It has, indeed, become a cliché to evoke the near absence of discussions of dharma in the literature preceding the dharmastras.2 Sheldon Pol- ಧಧಧ 2 L. Renou, Le destin du Véda dans l’Inde = Études védiques et Põinéenes VI, Paris, 1960, pp.1-3, citing (p.3 n.3) M. Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996 (11958), p.27. .