As an example of the kind of idea that is apt to cause confu sion in the minds of Western people, through the absence of any equivalent term in their own vocabulary, one might cite the con ception denoted by the Sanskrit word dharma;1 orientalists have certainly proposed any number of translations for the word, but most of these are only rough approximations or even completely erroneous, owing as usual to the confusion of points of view we have alluded to before. Thus, attempts are sometimes made to translate dharma by “religion”, though the religious point of view is here quite inapplicable; furthermore, it should at the same time be realized that it is not the conception of a doctrine, wrongly sup posed to be religious, that this word properly designates. On the other hand, if it be a question of the accomplishment of rites, which likewise are not religious in character, these are described in their entirety by the word karma, the general meaning of which is “action”, but which is here taken in a special and, as it were, techni cal sense. For those who wish at all costs to see a religion in the Hindu tradition, there would still remain what they believe to be a moral aspect, and it is this more especially that they would call dharma; hence, according to circumstances, several more or less secondary interpretations have arisen, such as “virtue”, “justice”, “merit”, and “duty”, all of which are in fact exclusively moral ideas and for this very reason do not in any way express the idea in ques tion. The moral point of view, apart from which these ideas have no meaning, does not belong to India; we have already sufficiently insisted on this point, and we have even observed that Buddhism, which alone might perhaps have been thought likely to introduce it, never made any such advance along the path of sentimentality. Fur thermore, we may note in passing that these same ideas are not all equally essential to the moral point of view itself; that is to say, there are some of them which are not common to all moral conceptions: for example, the idea of duty or obligation is absent from most ancient codes of morality, among others from that of the Stoics, and it is only recently, and especially since Kant, that it has come to play such a preponderant part. An important thing to notice in this connection, since it is one of the most frequent sources of error, is that ideas or points of view which have become habitual tend for that very reason to appear essential; that is why attempts are made to introduce them into the interpretation of every kind of concep tion, even those most remote in time or space, although there would often be no need to go back very far to discover their real source.
Having said this much by way of dealing with the false interpretations most commonly met with, we will try to show as clearly as possible what should really be understood by dharma. As the mean ing of the verbal root dhri, from which it is derived, indicates, this word, in its most general sense, simply denotes “manner of being”; it is, so to speak, the essential nature of a being, comprising the sum of its particular qualities or characteristics, and determining, by vir tue of the tendencies or dispositions it implies, the manner in which this being will conduct itself, either in a general way or in relation to each particular circumstance. The same idea may be applied, not only to a single being, but also to an organized collectivity, to a spe cies, to all the beings included in a cosmic cycle or state of existence, or even to the whole order of the Universe; at one level or another, then, it signifies conformity with the essential nature of beings, which is realized in the ordered hierarchy where all beings have their place, and it is also, in consequence, the fundamental equilib rium or integral harmony resulting from this hierarchical disposi tion, which is moreover precisely what the idea of “justice” amounts to when stripped of its specifically moral character.
Considered in this way, as a principle of order and therefore as an inherent organization and disposition either of a being or group of beings, dharma may in one sense be regarded as opposed to karma, which is simply the action by which this disposition will be manifested outwardly, always provided the action is normal, or in other words provided it conforms to the nature of beings and the states of existence to which they belong, and to the relationships arising in consequence. Under these circumstances, that which is adharma, or contrary to dharma, is not “sin” in the theological sense of the word, neither is it “evil” in the moral sense, since both these ideas are equally foreign to the Hindu mind; it is simply “non-conformity” with the nature of beings, disequilibrium, a rupture of harmony, a destruction or upsetting of hierarchical relations. Without doubt, in the universal order, the sum total of all particular disequilibriums always goes to make up the total equilibrium, which nothing can destroy; but at each point regarded separately and by itself, disequi librium is both possible and conceivable, and whether it occurs in the social sphere or elsewhere, there is absolutely no need to attribute to it anything of a moral character when defining it as something that is contrary, within its own sphere, to the “law of har mony” that governs at the same time both the cosmic and the human orders. The meaning of “law” being thus defined, and, care being taken to distinguish it from all the particular and derivative applications to which it can give rise, we may accept the word “law” as a translation of dharma, no doubt an imperfect one, but less inexact than other terms borrowed from Western languages; it must be emphasized once more, however, that it is not a moral law that is here in question; while the notions of scientific law and social or juridical law, even by definition, only refer to special cases.
