On the Sources of Dharma
On the Sources of Dharma
When people criticise Hinduism for what the Dharmasashtras may say, they genuinely think that Dharmashastras function like Sharia, though the closest Islamic equivalent is Firqh, or jurisprudence within the human realm as opposed to the divine realm. For this article we must understand what exactly Dharma is, how our sacred texts function, and what that means for the understanding of Dharma across time,place, and circumstances. We will assume the infallibility of the Vedas, and also see where we can reject certain Smriti injunctions if logic dictates it be.
What is Dharma?
Dharma is often translated as “duty”, “law”, or “righteous action”, but the truth is that Dharma is an untranslatable term, meaning you have no exact English equivalent. So we have to go to the basics. In the Vedic texts, we have a concept of Rta, meaning Cosmic Order. The Sun shines because of this Rta, and the animals eat and get eaten because of Rta. Earthquakes happen because of Rta. Dharma loosely is the sum total of actions, duties, and tendencies that beings are to do that are in harmony with order, or Rta. The definition is vague,
The Jaimini Sutras 1.1.2 however constrain the definition of Dharma as “चोदनालक्षणोर्थो धर्मः”, or “Dharma is whose purposes (the essence of happiness) is with the qualities of the commands”, or whatever authoritative commands the sacred texts have, that is Dharma….
The Mahabharata Karna parva 69:58 says
“dhāraṇāddharmamityāhurdharmo dhārayati prajāḥ |
yaḥ syāddhāraṇasaṃyuktaḥ sa dharma iti niścayaḥ ”
“ ‘Dharma is from sustenance’ , so they said. Dharma makes the people sustain (themselves). That which may be enjoyed for sustenance, that resolve/purpose is (known as) Dharma”
(https://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/mahabharata-sanskrit/d/doc1010438.html)
Sources of Dharma
The question arises how do we know what actions are Dharmic or morally right, which sustain the people. For that our ancient scholars have listed the following Sources of Dharma.
As per Manu 2.6:
“वेदोऽखिलो धर्ममूलं स्मृतिशीले च तद्विदाम् ।
आचारश्चैव साधूनामात्मनस्तुष्टिरेव च ॥ ६ ॥
vedo'khilo dharmamūlaṃ smṛtiśīle ca tadvidām |
ācāraścaiva sādhūnāmātmanastuṣṭireva ca || 6 ||”
“The entire Veda is the root-source of Dharma; also the Conscientious Recollection of righteous persons versed in the Veda, the Practice of Good (and learned) Men, and their self-satisfaction.”
Shruti - Vedic Texts
Smriti - Smriti texts and or traditions
Acara - practices of cultured men
AtmanastuSTi - agreeable to one’s self.
As per Medhatithi and Jaimini, when contradictions occur, the Shruti takes priority over Smriti, which inturn takes priority over Acara. By extrapolation, we can also conclude that the authority of the source of Dharma goes down as you go down.
Now also per Medhatithi and Jaimini (whom Medhatithi refers to), Smritis are based on the Veda,and any injunction they have (regarding Vedic rituals) are backed up by a Vedic text, and if there is no Vedic passage to back up a Smriti statement, then it is assumed that the relevant Vedic passage is from a lost Recession. This applies to Dharma regarding Vedic Rituals.
Moreover, on account of Manu, Gautama, and such sages being deemed trustworthy and respectable, we treat their Smritis almost as if they are the Vedas themselves. This is Medhatithi’s opinion, but Jaimini departs from this.
On the Vedangas, Kalpa Sutras and the Dharmashastras
Let us cover what Vedanga is first. Vedanga is the “Limbs of the Vedas” and are auxiliary texts to the main Shruti texts. They are Smriti. They are not a part of the Vedas though they are associated with them in the sense that they provide the tools for the use of the Vedas.
There are 6 Vedangas:
Shiksha:Phonology and pronunciation. They are to teach how to pronounce the mantras in the Vedic texts.
Chandas: Prosody, or the study of poetic metres, and is focused on how the Vedic texts are to be recited or sung and how the poetic metres work.
