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| Dr. Bibek Debroy |
Dharma, Artha, Kāma, Mokṣa returns in a new avatar. And as becomes an avatar, it has a mission. The column will feed into a book planned by Bibek Debroy. He invites you to be part of this process - a truly exciting opportunity. Read the columns meaningfully, share your opinions, comment, feedback. Engaging with this column makes you part of the creation of Bibek's book - a unique opportunity indeed! Interact with Bibek on Twitter @bibekdebroy and/or leave a comment on the blog.
After a break, dharma, artha, kama, moksha is back under a different garb. But there is a background I need to explain. I am writing a book on “artha”. This is work in progress and these are bits and pieces from that. Hence, two requests. First, since this work in progress, give me feedback and comments. That will make the book better. Second, please do not look at one DAKM in isolation. It is a series (from the planned book) and needs to be looked at through that lens of continuity.
कर्मण्यवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। This is a famous shloka from the Bhagavad Gita. “You indeed have a right to the action, never to the fruits.” In advancing a proposition that Hinduism is concerned more about the world hereafter and is concerned relatively less with material prosperity in the present world, this shloka is also cited.[1] If the fruits are irrelevant, why should I be motivated to do anything? Why should I try to improve my material prosperity? Let me instead focus on the world hereafter. It so happens that this is not a shloka from the Bhagavad Gita, it is half of a shloka, from shloka 2.47, the 47th shloka in the 2nd Chapter. The remaining half of the shloka, often not quoted, is as follows. मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गः अस्त्वकर्मणि। “Never should action originate because of the fruits. Nor should you be attached to lack of action.” With both halves of the shloka taken together, one forms a slightly different impression. In discussing Hinduism, with its immensely huge corpus, and attitudes of Hinduism towards specific topics, one must therefore be careful in quoting selectively. What’s the point of quoting half a shloka, without considering the rest of the Bhagavad Gita? How can one quote from a text, ignoring the context of who it was composed for and by whom? Not to speak of issues about when it was composed.
The word वर्ग (varga) means category or class. Used in the sense of an objective or purpose, the three objectives or vargas of human existence are धर्म (dharma), अर्थ (artha) and काम (kama). These are पुरूषार्थs (purusharthas), the objectives of human exertion. Strictly speaking, there are four purusharthas, not three - the fourth being मोक्ष (moksha). Moksha can be translated as emancipation, liberation, freedom, release. There are eighteen पर्वs (parvas) in the Mahabharata. In this context, the word parva means part or section. One of the longest of these 18 parvas is Shanti Parva, the section that is about peace. Bhishma hasn’t yet died. He is lying down on the bed of arrows and Shanti Parva, and the subsequent Anushasana Parva, constitute his teachings to Yudhishthira and his brothers. A sub-section in Shanti Parva is titled Moksha-Dharma-Parva, Chapters 168-353 in the Critical Edition.[2]
In this sub-section, there is a conversation between Krishna Dvaipayana Vedavyasa and his son, Shuka, where Shuka asks his father and preceptor about moksha. This is what Vedavyasa says. “A being is bound down through deeds and is freed through knowledge..…However, a person who obtains knowledge reaches the spot where there is no reason to grieve. Once one goes there, one does not die. Once one goes there, one is not born. Once one goes there, one does not decay. Once one goes there, one does not increase.” In Sanskrit, the last two sentences are as follows. यत्र गत्वा न म्रियते यत्र गत्वा न जायते। न जीर्यते यत्र गत्वा यत्र गत्वा न वर्धते।[3] This is the sense in which moksha is usually understood, a state where an individual is freed from the cycle and bondage of death and rebirth and karma. Indeed, this is precisely what happens to Shuka. He is liberated and emancipated in that sense.
But if one reads the Mahabharata, is that the sense in which the word moksha is used?[4] The Mahabharata was not only about exceptional people like Shuka. It was also about people concerned with this world, people who had to deal with dharma, artha and kama, not only about moksha, interpreted as liberation from the cycle of life. The Bhagavad Gita has 18 chapters and the titles of each of these chapters is qualified by the use of the word योग (yoga).[5] Only one of these titles uses the word moksha and this is the 18th chapter, titledमोक्षसंन्यासयोग (moksha-sannyasa-yoga). If one reads through this entire chapter, there is not a single instance of the word moksha being used in the Shuka sense. Instead, the entire argument is about detachment, even when one is engaged in dharma, artha and kama. Without deviating from the subject and going off on a tangent on a discussion of moksha, there is a simple point being made. Who has said that Hinduism is about the other-worldly pursuit of moksha in a Shuka sense? That’s a selective and subjective reading of some texts. It isn’t a proposition that should be advanced as a sweeping generalization.
