Dharma
What it is
Dharma is what holds a thing in its place and keeps it being what it is. Applied to a person it is the conduct proper to them. Applied to a society it is the order that keeps it from coming apart. Applied to anything at all it is that thing’s own nature, the way heat is the dharma of fire.
It is the first of the four purusharthas, the aims of a human life, and it comes before artha, wealth, and kama, desire. The sequence is the teaching. Wealth and desire are both legitimate and both placed second and third, which is to say that the boundary is meant to be settled before the pursuit begins rather than repaired afterwards.
The single most common error in English is to translate dharma as religion. It is not a body of belief and has no creed to assent to. A person is not asked what they hold true. They are asked what holds together because of how they act.
Sanskrit and etymology
Dharma (धर्म) comes from the root dhṛ, to hold, to bear, to support, to uphold.1 Everything the word does follows from that root.
The Mahabharata makes the etymology carry the definition. In the Karna Parva, Krishna explains the term by pointing at the root itself: it is called dharma because it upholds, and what upholds and sustains people is dharma.1 The argument is circular by design. The text is refusing to define dharma by content, and defining it instead by function. Whatever holds a thing together is that thing’s dharma, and you find out what it is by seeing what happens when it is absent.
The older Vedic word in this territory is ṛta, the cosmic order that keeps the seasons and the stars regular. Dharma is the later term, and the shift from one to the other is a shift from an order simply observed in the world to an order a person is responsible for maintaining.
The ten characteristics
The Manusmriti gives the most commonly cited list of what dharma looks like in a person, in ten items.2
| Sanskrit | Sense |
|---|---|
| dhṛti | steadiness, perseverance |
| kṣamā | forbearance, forgiveness |
| dama | self-restraint |
| asteya | not taking what is not given |
| śauca | cleanliness, inner and outer |
| indriya-nigraha | governance of the senses |
| dhī | intelligence, discernment |
| vidyā | learning, accurate knowledge |
| satya | truth |
| akrodha | absence of anger |
Two features of the list are worth noticing. Not one item is a belief. And the list is almost entirely composed of restraints and capacities rather than actions, which is consistent with a concept defined by what it holds rather than by what it does.
The kinds of dharma
The literature distinguishes several senses, and most confusion about the word comes from collapsing them.
Sadharana dharma is the universal kind, binding on everyone regardless of position. The ten characteristics above belong here.
Svadharma is one’s own, particular to a person’s situation, stage of life and capacity. The Bhagavad Gita states in both its third and eighteenth chapters that one’s own dharma performed imperfectly is better than another’s performed well, which is among the most quoted and most misapplied sentences in the text. See Swadharma.
Ashrama dharma is what belongs to a stage of life, and it is the piece most relevant to a householder. The tradition has a full account of obligations proper to someone raising a family and running a home, which is why this work does not treat the householder as a lesser case.
Apad dharma is conduct permitted in extremity, when the ordinary rules would destroy the thing they exist to protect. Its presence in the literature is evidence that the system was never intended to be applied mechanically.
What is contested
Whether dharma is fixed or situational is argued inside the source texts rather than only about them. The Mahabharata, which is the longest sustained treatment, repeatedly stages situations where two dharmas conflict and no clean answer exists, and states in its own voice that the truth of dharma is hidden in a cave. A tradition that wanted a rulebook would not have written that epic.
Varna-based dharma carries the heaviest modern objection. Duty assigned by birth is the aspect of the classical system that B. R. Ambedkar attacked directly in Annihilation of Caste, and the critique has not been answered by restating the older texts more sympathetically. This wiki’s position is set out on Four Dharmas and is not repeated here.
“Sanatana dharma” is a term with a history. It appears in the older literature meaning something like the eternal or perennial order, and its use as the standard self-description of a religion is substantially a nineteenth and twentieth century development. See Sanatan Dharma.
The translation problem is not solved. Duty, righteousness, law, virtue, order and religion have all been offered and each misses. Most careful writing now leaves the word untranslated, which is what this wiki does.
Why it matters
It is the first purushartha, and the order is the whole argument. A great deal of what this work says about money rests on nothing more than that sequence. The essay No Bank Would Lend His Father Two Lakh Rupees is an extended demonstration of what happens when the earning is built first and the boundary is looked for afterwards, and Oh Money In This Too is the same claim made directly.
It makes the commerce position coherent rather than defensive. A tradition that placed wealth second would have no reason to be embarrassed by it and no reason to let it run first. That is a more stable footing than either the wellness industry’s discomfort about charging or its enthusiasm for it.
It gives the practice something to be for. Steadiness, restraint, governance of the senses and absence of anger are four of the ten characteristics, and they are also, fairly precisely, what the morning practice and the evening review are working on. The Shadripus are the same territory from the other direction.
It is what “the old way” means. The phrase used across this work points at an order a person maintains by conduct, over a long time, in an ordinary house. Dharma is the word for that.
Related concepts
- Four Dharmas
- Kama
- Sanatan Dharma
- Karma Yoga
- Shadripus
- Shraddha
- Sankalpa
- Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
- Bihar School of Yoga
- No Bank Would Lend His Father Two Lakh Rupees
- Oh Money In This Too
- The Fourth Room
- The Three 3.0s
Notes
Future work could pursue: ashrama dharma as its own page, since it is the part of the classical scheme that speaks most directly to the people this work addresses and is currently the least developed here; the ṛta to dharma shift, which is a real change in what the tradition thought order was and is usually passed over in a sentence; the conflict cases in the Mahabharata, which are the tradition’s own admission that the concept does not resolve cleanly and would make an unusually honest page; and a treatment of how “Sanatana Dharma” came to be used as it now is, which the existing Sanatan Dharma page does not yet cover.
Terms used on this page that do not yet have pages of their own: Purusharthas, Shaucha, Dhee, Bhagavad Gita, Swadharma, Yajna. They are left unlinked deliberately, because the published folders render an unresolved link as a live 404.
Footnotes
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On dharma from the root dhṛ, to hold or maintain, and on the Karna Parva passage defining dharma by its function of upholding: “Dharma”, Hindupedia. https://hindupedia.com/en/Dharma ↩ ↩2
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On the ten characteristics at Manusmriti 6.92, dhṛti, kṣamā, dama, asteya, śauca, indriya-nigraha, dhī, vidyā, satya, akrodha: “Dharma (Life Principles) according to Manusmriti”, Exotic India. https://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/dharma-life-principles-according-to-manusmriti/ ; and “What are the ten principles of dharma, as mentioned by Manu Smriti?”, Vedaboys. https://www.vedaboys.com/what-are-the-ten-principles-of-dharma-as-mentioned-by-manu-smriti/ ↩