Dharma

This introductory work proposes a fresh take on the ancient Indian concept dharma. By unfolding how, even in its developments as “law” and custom, dharma participates in nuanced and multifarious understandings of the term that play out in India’s great spiritual traditions, the book offers insights into the innovative character of both Hindu and Buddhist usages of the concept. Alf Hiltebeitel, in an original approach to early Buddhist usages, explores how the Buddhist canon brought out different meanings of dharma. This is followed by an exposition of the hypothesis that most, if not all, of the Hindu law books flowered after the third-century BC emperor Asoka, a Buddhist, made dharma the guiding principle of an entire realm and culture. A discussion built around the author’s expertise on the Sanskrit epics shows how their narratives amplified the new Brahmanical norms and brought out the ethical dilemmas and spiritual teachings that arose from inquiry into dharma.

A chapter on the tale of the Life of the Buddha considers the relation between dharma, moksa/nirvana (salvation), and bhakti (devotion). Here, Hiltebeitel ties together a thread that runs through the entire story, which is the Buddha’s tendency to present dharma as a kind of civil discourse. In this sense, dharma challenges people to think critically or at least more creatively about their ethical principles and the foundations of their own spiritual values. A closing chapter on dharma in the twenty-first century explores its new cachet in an era of globalization, its diasporic implications, its openings into American popular culture, some implications for women, and the questions it is still raising for modern India.

• Alf Hiltebeitel, Author

  Alf Hiltebeitel is a professor of religion, history, and human sciences at the George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in the history of religions at the University of Chicago. He teaches courses on Hinduism, Buddhism, Indian and comparative mythologies, the Goddess, and recently on Dharma in Hinduism and Buddhism. His main research interests are in the Sanskrit epics the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, and in ethnography on the south Indian Tamil cult of Draupadī, the Mahābhārata’s chief heroine. In addition to authoring many articles, he has edited or coedited three books, and translated or cotranslated four books from French: two by Georges Dumézil and one each by Mircea Eliade and Madeleine Biardeau. His own books are The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahābhārata (1976/1991); The Cult of Draupadī, vol. 1, Mythologies: From Gingee to Kurukṣetra (1988/1992); The Cult of Draupadī, vol. 2, On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (1991); Rethinking India’s Oral and Classical Epics: Draupadī among Rajputs, Muslims, and Dalits (1999/2001); and Rethinking the Mahābhārata: A Reader’s Guide to the Education of the Dharma King (2001/2002).