What about dharma, artha and kama? Kama refers to desire, not necessarily to sexual desire alone. Vatsayana’s Kama Sutra, one in a long line of works on kama, is illustrative. It is often understood to be a documentation of sexual positions. Yet, sexual positions account for only one of its seven major segments. In Chapter 3, there is a reference to 64 kinds of arts an accomplished maiden should be familiar with. Here is a listing of the 64. This has little to do with sexual positions or even sex and probably has more to do with artha. That’s the reason it is worth giving the listing.
Since this has little to do with the main topic of discussion, this listing is reproduced from the 1883 Richard Burton translation, though there is some minor variance with the prevalent Sanskrit text.[6]“(1) Singing; (2) Playing on musical instruments; (3) Dancing; (4) Union of dancing, singing, and playing instrumental music; (5) Writing and drawing; (6) Tattooing; (7) Arraying and adorning an idol with rice and flowers; (8) Spreading and arranging beds or couches of flowers, or flowers upon the ground; (9) Colouring the teeth, garments, hair, nails and bodies, i.e. staining, dyeing, colouring and painting the same; (10) Fixing stained glass into a floor; (11) The art of making beds, and spreading out carpets and cushions for reclining; (12) Playing on musical glasses filled with water; (13) Storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs; (14) Picture making, trimming and decorating; (15) Stringing of rosaries, necklaces, garlands and wreaths; (16) Binding of turbans and chaplets, and making crests and top-knots of flowers; (17) Scenic representations, stage playing Art of making ear ornaments Art of preparing perfumes and odours; (18) Proper disposition of jewels and decorations, and adornment in dress; (19) Magic or sorcery; (20) Quickness of hand or manual skill; (21) Culinary art, i.e. cooking and cookery; (22) Making lemonades, sherbets, acidulated drinks, and spirituous extracts with proper flavour and colour; (23) Tailor's work and sewing; (24) Making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, etc., out of yarn or thread; (25) Solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles and enigmatical questions; (26) A game, which consisted in repeating verses, and as one person finished, another person had to commence at once, repeating another verse, beginning with the same letter with which the last speaker's verse ended, whoever failed to repeat was considered to have lost, and to be subject to pay a forfeit or stake of some kind; (27) The art of mimicry or imitation; (28) Reading, including chanting and intoning; (29) Study of sentences difficult to pronounce. It is played as a game chiefly by women and children and consists of a difficult sentence being given, and when repeated quickly, the words are often transposed or badly pronounced; (30) Practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff and bow and arrow; (31) Drawing inferences, reasoning or inferring; (32) Carpentry, or the work of a carpenter; (33) Architecture, or the art of building; (34) Knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems; (35) Chemistry and mineralogy; (36) Colouring jewels, gems and beads; (37) Knowledge of mines and quarries; (38) Gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, and determining their ages; (39) Art of cock fighting,
quail fighting and ram fighting; (40) Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak; (41) Art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it; (42) The art of understanding writing in cypher, and the writing of words in a peculiar way; (43) The art of speaking by changing the forms of words. It is of various kinds. Some speak by changing the beginning and end of words, others by adding unnecessary letters between every syllable of a word, and so on; (44) Knowledge of language and of the vernacular dialects; (45) Art of making flower carriages; (46) Art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets; (47) Mental exercises, such as completing stanzas or verses on receiving a part of them; or supplying one, two or three lines when the remaining lines are given indiscriminately from different verses, so as to make the whole an entire verse with regard to its meaning; or arranging the words of a verse written irregularly by separating the vowels from the consonants, or leaving them out altogether; or putting into verse or prose sentences represented by signs or symbols. There are many other such exercises; (48) Composing poems; (49) Knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies; (50) Knowledge of ways of changing and disguising the appearance of persons; (51) Knowledge of the art of changing the appearance of things, such as making cotton to appear as silk, coarse and common things to appear as fine and good; (52) Various ways of gambling; (53) Art of obtaining possession of the property of others by means of mantras or incantations; (54) Skill in youthful sports: (55) Knowledge of the rules of society, and of how to pay respect and compliments to others; (56) Knowledge of the art of war, of arms, of armies, etc; (57) Knowledge of gymnastics; (58) Art of knowing the character of a man from his features; (59) Knowledge of scanning or constructing verses; (60) Arithmetical recreations; (61) Making artificial flowers: (62) Making figures and images in clay.”
