DAVIS-FourHumanAims-2024

Princeton University Press
Chapter Title: The Four Human Aims: Guides for the Good Life
Book Title: Religions of Early India

Book Subtitle: A Cultural History
Book Author(s): RICHARD H. DAVIS
Published by: Princeton University Press. (2024)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.15507139.19
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Princeton University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Religions of Early India
This content downloaded from 132.174.249.166 on Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:13:59 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
11
The Four H uman Aims:
Guides for the Good Life
once upon a time, the story goes, p eople did not need a king or a government.
There was no punishment, and none was needed, since p eople carefully main-
tained Dharma. But then confusion (moha) entered the picture, and along with
it came greed (lobha). Due to greed, p
eople were overpowered by desire (kama).
And when they were dominated by desire, Dharma disappeared.
When humans came into contact with things they did not own, desire became
their highest concern. As they came to be dominated by desire, p assion af-
flicted them. Overcome with passion, they did not remember what should
be done and what should not, which women could be approached sexually
and which could not, what can be eaten and what cannot, what sin is and what
it is not. They no longer offered up sacrifice. When this human world fell into
complete disorder, the Veda perished. And with the loss of the Veda, Dharma
was ruined. (MBh 12.59.18-21)
The gods w ere terrified. Without the Vedic sacrifices to nourish them, they began
to lose their powers. They sought out the help of the creator god Brahman, and
Brahman promised to do his best to restore the proper order of things.
In the Mahabharata, Bhishma tells this story to Yudhishthira to explain the
genesis of kingship and the special status of kings. According to his origin story,
the overwhelming forces of greed, desire, and passion lead to a complete
deterioration of the social order, and this ruptures the productive reciprocity of
humans and gods. Deprived of sacrificial offerings, the gods are reduced in
power, and they can no longer shower their benefits down onto humans in re-
turn. This is the state of anarchy—both within human society and in the broader
cosmic order binding together humans and the divine. To restore the Veda and
383
384 C h a p t e r 1 1
Dharma will require the creation of kingship, as Bhishma goes on to explain.

But before that, Brahman carries out a different kind of creation. From his mind,
Brahman creates a massive treatise, 100,000 chapters long, describing Dharma,
Artha, and Kama. He calls this the Set of Three Aims (trivarga). In addition to
these three worldly aims, some persons intend to gain a state of transcendence.
Accordingly, Brahman also discusses a fourth motive, Moksha. These four to-
gether are known as the four aims of human life (purushartha).
At the very beginning of things, according to this origin story, the creator Brah
man set out a master guidebook for the conduct of h uman life in society. It was
comprehensive. As Bhishma observes, “In the treatise that Brahman composed,
everything in the world—Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha—is put into words”
(MBh 12.59.85). Brahman’s original work offered guidelines for the perennial
human questions of how to live a good and pleasurable life, under good gover-
nance, in a properly ordered society, and how to attain the highest spiritual state.
Bhishma goes on to explain that this original operating manual has been
transmitted by gods and h uman sages over time. During the transmission it has
been divided by topics and progressively abridged in size, due to h uman limita-
tions of comprehension and lifespan. But, he suggests, parts of it still circulate
among humans.
Shastra and Science

In his story, Bhishma calls Brahman’s original master-guide a shastra, usually
translated as “treatise.” The term “shastra” comes from a verb root that conveys
actions of directing and teaching. Shastras are verbal texts that seek to discuss
a particular subject matter systematically and authoritatively. They aim to set out
principles and to give teachings that will be (as Kautilya says of his shastra on
Artha) “easy to grasp and understand, decisive in doctrine, clearly worded, and
free of prolixity” (ASh 1.1.19). From the early centuries CE, t here are important
shastras that deal with the three aims of worldly life: the Kamasutras of Vatsy-
ayana Mallanaga, the Arthashastra of Kautilya, and the Manava Dharmashastra
attributed to Manu, the first human. As for the fourth purushartha, Badarayana’s
Brahmasutras and Patanjali’s Yogasutras take up the theory and practice of medi-
tation as a key method of attaining that transcendent goal.
Both Vatsyayana and Manu locate their works explicitly as descendants of
Brahman’s original shastra. This gives them the prestige of a mythical source. It
also indicates their claim to be timeless or transhistorical in the principles they
set forth.1
T h e F ou r H u m a n A i m s: G u i de s f or t h e G o od L i f e 385
Historically, we can look at these works as the compositions of learned experts