Vyakarana: Grammar, the study of Sanskrit grammar, namely used to analyse the Vedic texts.
Nirukta: Etymology, the study of the meanings and etymology of Sanskrit words, used to establish what each word in the vedic texts mean.
Kalpa: Proper Instructions. These focus on how to actually conduct the Vedic rituals that involve a person’s life from birth to death.
Jyotisha: Astronomy and Astrology, the study of which is to serve as aid for time keeping, as rituals must be done at a certain time and even under certain astronomical conditions.
Kalpa Sutras
Now that is established, let us move on the the Kalpa Sutras. The Kalpa Sutras are also called Prayoga Shastra. These are prose texts written as aphorism by different authors (sages) who belong to different Vedic recensions.
It is these texts that tell you what rituals a person can do or is supposed to do, how to do it, when to do it.
This includes stuff from how to construct a fire altar to what sacraments a man from various Varnas must undergo.
They also contain guides on what Dharma is.
The Kalpa Sutras (Prayoga Shastra) can be divided into the following:
Shrauta Sutras: How to perform Vedic rituals and how to use the Vedic texts in context of a ritual.
Sulba Sutras: These are on how to make a fire altar and such. They contain some of India's earliest geometrical knowledge. The Baudhayana Sulba Sutra contains a statement of the Pythagorean Theorem.
Grihya Sutras: These are on Vedic rituals in the domestic sphere, such as sacraments of birth, study, marriage, death, and funerals.
Dharmasutras: These are the infamous treatise on Dharma, or morality, ethics, etc. As per modern scholarship, the later Dharmasashtras are based on these older Dharmasutras.
Of these, the first 3 date before the Buddha, and the last one, i.e. the Dharmasutras, date after the Buddha. The Dharmasutras are said to be subject to alterations. For example, scholars George Bühler and P.V. Kane says the last 2 books of the Baudhayana Dharmasutra are of a later date than the first 2.
By contrast to the Dharmasutras the Dharmashastra, like Manusmriti or Yajnavalkya Smriti are metrical texts and date to the early centuries of the common era as per modern scholarship, and furthermore are said to base themselves on the older Dharmasutra literature. It may be possible that the latter part of the Dharmasutras are based on the Dharmashastras.
How the Vedic and Smriti texts Function
The statements of Shruti or Smriti that enjoin Dharma are called Vidhi, or injunctions. Statements that sound like hyperboles or have no clear purpose are Arthavadas, and are meant to supplement the Vidhis. Stories about the gods or people are also type of Arthavada that enjoin or deprecate a ritual or simply highlight an aspect of reality. For example, if it is said that Indra performed a certain Yajna, it doesn;t matter if that actually happened, all that is meant is that one should perform that Yajna. Likewise, Indra is said to have deposited his sin of killing a Brahmin upon bubbling water and for that bubbling water is to be avoided. The story doesn;t have to be true or sensible, all that is meant is that bubbling water (from stagnant water bodies) is something to be avoided as it can cause disease (due to bacteria).
Now, in a previous blog post, I added my own hermeneutical principles that will aid us in analysing the Hindu texts: https://bharatasamskriti.blogspot.com/2024/03/new-hermeneutical-principles-for.html
The Elusive Nature of Dharma
Before we continue, we have to make it clear that understanding of what is Dharma may truly never be known, for it is as if the true Dharma is tucked away in a cave. Sages have to study the scriptures and use their intellect to understand what Dharma may be.
There is a passage in the Mahābhārata, Vana-parva 313.117 quoted in the Madhya Lila 25.57:
“tarko ’pratiṣṭhaḥ śrutayo vibhinnā nāsāv ṛṣir yasya mataṁ na bhinnam dharmasya tattvaṁ nihitaṁ guhāyāṁ mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ”
“Logic is unstable, the Shrutis are divided, there is not a Sage whose belief is not different. The (true) meaning of Dharma is hidden in a cave. That by which great folk have undergone (to Dharma) is the path”
Means of Understanding
To analyse the sacred texts, we have to use the Six Pramanas, or means of obtaining knowledge. Usually these are used in philosophy and science, but can be applied to hermeneutics. They are:
Śabda (Vedic reference)
Pratyakṣa (perception)
Anumāṇa (inference)
Upamāṇa (comparison, analogy)
Arthāpatti (postulation, presumption)
Anupalabdhi, Abhava (non-perception)
With the exception of Shabda, the authoritativeness diminishes as you go down. For example, inference is more fallible than direct perception. Regarding Shabda, the infallibility is only for matters not perceivable by the 6 senses.