Dating texts is always difficult and so far, we haven’t said anything about time-lines. Vatsayana’s Kama Sutra could have been anywhere between 400 BCE and 200 CE, though there were similar texts of an earlier vintage. To return to the point, kama is about the senses, not exclusively about sex. Nor does dharma necessarily mean religion and should never be translated as religion. In different contexts, dharma can mean good conduct, jurisprudence and rule of law and customary practice. It can also mean the metaphysical. Of the three purusharthas, artha is the easiest to pin down. It means material prosperity and wealth.
[1] Since a broader point is being made, there is no need to specifically reference such mentions.
[2] All references to the Mahabharata are to the Critical Edition. The Critical Edition was published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, between 1933 and 1966. A soft copy of the Critical Edition is available at http://bombay.indology.info/mahabharata/statement.html.
[3] The English translation is for 12.233.11-12, while the Sanskrit is for 12.233.12. This means 12th parva (Shanti parva), chapter 233, shlokas 11-12. The English translation is from The Mahabharata: A Translation, Vol.9, Bibek Debroy, Penguin, 2014.
[4] This is a point also made by Chaturvedi Badrinath, The Mahabharata, An Inquiry in the Human Condition, Orient Longman, 2007.
[5] The word yoga means union, but is used in multiple senses in different contexts.
Not only is the varna issue controversial, there are too many generalizations around it. Consider the issue of interest rates. This is a quote from 8.140-142 of the Manu Samhita, as translated by G. Buhler.[2] “A money-lender may stipulate as an increase of his capital, for the interest, allowed by Vasishtha, and take monthly the eightieth part of a hundred. Or, remembering the duty of good men, he may take two in the hundred (by the month), for he who takes two in the hundred becomes not a sinner for gain. Just two in the hundred, three, four, and five (and not more), he may take as monthly interest according to the order of the castes (varna).” This seems to suggest an annual interest rate of 15%. However, it can also be 24% for brahmanas, 36% for kshatriyas, 48% for vaishyas and 60% for shudras. The interest rate is ostensibly graded according to the varna. Contrast this with a quote from the Artha Shastra.[3] “An interest of apana and a quarter per month per cent is just. Five panas per month per cent is commercial interest (vyavahariki). Ten panas per month per cent prevails among forests. Twenty panas per month per cent prevails among sea-traders (samudranam).”[4] In the Sanskrit, the word dharma is used and an interest rate of 15% per year is in accordance with dharma. As with several words in Sanskrit,व्यवहारिक can have multiple meanings. In this context, it does mean commercial. Hence, compared to the normal interest rate of 15%, the commercial rate of interest is 60%. The word कान्तारग is more difficult to translate. It does mean one who has gone to a forest, but has the nuance of someone who journeys through a forest or a wilderness. In such cases, the interest rate is 120%. Finally, that 240% is for those who undertake sea-voyages. In Kautilya, there is no reference whatsoever to interest rates being linked to varna. A journey through a forest was riskier than an ordinary commercial venture. A sea-voyage had greater uncertainty than a journey through a forest. The Kautilya scale was hence a risk premium added to the usual commercial rate of interest and nothing more. Who were the people who were likely to engage in trade and undertake voyages through forests and seas? Clearly those who engaged in trade, that is, vaishyas. Ipso facto, the interest rate, with the risk premium added, was likely to be higher for vaishyas than for brahmanas or kshatriyas. We are not quite discussing the interest rate now. This was more in the nature of an illustration. There is a difference between interest rates being linked to a functional occupation and being linked to varna per se. In generalizing about varna, this is worth bearing in mind.