who have reflected on and debated these topics. Shastra authors frequently refer
to other colleagues whose works have not been preserved, and they also include
or stage debates among other named experts within the text. I’ll use the term “sci-
ence” for t hese disciplines of knowledge, not in the narrower sense of the ex-
perimental or natural sciences, but in an older and broader way, as in the h uman
sciences. In that Aristotelian sense, as R. G. Collingwood suggests, a science is
“a body of systematic or orderly thinking about a determinate subject-matter.”2
Vatsyayana’s treatise on the subject of human pleasure and Kautilya’s on the pur-
suit of royal statecraft certainly fit this usage. So, too, do Manu’s guidelines for
living a r ighteous life and organizing a righteous society, and Patanjali’s system-
atic presentation of yogic forms of meditation. They are similar to other classical
Indic sciences, such as grammar and astronomy, that had developed initially as
adjuncts to the Veda. In addition to the four aims of h uman life, many other
spheres of activity in India gained their own shastras: medicine, cooking, mathe
matics, elephant rearing, and others. In this chapter we will look at the shastras
dealing with the four principal aims of human life as guidebooks that provided
learned, reflective, o rganized guidelines for h uman conduct in t hese different
spheres.
Each shastra addresses itself to those most likely to have a special interest in
that science. Vatsyayana considers Kama a universal constituent of human life,
but he directs his advice toward certain pleasure-seeking types of persons, such
as the affluent man-about-town and the courtesan. Kautilya’s Arthashastra ad-
vises a king and his ministers in the science of statecraft. Manu addresses his
Dharmashastra most directly to Smarta Brahmins, but he also more ambitiously
sets out a Brahmin’s-e ye vision of a social order based on that conception
of Dharma. Badarayana presents a method for a Veda-reciting twice-born to
seek liberation. Patanjali outlines the best practices for a practitioner of yogic
meditation.
These shastras often employ a sutra format. That is, they set out their tenets
and recommendations in very brief, aphoristic form. These terse statements are
strung together (the core meaning of “sutra”) into texts that are short enough to
be memorized but too laconic to be fully understood on their own. In early India
such foundational works would have been transmitted orally from teacher to stu-
dent, memorized by the student, and explained by the teacher’s additional com-
mentary. In the subsequent development of these intellectual disciplines, their
oral and written commentaries played an enormous role. As Gary Tubb and
Emery Boose observe, “Works of commentary pervade the history of Sanskrit
386 C h a p t e r 1 1
thought to a degree that is unparalleled in the writings of most other traditions.”3

Important core texts like those of Manu and Badarayana attracted numerous com-
mentators, who often debate one another over the correct explication of the
original.
It is important to keep in mind that these are normative treatises. They offer
advice or guidance, in the optative mood of “should” and “ought,” to particular
audiences about how best to conduct their pursuits. Though the Dharmashas-
tra of Manu has sometimes been translated as the “Laws of Manu,” they do not
set out laws and did not have legal status. They are closer to modern guide-
books in their efforts to set out proper codes of conduct or best practices for
various situations. They do not aim to provide accurate description of histori-
cal reality. Nevertheless, they are valuable historical documents. Mark McClish
and Patrick Olivelle put it well: “As products of their respective cultural m
ilieus,
śāstras do offer us information about the past, but only if we first understand
them to be intellectualized reflections on the principles believed to underlie
the proper undertaking of various human activities rather than as attempts
to describe historical human practices.” 4 We meet in these works various Indic
ideal-t ypes: the affluent urban male, the enterprising courtesan, the ambi-
tious king, the pious Brahmin householder, and the meditating yogi, among
others. Despite their own claims to timelessness, they provide f ascinating
glimpses into the ideals and aims of important social groups in the history of
early India.
Kama: Desire, Pleasure, and Self-Mastery