Authoritativeness of the Sacred Texts
The Shabda Pramana, or Scriptural testimony, usually shruti, but also Smriti declarations based upon the Vedas, are authoritative and infallible regarding the Apruva, or unseen/unprecedented matters, when they don’t contradict Direct Perception.
Under the Vedanta Sutras (Brahma Sutras):
In cases of Scripture conflicting with Perception, Scripture is not stronger. The True cannot be known through the Untrue.
With reference to the assertion (p. 24 ff.) that Perception, which depends on the view of plurality, is based on some defect and hence admits of being otherwise accounted for--whence it follows that it is sublated by Scripture; we ask you to point out what defect it is on which Perception is based and may hence be accounted for otherwise.--' The beginningless imagination of difference' we expect you to reply.--But, we ask in return, have you then come to know by some other means that this beginningless imagination of difference, acting in a manner analogous to that of certain defects of vision, is really the cause of an altogether perverse view of things?--If you reply that this is known just from the fact that Perception is in conflict with Scripture, we point out that you are reasoning in a circle: you prove the defectiveness of the imagination of plurality through the fact that Scripture tells us about a substance devoid of all difference; and at the same time you prove the latter point through the former. Moreover, if Perception gives rise to perverse cognition because it is based on the imagination of plurality, Scripture also is in no better case--for it is based on the very same view.--If against this you urge that Scripture, although based on a defect, yet sublates Perception in so far as it is the cause of a cognition which dispels all plurality apprehended through Perception, and thus is later in order than Perception; we rejoin that the defectiveness of the foundation of Scripture having once been recognised, the circumstance of its being later is of no avail. For if a man is afraid of a rope which he mistakes for a snake his fear does not come to an end because another man, whom he considers to be in error himself, tells him 'This is no snake, do not be afraid.' And that Scripture is founded on something defective is known at the very time of hearing Scripture, for the reflection (which follows on hearing) consists in repeated attempts to cognise the oneness of Brahman--a cognition which is destructive of all the plurality apprehended
(https://sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe48/sbe48025.htm)
Likewise Shankaracharya said in his Gita Bhashya, commenting under Bhagavad Gita 18.66:
“The appeal to the infallibility of the Vedic injunction is misconceived. The infallibility in question refers only to the unseen forces or apurva, and is admissible only in regards to matters not confined to the sphere of direct perceptions, etc. ..... Even a hundred statements of sruti to the effect that fire is cold and non-luminous won't prove valid [because no one can cognise what contradicts perception]. If it does make such a statement, its import will have to be interpreted differently. Otherwise, validity won't attach to it. Nothing in conflict with the means of valid cognition or with its own statements may be imputed to sruti.”
So these texts have authority when it comes to stuff like Vedic Rituals where whether these rituals work cannot be concluded from other means of knowledge but verbal testimony. In other words, the Ashtaka sacrifice is said to bring eternal merit, but we have no way of verifying that with perception, inference, etc. and thus we have to rely on the Vedic statement that that is the case.
These texts, however, don’t have authority on things like whether the Earth is flat or round, as this issue is easily resolved through perception and inference (astronauts saw the earth as a sphere and we can infer it from the pole star changing angles as you change latitude). Hence you can’t debunk Hinduism by finding scientific errors in the scriptures, moreso as the scriptures aren’t considered science books.
Non Authority of Worldly Motives
Here non-authority means non-binding. The vedic injunctions are binding in that we have to follow it whether we like it or not, but Smriti texts are not like that. In contrast to views that the Smritis are as infallible as the Vedas, there are times where we can reject a Smriti injunction. That is when they are motivated by some logic as opposed to being derived from injunctions found in the Vedic texts.
