We can now go on to examine what Hindus mean by ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. A number of terms, both Sanskrit and vernacular (including dharma and adharma), measure up more or less adequately to these pairs. Generally, each term of these dyads has both a naturalistic and a moral connotation, i.e. each term is used to express both natural and moral goodness or evil respectively, the weight of meaning turning on the context being considered. For example, take the Sanskrit word pāpa, often translated as ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. Pāpa can mean both natural evil and moral evil, or both simultaneously, while its positive counterpart puṇya can mean ‘merit’, ‘holy’ and ‘ritually pure’. So, in Gītā 9.32, where women, Vaiṣyas and Śūdras are described as pāpa-yonayaṣ, i.e. ‘those whose origins are pāpa’, both naturalistic and moral connotations seem to be implied. All of the following readings of pāpa-yonayaṣ are applicable: (i) these individuals are ‘evil-born’ because they have been born in undesirable circumstances as either women or low-castes owing to demerit acquired in previous lives; (ii) they are ‘sources of evil’ or ritual impurity according to conventional codes (e.g. Draupadī, simply by the fact of being a woman who is having her period, is a source of ritual impurity through contact);and (iii) they are ‘sources leading to wrongdoing/sin’ in others through some circumstance or other (e.g. women are a source of suffering in the world, for it is through women that we are born into this vale of sorrows, and of wanton lust). The sexist connotations of some of these meanings are obvious. The Gītā goes on to say that even such folk can tread the highest path of devotion and salvation by taking recourse to Kṛṣṇa.
This ambiguity of terms for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in general can lead to serious misunderstanding of Hindu morality if careful contextual distinctions are not drawn. Here is a notable example. In his book, Our Savage God (1974), R.C. Zaehner analyses a cause célèbre of the late 1960s in which an American cult leader and some of his followers were convicted of mass murder. Zaehner argues that the thinking behind the killings was similar to if not derived from a major teaching of the classical Upaniṣads, namely, that the individual who has attained enlightenment transcends conventional morality of right and wrong, according to which almsgiving, for instance, is good and murder wrong. Zaehner inquires:
Can we, then, be surprised if the sage, fully liberated from the bonds of space and time and therefore from the whole world of ‘appearance’ in which alone the opposites of good and evil have any validity, should act out his life in accordance with either the good or the evil aspect of God since, when all is said and done, they are the same? ... (for) Hindus postulate wrong at the very heart of Truth.
(1974:97–8)
There is a profound confusion here, not only with respect to Hindu conceptions of God or the Supreme Being generally, but also with respect to Zaehner's understanding of the Upaniṣadic texts concerned. This confusion is based on a misunderstanding, a mis-contextualization, of Sanskrit terms which Zaehner translates as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in the Western sense of virtue and vice. It is no wonder then that the Upaniṣads are supposed to teach that the enlightened person is not bound by everyday morality, especially if enlightenment is the transcending of this world of appearance. The terms in question are puṇya and pāpa, and sukṛta and duṣkṛta. In context, these pairs do not mean ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’ in the Western sense, but largely the ‘merit’ (puṇya/sukṛta) and ‘demerit’ (pāpa/duṣkṛta) generated by good and bad observance of traditional ritualistic, i.e. karmic, religion. The Upaniṣads teach innovatively that by the practice of a selfless ethic, the enlightened individual must transcend this ritual-based, karmic mentality. This is a very different teaching indeed. It does not say that the Sage may commit murder or dismiss everyday morality with impunity, as the Vedāntins, for instance, interpreters of the classical Upaniṣads par excellence, are quick to point out. Zaehner's reading of Upaniṣadic morality is not uncommon for some Westerners, especially those fired by ideological motives (and Zaehner had a few). This is why I have taken the trouble to draw attention to it.