In modern times, Vatsyayana’s Kamasutras is best known for its frank and detailed
treatment of erotic techniques, As translators Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar
admit, “Most Americans and E uropeans think that the sexual positions are all
that there is to the Kamasutra.”5 The guidebook does classify and comment
on the many methods of kissing, erotic scratching, love biting, and slapping,
and it does describe myriad sexual positions. These are all intimately part of
Vatsyayana’s scientific and taxonomic treatment of Kama. But this is just one
section of his treatise. Much of his work concerns m atters that we would classify
as lifestyle advice. Vatsyayana sets out guidelines for persons in specific life situ-
ations. The Kamasutra devotes sections to the affluent urban male, the unmar-
ried woman seeking a husband, the wife in a monogamous marriage, the senior
wife and the junior wife in a polygamous h ousehold, w
omen in harems, and
courtesans of different degrees of exclusivity. It is striking that most of t hese
types are female. Vatsyayana speaks inescapably as a male, but in comparison

to other works of early India, the Kamasutras acknowledges the subjectivity of
females and the possibilities of female agency much more fully.
Vatsyayana traces the genealogy of the discipline back to Brahman’s composi-
tion of 100,000 chapters. From this original, he says, various expert authors
passed along the treatise, shortened it, and separated it by topics: sexual tech-
nique, female virgins, other men’s wives, courtesans, and so on. Vatsyayana’s proj
ect is to reunite the topics and condense the entire subject of Kama into a brief
work. Not much is known about Vatsyayana Mallanaga as a historical figure, but
scholars date his treatise on Kama to the third century CE. Vatsyayana’s world,
in the Kamasutras, is the affluent cosmopolitan society that took shape in the early
centuries CE in northern India, with its urban centers, royal courts, and pan-
Asian networks of trade.
A Science of Kama
Why should Indians of classical times require a science of Kama? W asn’t desire
a hindrance to the religious life? From the time of Yajnavalkya in the Brihad
aranyaka Upanishad, Indian religious thinkers had consistently portrayed Kama,
or desire, as a problem. Among the Shramana groups, teachers repeatedly cited
Kama as one of the most pernicious obstacles to overcome for religious seekers.
Kama, they argued, leads to attachment, to all the ties that keep us bound to the
world. This is true for individuals and for society as a whole. In Bhishma’s origin
story about kingship in the Mahabharata, Kama is one of the forces that over-
powers people and leads to a state of social deterioration. The early Buddhists
told a similar story—though without the Vedas or divine intervention—in which
greed and desire enter into a previously idyllic social order, create chaos, and re-
quire the disciplining force of a king to restore order.6
Yet it is necessary to acknowledge that Kama is a potent, even ubiquitous, force
in human life. Kama can lead also to beneficial religious actions. In his Dharma-
shastra, Manu, no friend of hedonism, portrays Kama as universal.
To be ruled by Kama is not praised. But in this world t here is no such t hing
as desirelessness. Even Vedic Brahmins study the Veda and perform their rites
out of Kama. Kama is the root of intention, and sacrifices arise from inten-
tions. Every vow and moral self-restraint is born of intention, so it is said. We
never see anything done in this world by someone without Kama; w hatever
is done is set in motion through Kama. By engaging in them properly, one can
388 C h a p t e r 1 1
obtain all one’s intended desires in this world, and go to the world of the gods
hereafter. (MDhSh 2.2-5)
For Manu, the key word here is “properly.” As the basis for intentional action, he
asserts, Kama must be properly directed toward righteous ends or Dharma.
In the Kamasutras, Vatsyayana defines Kama differently. Kama can have both
transitive and intransitive meanings. Manu uses Kama transitively, as the desire
for something (worldly benefits, heavenly afterlife), which provides the intention
to take actions (learning the Veda, performing sacrifices) that lead to those
ends. Vatsyayana focuses on Kama intransitively, as the experience of sensory
pleasure. “Kama,” he states, “consists of the pleasurable engagement of the sensory
faculties—ear, skin, eye, tongue, and nose—with their proper objects of sensation,
supervised by the mind, in connection with the self ” (KS 1.2.11). Here Vatsyayana
refers to the broadly held psychology of perception in early India. Human sense
faculties are oriented outward; they are attracted by objects of s ensation and reach
out t oward the world. Of all t hese p
leasurable sensory engagements, according to
the Kamasutras, the highest form of Kama lies within sexual intercourse.
The purpose of Vatsyayana’s guidebook in the broadest sense is to instruct his
audience in attaining sensory p leasure. This requires knowledge and technique.
Unlike sexual coupling among animals, he observes, h uman sexuality is a social
act involving both male and female whose mutual engagement enhances the erotic
pleasures for both. For that reason, both males and females o ught to study the
Kamasutras. (Homoerotic guidance is largely absent from Vatsyayana’s account,
but Doniger and Kakar suggest that “it is possible to excavate several alternative
sexualities latent in the text’s somewhat fuzzy boundaries between homoeroti-
cism and heteroeroticism.”7) Kama can and should be cultivated.
Vatsyayana sees Kama as a key part of the good life. In fact, it is essential, a
necessary means of sustaining the body, just as much as food is. But he also
acknowledges that Kama can have damaging effects, just as infectious diseases
may weaken or destroy the body. Vatsyayana cites famous cases where even the
most powerf ul males came undone due to their lust for desirable but improper
females: the Vedic god Indra’s desire for the sage’s wife Ahalya, the demonic
ruler Ravana for Rama’s wife Sita, the powerf ul prince Kichaka for Draupadi.
Kama, then, is not to be pursued when it conflicts with other life purposes.
Even Vatsyayana admits that one should not transgress Dharma in pursuit of
Kama. When the three aims compete, he says, Dharma takes precedence over
Artha, which in turn precedes Kama, since adequate wealth allows the pursuit
of pleasure.
The Nagaraka, Man-about-Town

