THE WORD DHARMA comes of a verbal root dhr which means ‘to uphold,’ ‘to support,’ ‘to maintain.’ It may be defined as that conduct which is calculated to support life, to enrich life, to give meaning and value to life.
Life is a bilateral activity. Concern for life includes individual man on the one side and all the world on the other side. From this meaning flow specifically three principles:
(i) Care for Self-development: Dharma means that each being should be at his best in that particular quality or property which gives him a specific social value. Dharma is the characteristic virtue of a creature or of a thing: as heat is of fire, or salinity of salt, or as skill in measuring is in the mathematician or as scalpel proficiency in the surgeon. Dharma seeks excellence in each in his or her own distinctive faculty or field of service. This is the principle of individual Liberty or opportunity for the full expression of personality.
(ii) Care for the Development of Others: The expression of one’s individuality should not hinder, but help the similar development of all those with whom one may be associated. This means self-control side by side with self-development. This makes for Order (Vyavastha); and the principle of regulation is Justice (Nyaya). Liberty and justice are both implicit in Dharma.
(iii) Universalizing the Individual: Dharma sees all life as but one indivisible movement of inter-related cosmic forces. An All-transcending Spirit pervades the whole creation. Realizing this in one’s own personal experience, in every detail of life, is the highest of felicities for man. This requires his entire self-identification with all that is. That can only come from the cessation of his self-identification with the narrow self of the body and its divided and dividing interests. This ethic must reflect itself in the practice of universal fellow-feeling, brotherliness, compassion and loving kindness. These constitute the first steps in the soul’s pilgrimage towards its Eternal Home.
Dharma is thus individual life lived in harmony with life around us. It forms an approach to transworldly Reality through the footpaths of the world. It is the bridgeway connecting the temporal with the Eternal, the finite with the Infinite. Herein is seen the distinction of Manu’s Code from the other law books of the world.
Dharma is thus individual life lived in harmony with life around us. It forms an approach to transworldly Reality through the footpaths of the world. It is the bridgeway connecting the temporal with the Eternal, the finite with the Infinite. Herein is seen the distinction of Manu’s Code from the other law books of the world.
The very foundation of Manu differs as wholly from the others’ as spirit from the flesh. It would be manifestly erroneous to evaluate Manu by the same canons as are applied to Justinian or Gaius, Maine or Macaulay. Manu’s basic point of view is not theirs at all. He should be judged from the premises he set out.
The practical requirements of Dharma are classified under two heads, the Sadharana (Samanya) or General and the Vishesha or the Particular.
The General is universal morality and comprises righteousness, duty and benevolence. Manu specifies ten as the ingredients of Sadharana Dharma: (i) Self-possession, (ii) forbearance, (iii) bodily discipline, (iv) non-theft, (v) purity (of body and mind), (vi) sense-control, (vii) intellectual efficiency, (viii) learning and knowledge, (ix) devotion to truth and (x) non-anger — these ten are the characteristics of Dharma.
In another place, “Non-cruelty, loyalty to truth, non-stealing, purity and sense-control — these, said Manu, — are the gist of the law common to all the four varnas.”
The Particular Dharmas are those that are specific to each of the four varnas separately and to each of the four stations of a Dvija.
Manu comprehends both kinds of Dharma in his purview and also provides expiatory or purificatory ordinances for special occasions. The Code of Manu is not simply a treatise of personal ethics and duties of varnas and and inter-varna relationships. It is the sourcebook of civil law and canon-law. It is a manual of political economy and government. It is a handbook of etiquette and social decorum and a digest of the Hindu philosophy of life.
If we would do justice to it and derive guidance from it, it is a book which should engage the study of a body of scholars in jurisprudence, sociology, history and philosophy. Two or three scholars in each of these subjects should ideally devote themselves to studying these respective topics in the Manusmriti. Such an attempt will give us a re-evaluation of the work, which is sympathetic and independent, as viewed from the conditions of our time.
I DO NOT PROPOSE TO DEVOTE ANY TIME to the problems of its chronology and textual reading. Mahamahopadhyaya P. V. Kane in his monumental History of Dharmashastra furnish much useful information on those topics.
The legend in the Manusmriti declares that it is the Creator (Virat) who first composed the laws. He first taught them to his eldest son Manu; that Manu in his turn instructed his sons, Marichi and nine other sages; and that Bhrgu, one of those sons and sages, communicated the law finally to other sages in the form in which it has come down to us.
I am tempted to hazard an interpretation of the legend. Let us consider the two words ‘Manu’ and ‘Smrti.’ Manu is the knowing man — the wise man, because the verbal root ‘manu’ means ‘to understand.’
At an early stage in our civilization, there was an old man whose wisdom had come to be seen as such by his fellow-men. They therefore called him Manu, the Wise One. He was accepted as the patriarch, as the father of the civilisation. In a sense, all men are his progeny: Manujas or Manushyas or Manavas. And being the patriarch, he answered all their questions and gave shape to their conduct. The rulings he gave and the precedents he set were received by them as law. And those principles and precedents impressed themselves on the memories of the people of his time and were transmitted to their successors.
Memory is Smrti, and what comes from human memory (as distinguished from Shruti or heard revelation), is Smrti.
Manusmrti is thus the remembered precepts of the First Wise Man.
This Wise Man was perhaps a contemporary of the Rshis, who were the first direct hearers of the revelation (Shruti), because the Veda refers to Manu and his pronouncements. The society described in the Vedas is one having settled laws and rules. If the Vedas are the message of the Devatas, the rules thereunder are the handiwork of the First Man (Manu) speaking from his memory and through the memory of successive generations of men. Man, mind, morals — the three are correlatives, travelling together down the ages by the vehicle of memory. Such to my mind is the significance of the Manusmriti.
Manu was the first great elaborator and codifier of rules and usages which in the Vedic times had taken shape in the course of the life of the Vedic community. But these had not yet received the definiteness of form and the authority of finality that could come only from the hands of a great seer accepted as such by all.
To be continued
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