In some vernaculars today, the terms pāp(a) and puṇya are still commonly used in all sections of Hindu society in both their naturalistic and moral connotations. In traditional Bengali folk religion, pāp is used in the general sense of ‘transgression’ (e.g. F.M. Smith 1991:69–70). But among more educated circles of Bengali and Hindi speakers, for example, the sense of ‘moral wrongdoing’ for pāp is increasingly being emphasized. Thus in the acclaimed Bengali translation of the New Testament (Bandyopadhyay & Mignon 1984), pāp(a) has moral and theological connotations, viz. ‘(moral) wrongdoing/sin’; it is never used in a naturalistic sense.10 In ethical contexts, dhārmik(a) in the sense of ‘righteous/virtuous (person)’ is often used as the opposite of pāpī and adhārmik(a).11
Consider another example: the expression durbuddhi. In traditional Hinduism this is given naturalistic and moral connotations, and can mean both ‘stupid, obtuse’ and ‘evil-minded, vicious’. The context determines which meaning comes to the fore, or whether both senses are to be taken into account more or less equally. Duryodhana is described as durbuddhi, and it seems that both senses should be simultaneously operative. Because he is vicious, he acts like a fool; again, his obtuseness compounds his viciousness. The expression also has currency in some vernaculars, for example, contemporary Bengali. Here again, both senses can be implied, sometimes simultaneously. This bivalence indicates that a causal connection is often perceived to exist between both senses. Let us delve more deeply into this connection with respect to two other terms, especially in the context of Vedāntic theology.
The words I have in mind are vidyā and avidyā (alternatively, jñāna and ajñāna), which are usually translated as ‘knowledge’ and ‘ignorance’ (in their theological context as ‘(spiritual) knowledge’ and ‘(spiritual) ignorance’ respectively). One often encounters the view that Vedānta exalts ‘gnosis’ as a means to final liberation (sometimes the word ‘gnoseological’ is used instead of ‘epistemological’). This is an unfortunate translation with respect to vidyā or jñāna. In Gnosticism, where ‘gnosis’ as a form of knowledge is most at home, creation tends to be considered as pathomorphic, i.e. as a diseased, undesirable state. It is not so in Vedāntic theology, which speaks of an īśvara or God who produces the world deliberately, caringly and responsibly (see our discussion in earlier chapters). In Gnosticism there is a fundamental contrastive opposition, ontologically and ethically, between God and the world. God is entirely transcendent and distant from the world of humans, and intermediary powers rule this world. Vedāntic theology is not dualistic in this way – quite the contrary. Here ‘God’, for all ‘his’ transcendence, is in direct saving contact with the world, through his agents and manifestations, his own inner presence (he is the antaryāmin or ‘inner controller’), his grace, his avatāras. In Gnosticism, the psychophysical realm, as opposed to the world of the inner spirit, is unrelievedly bad, lacking reliable footholds, epistemic or otherwise, for our spiritual ascent. As we have seen earlier, this is certainly not the case for Hinduism in general or Vedānta in particular. Most Vedāntins tend to view the world – its experiences, images, realities – positively, as containing means and symbols of salvation (though the balance between pravṛtti and nivṛtti varies).
In Gnosticism, the sole means of salvation is a kind of superior knowledge, revealed to initiates, tending towards an elaborate theory of things to be known as well as an ethical and spiritual discipline of arcane techniques and information (which includes ‘maps’ of postmortem worlds leading to final liberation). Further, although the gnosis of Gnosticism is allied to a morality, in itself it has a strong amoral quality, indicated by the fact that the morality of Gnosticism can be either libertine or ascetic. In Vedānta in general, devotion to the Lord and a selfless ethic are indispensable for salvation, and even the apparently uncompromising monism of Śaṃkara acknowledges the importance of the path of bhakti or devotion t
o the Lord in the spiritual life. Thus, although it may be the case that one can discern ‘gnostic’ elements in aspects of Vedānta, there is on the whole more to separate the two traditions than there is to unite them. The point is that translating the vidyā of Vedānta by ‘gnosis’ – as is sometimes done, or, as is more often the case, understanding vidyā in a gnostic sense – is something of a non-starter. So what does vidyā really mean?
To begin with, it has a naturalistic connotation; it entails right cognition about the nature of the world, the human being and Brahman, including the relationships between these. Someone who lacks this knowledge, or who is mistaken about these realities, cannot be spiritually advanced. (Each school of Vedānta invests this knowledge with different content, of course.) But this knowledge is also experiential; it has a personal, practical side to it. It must be internalized; this is where bhakti comes in – devotion to the teacher, and to ‘God’. In this scheme, the whole person must be caught up in vidyā: intellect, will, emotions. And from such a commitment, which ends in enlightenment, flows a morality that is sensitive to the distinction between virtue and vice, good and bad, requiring at all times the pursuit of the former and the rejection of the latter.