The male protagonist of the Kamasutras is called a nagaraka, a city dweller. He
has completed his education and is a householder, with sufficient resources to
allow him considerable leisure. In the Indian society of the early centuries CE,
such affluent nagarakas could have been princes and kings, members of the royal
court, wealthy merchants and their sons, successful artisans and the like. For
Vatsyayana, class origin is less important than wealth and leisure. In the Kama-
sutras, the author advises this urban householder on home design and furnish-
ings, which ought to include things like cages of pet birds and swings set in the
shade. He provides guidance on matters of personal grooming.
The nagaraka lives alone, but he enjoys an active social life. Vatsyayana
describes drinking parties, garden picnics, and convivial gatherings of all sorts.
These could include p erformances by musicians and actors, poetry recitations,
friendly competitions in painting or singing, and other cultural diversions.
A ccordingly, the nagaraka should be assiduous in his practice of the arts.
Vatsyayana lists sixty-four arts that an accomplished man-about-town should
study, along with the Kamasutras itself. T hese include m usic, dance, painting,
flower arrangement, mixing drinks, cooking, telling jokes, teaching birds to
speak, understanding languages and local dialects, improvising poetry, gam-
bling, athletics, and many others.8
The man-about-town lives a cultivated life, and his sexual activity is likewise
am atter of cultivation and mastery. Here is where Vatsyayana places his exten-
sive catalogue of erotic technique. But this knowledge is not and should not be
restricted to males, since sexual activity is a m atter of mutual engagement. For
this reason, Vatsyayana insists that a female, too, should study the science of Kama
before she reaches the prime of life and then continuing a fter marriage. Just as
there are sixty-four arts, t here is another more specialized set of sixty-four: the
sixty-four arts of love. These were taught by Vatsyayana’s p redecessor Babhra-
vya. The erotic arts can bring one wealth, success, and good fortune, says the
Kamasutras, and women love it. This, too, is a valuable discipline of knowledge,
not just for private practice. It confers a social distinction, especially with females.
“The male who is skilled in these sixty-four arts is regarded with affection and
respect by young w omen, by wives of other men, and by courtesans” (KS 2.10.54).
Females may likewise be expert in t hese arts, and the courtesan (as we w ill see)
employs them both skillfully and deliberately.
Vatsyayana approaches religious culture from a different perspective than we
have seen elsewhere. For the man-about-town, religion figures as another
390 C h a p t e r 1 1
opportunity for enjoyment. The nagaraka participates actively in religious fes-