The “law” may by an analogical transposition be regarded in principle as a “universal will”, which however does not allow anything personal to subsist in the conception, nor, for still stronger reasons, anything anthropomorphic. The expression of this will in each state of manifested existence is called Prajāpati or the “Lord of produced beings”; and in each particular cosmic cycle this same will manifests itself as the Manu who gives the cycle its proper law. Manu should not therefore be taken for the name of a mythical, legendary, or his torical personage; it is properly speaking the name of a principle, which can be defined, in accordance with the meaning of the verbal root manas, as “cosmic intelligence” or “thought reflecting the uni versal order”. On the other hand, this principle is also regarded as the prototype of man, who is called manava insofar as he is consid ered essentially as a “thinking being”, characterized by the possession of manas, the mental or rational faculty; the concept of Manu is therefore equivalent, at least in certain respects, to what other tradi tions, notably the Hebrew Kabbalah and Islamic esoterism, refer to as Universal Man, or what Taoism calls “the King”. We have seen pre viously that the name Vyāsa does not denote a man but a function; in that case, however, the function is in a general way an historical one, while Manu represents a cosmic function which can only become historical when specially applied to the social order, but without this in itself presupposing any kind of “personification”. In fact, the law of Manu, for any cycle or collectivity whatsoever, is nothing else but the observance of the natural hierarchical relations existing between the beings subject to the special conditions of that cycle or collectivity, together with the whole body of precepts nor mally pertaining thereunto. We do not propose to dwell here on the subject of cosmic cycles,2 especially as rather lengthy explanations would be necessary to make the theory plainly intelligible; we will simply point out that the connection between them is not chrono logical but logical and causal, each cycle being determined in its entirety by the preceding cycle and determining in its turn the following one, through a continuous production governed by the “law of harmony” which establishes the fundamental analogy between all the modes of universal manifestation.
When it comes to applying it to the social sphere, the “law”, which then takes on its specifically juridical sense, may be formulated in a shāstra or code, which, insofar as it expresses the “cosmic will” at that particular level, is referred to Manu, or, more precisely, to the Manu of the actual cycle; but it is evident that this attribution does not make Manu the author of the shāstra, at least not in the ordinary sense in which something purely human is said to be the work of such or such an author. Here again, as in the case of the Vedic texts, there is no definitely assignable historical origin, and indeed, as we have already explained, the question of such an origin is of no consequence from the doctrinal point of view. However, an important distinction is to be noted between the two cases: while the Vedic texts are described by the term shruti, as being the fruit of direct inspiration, the dharma-shāstra only belongs to the class of tradi tional writings called smriti, the authority of which is of a less fun damental character; among the writings of this class are also included the Purāna s and the Itihāsa s, which Western scholars take to be mythological or epic poems only, having failed to grasp the profound symbolism that makes of them something quite other than “literature” in the ordinary sense of the word. Fundamentally, the distinction between shruti and smriti is equivalent to that between pure and direct intellectual intuition on the one hand, and reflected consciousness of the rational order on the other hand, the former applying exclusively to the domain of metaphysical princi ples, the latter exercising itself upon objects of knowledge in the individual sphere, as must necessarily be the case where social or other applications are in question. Despite this, the traditional authority of the dharma-shāstra does not in any way derive from the human authors whose task it has been to formulate it, doubtless orally at first and later on in writing, and that is why these writers have remained unknown and unidentified; its authority derives exclusively from the fact that it represents a true expression of the law of Manu, that is to say from its conformity with the natural order of the existences it is destined to govern.
1 See Studies in Hinduism, chap. 5. ED
2 SeeTraditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles, pt. 1, chap. 1. ED