In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, an important text of the scriptural corpus from which Vedāntic theology derives inspiration, we find a statement about the relationship between vidyā/avidyā and the good and not-so-good in the context of moral striving. Yama, the Lord of Death, is discoursing with Naciketas, a youth who seeks the secret of eternal life. A person can follow either of two paths in life, says Yama: the better way (śreyas), or the path of pleasure (preyas). The path of pleasure is the path of self-indulgence;it is the way of ignorance (avidyā), trod by the fool to whom ‘the Beyond does not shine’, who thinks, ‘There is only this life; there is no other’. The Lord of Death observes, ‘Again and again such a one falls into my power’. The better way – by implication, the way of non-covetousness – is the way of wisdom (vidyā), which leads to immortality and to that which is beyond Yama's grasp (1.2.1–9). Thus for Vedāntins, and a great many other Hindus influenced by Upaniṣadic ideas, vidyā and avidyā are not only cognitional terms, denoting what is good and bad epistemically, but also words with moral content – ‘value’ terms – referring to the moral condition of the knower and to moral goals. The two kinds of meaning are interrelated.
Vidyā is wisdom that implies purity of mind (often likened to a mirror) and purity of soul; the one sustains and enhances the other. It is no accident that light and the reflection of light are common symbols in Hinduism of vidyā and the knowing process, respectively. Avidyā is spiritual ignorance, symbolized by darkness. In this condition, tamas, a natural ‘staining’ constituent of the mind, dominates the knowing mechanism. In Hinduism the immoral person tends to be confused, while the Sage has a ‘clear’ mind. According to Vedānta, the ordinary person is born in a state of avidyā, congenitally ignorant of his or her true spiritual condition and ultimate destiny: avidyā is a sort of ‘original sin’. By various means, one can pass from a state of avidyā to vidyā. What these means are depends on the distinctive teaching of each school, and in most Vedāntic schools the way of vidyā necessarily involves action (karman) in this world and emotional commitment (bhakti) first to the Lord and then to his representatives and creation. Thus vidyā is not simply a bloodless ‘gnosis’.
The tendency to use the same terms to signify ‘good/right’ or ‘bad/wrong’ in this bivalent manner dates back to earliest times in the recorded (religious) history of the subcontinent. A good example is the pair ṛta and anṛta, which was gradually superseded by dharma-adharma. Establishing ṛta (‘order’, ‘righteousness’) was the task ascribed in particular to the deva Varuṇa (with whom Mitra was sometimes associated in this role). Consider the use of ṛta in the following verses of the Ŗg Veda. ‘The rivers flow in accordance with the order (ṛtam) of Varuṇa’ (2.28.4); ‘I call upon Mitra and Varuṇa, the lords of ṛta, of light, who foster ṛta with ṛta’ (1.23.5). Note the juxtaposition of ‘light’ and ‘ṛta’. Light establishes order out of the chaos of darkness; as such, light is order. But light is also the symbol of moral order. This emerges in the following verse: ‘Do not smite us, Varuṇa, with shafts that strike the transgressor at your command. Do not let us pass from light to darkness’ (2.28.7).12 Varuṇa is the lord of ṛta, the punisher of transgression (enas), of unright (anṛta), which clings to one even involuntarily. A Ṛg Vedic hymn to Varuṇa says, ‘Loose us from the yoke of the sins of our fathers, and also of those we ourselves have committed ... The evil, Varuṇa, was not done on purpose ... Even in sleep evildoing (anṛta) is not wholly banished’ (7.86.5–6; see Chapter 2). Here, in the same breath, evil or anṛta is spoken of as being received involuntarily – a burden passed down – and as being personally perpetrated; it is endemic to the human condition.
When educated Hindus of the nineteenth century needed to translate the Western concept of ‘religion’, the word dharma, with its central place in traditional Hindu usage and its connotations of a code of practice, a way of life, personal responsibility and duty, as well as of socio-religious order, came readily to mind. Its naturalistic nuances either weakened or became somewhat divorced in a separate usage of the term. Today, in Indian languages, dharma commonly means, or is a common translation of, ‘religion’. This is not too procrustean a development. Centuries ago, in the Introduction to his commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā, Śaṃkara himself uses the term in a not dissimilar sense. He says:
The Lord, having produced this world, and desiring its stability (sthiti), first made the supervisors Marici etc. and propagated the dharma of involvement with the world (pravṛtti-dharma), called the Veda [viz. the religion of sacrificial ritual here]. Then, producing others ...he propagated the dharma of disinterestedness (nivṛtti-dharma), characterized by knowledge (jñāna) and renunciation (vairāgya). Thus Vedic dharma is twofold, pravṛttic and nivṛttic, which is the cause of the stability of the world.