Jaimini Mimamsa Sutras 1.3.4 says: “हेतुदर्शनात् च्”, which, while translated as “and from worldly motive”, means “...and from view of (logical) reason”. The commenters like Shabara cite a Smriti injunction saying that an Adhvayu priest takes a cloth after doing Vaisarjana Homa. They believe that not only does this contradict a Vedic text, but they posit that this injunction originated because a greedy priest found it fancible to take the cloth, and because they could ascribe a tangible reason, the injunction is not authoritative.
Infact, Medhatithi under Manu 2,6 elaborates on this by saying that some Smriti texts, such as Manu 2.6 itself is, can be based on logic as opposed to vedic statements:
“The whole of the present section therefore is based on purely logical facts, and not on the Veda, in other cases also,—e.g., in the case of Smṛtis dealing with law-suits, &c.—what is propounded is based upon logic, as we shall show later on, as occasion arises. How the performance of the Aṣṭakā, etc., is based upon the Veda we shall show in the present context itself.”
Moreover, Medhaothi notes that when Smriti injunctions are based on perceptible reasons, they carry no force
Medatithi says the following on injunctions based on perceptible and imperceptible reasons. Under Manu 3.11:
“In the whole of this section on Marriage, wherever the prohibition is not based upon grounds that are not perceptible—e.g., ‘one should marry a maiden who is not his father’s sapiṇḍa,’ etc., (when the grounds of interdiction are trascendental, not perceptible, as in the case of the prohibition of marriage with a diseased girl, etc.),—if the prohibition is disobeyed, the ‘marriage’ itself remains unaccomplished. Hence, if one happens to marry a girl belonging to the same gotra as himself, the marriage, even though performed, would be as good as not performed; and this for the simple reason that the character of ‘marriage’ is determined by scriptural injunction,...”
“As regards the prohibition of marriage with girls belonging to families that may have dropped the sacred rites and so forth,—it is based upon perceptible grounds; and, hence, when such girls are married, the ‘marriage’ is duly accomplished, the girl actually becomes the man’s ‘wife,’ and she shall not be given up. It is in view of this fact that in verse 6, we have the laudatory epithet ‘even though they be great,’ which draws a line of distinction between the two sets of prohibitions. Such also is the custom among all cultured people: they do occasionally marry girls ‘with tawny hair,’ etc., but never one that belongs to the same gotra.”
This brings us to another point. Sashtras like the Kalpa Sutras or Prayoga Shastra is cited as an example of texts that are NOT infallible.
Jamini Mimamsa Sutras 1.3.11-14:
11. प्रयोगशास्त्रम् इति : “If thus (you cite) the Prayoga Sashtra”
- The opponent says these are authoritative as they are made by Rishis who are dealing with sacrifices.
12. न असन्नियमात्: “Not so, from the lack of accents”
- These texts can’t be comparable to the Vedic texts as they don’t even have the accents (svaras) charecterisitc of the Vedic texts.
13. अवाक्यशेषात् च: “And from the non being a supplement to a declaration (of a text)”.
- The Smritis like Kalpa Sutras aren;t a supplement to a certain Vedic text, nor are they a supplement to a particular set of shlokas of a Vedic texts.
14. सर्वत्र च प्रयोगात् सन्निधानशास्त्रात् च: “And from their applicability everywhere and from being a compilation shastra:
- These texts are holistic in regards to their approach to the sacrifices. They are mere compilations. Besides, some commenters cite contradictions between such texts as proof that they are not infallible.
यान्यस्माकं सुचरितानि । तानि त्वयोपास्यानि । नो इतराणि ॥ ६ ॥
yānyanavadyāni karmāṇi | tāni sevitavyāni | no itarāṇi || 5 ||
yānyasmākaṃ sucaritāni | tāni tvayopāsyāni | no itarāṇi || 6 ||
5. What works are free from fault, they should be resorted to, not others,
6. What are good works of ours, they should be done, not others”
Comments
Post a Comment