Without straining its sense too much, dharma in this passage may be translated as ‘religion’, and a well-known late nineteenth-century English translation of Śaṃkara's commentary on the Gīta, still in common use (7th edn, 1977), renders pravṛtti-dharma and nivṛtti-dharma as ‘the Religion of Works’ and ‘the Religion of Renunciation’ respectively (A.M. Sastry 1897: 2). By extension, people talk in inter-faith context today of the Christian dharma, the Hindu dharma, the Buddhist dharma and so on, in the sense of ‘religion’.
Let us return to the episode of the dicing match, and consider it now from the angle of the other tension constitutive of dharma to show that exercising deliberation and autonomy is not regarded as inherently subject to deterministic forces, whether internal or external. Consider again Yudhiṣṭhira's predicament. The narrative places him at the nodal point of multiple dharmic pulls (‘nooses’ in the word of the text). As patron of the rājasūya sacrifice, he must attend to the dharma of this sacrifice, to its proprietary demands, including, if van Buitenen is right, to the requirements of a token dicing game. Yet for Yudhiṣṭhira, as we have seen, this formal demand becomes an excuse to indulge his passion for gambling. How responsibly did Yudhiṣṭhira play – at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end? More than once the text raises this question and leaves us to explore its implications through the twists and turns of the story.
A crucial factor in the drama is the role of fate (daiva) which represents, depending on context, both chance and necessity – forces that we cannot control. And throughout the story there is an interplay between fate, in this sense, and freedom of choice. It is Yudhiṣṭhira who is a central representative of this interplay. In agreeing to play the dice game certain constraints become evident: the rules of the game, his status as a Kṣatriya, the summons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra (the head of his clan), but also his passion for gambling. These are the parameters of the drama's enactment. But Yudhiṣṭhira was crucially not a pawn of fate, as the text mak
es clear. Fate did not control the match as it could have if the game were played according to the rules, for Śakuni, the expert gambler, cheated. Further, Yudhiṣṭhira was not forced to play by or against Śakuni. In fact, before the game Śakuni offered to let him pull out, albeit in a way that required a brave moral choice. But both Yudhiṣṭhira and Dhṛtarāṣṭra used fate as a cover-up for their respective addictions.
At every turn, Yudhiṣṭhira is beset by constraints, some self-inflicted, others imposed by external circumstances. Among the self-inflicted are his vow always to accept a challenge (even when dishonestly made?), and his passion for gambling (but Bhīṣma suggests that it is not an overwhelming passion when he points out that Śakuni did not force Yudhiṣṭhira to play). Among the external constraints we may mention Yudhiṣṭhira's duties as a Kṣatriya, king and eldest brother – all three conditions bear upon his wife and younger brothers. As a husband, he has a duty to protect his wife from disgrace, a duty compounded by the fact that Draupadī was the co-wife of his younger brothers who also had rights in the matter. As their king, Yudhiṣṭhira had a duty to see to his wife's and brothers’ welfare. As the eldest brother, Yudhiṣṭhira had a responsibility to protect his younger brothers. As a Kṣatriya he was bound to uphold the honour of this status at all times. These dharmic pulls, compounded by Yudhiṣṭhira's self-inflicted constraints, come interactively to a head in Draupadī’s persistent demand for an answer to the searching question she poses.
In this vortex of doubt and uncertainty, it is no wonder, perhaps, that Yudhiṣṭhira is described as being ‘mindless’ and ‘silent’. Some scholars have opined that here he symbolizes the witness, non-active, spiritual self or puruṣa of the ancient Sāṃkhya system of thought, with Draupadī playing the role of prakṛti or pradhāna, the contrasting material principle that actively seeks to bring about puruṣa’s liberation from our world of suffering. This is a seriously defective analogy. For in classical Sāṃkhya, it is prakṛti that lacks consciousness; ‘she’ acts blindly for puruṣa’s advantage. Further, in Sāṃikhya, puruṣa lacks passion of any kind (for gambling or otherwise);it is prakṛti that is the source of passion through her constituent qualities or guṇas. Finally, Sāmkhya gives several examples of puruṣa and prakṛti functioning as if jointly, to effect puruṣa’s goals – but in the story Draupadī acts alone to bring about Yudhiṣṭhira's release.13
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 44