tivals and ceremonies, but he regards them primarily as convivial social settings
for pleasurable pastimes. He certainly does not share the renunciatory orienta-
tion of the Shramanas and other disciplinary communities, nor does he seek
f uture this-worldly benefits through veneration of gods. Rather, he pursues en-
joyment in the here-and-now sensual features of religious and cultural gather-
ings. The sensory pleasurableness of religious ceremonies is less often addressed
in Indian religious literature, though it would certainly have been an appealing
feature for many participants, not just for the affluent man-about-town.
Vatsyayana describes fortnightly soirees at the temple of Sarasvati, patron god-
dess of the arts. The nagaraka and his invited guests host thespians, e ither local
ones or traveling drama troupes, and enjoy their performances. Festivals associ-
ated with other deities offer similar opportunities for aesthetic enjoyment. In
one passage, Vatsyayana lists twenty special “sports” (krida) celebrated on par
ticular dates in the lunar or solar calendar. Some are pan-Indian, while o thers
are regional observances. Some are well known. The raucous festival of Holi,
celebrated on the full-moon day in the springtime month of Phalguna, is an an-
cient tradition that continues to the present. The Spring Festival (suvasantaka)
revolving around Kama in his divine form, figures as a beloved celebration in the
Gupta Era dramas of Kalidasa and Shudraka. The Kaumudi Jagara, an all-night
vigil on the full moon of Kartika month, is devoted to the god Skanda and also
is a time for dice games and gambling. But o thers in the list are uncertain and
intriguing. Vatsyayana mentions a “Night of the Yakshas,” but he assumes his audi-
ence will know what it is. Several of the sports involve eating special foods, most
likely at the time of year when they first become ripe or available: mangos,
sugarcane, abhyusha grain. There are sports of water games, swinging, flower
gathering, and wreath making. T here is an amorous game called “kadamba-tree
fighting.” Religious ceremonies mix with festive games in the pleasure-seeking
life of the affluent nagaraka.
Virgins, Wives, and Courtesans

For males, as the Kamasutras portrays it, the most important social criterion is
wealth. This allows males an independence of action. The nagaraka appears as
Vatsyayana’s ideal-type male—affluent, leisured, skillful in myriad arts, and sexu-
ally active. For females, the crucial factor is their domestic situation—unmarried,
married, or i ndependent. Vatsyayana therefore o rganizes his treatment of females
in the Kamasutras according to their relationships with males. T hese include the
young unmarried woman (kanya, or “virgin”); the “only wife”; wives in polyga-
mous households; women in harems; and courtesans.
Vatsyayana devotes one chapter to the young w oman seeking an appropriate
husband. He begins with a description of a desirable marriage partner from a male
perspective: a virgin of good family, with parents still alive, with beauty, good
character, and lucky marks on her body. The suitor should court such a girl, and
Vatsyayana gives suggestions for how to go about this. But in contrast with many
other early Indian sources such as the Dharmashastras, Vatsyayana allows the
woman agency in this endeavor. Her goal, he says, should be to form the “best
alliance” that w ill enable both wife and husband to treat each other as unique
individuals and to make one another happy. In the play of courtship, the female
has choices to make among suitors, and ways to convey her intentions, both wel-
coming and dismissive. The male suitor must be conscientious and alert to these
signals. Much different from a s imple transaction or alliance among families, Vat-
syayana treats the dance of courtship between male and female with complexity,
involving personal and social calculations.
Among wives, Vatsyayana distinguishes the “only wife” in a monogamous
marriage from t hese w omen in h ouseholds with two or more wives. A prime
consideration for the only wife is to conduct herself in a way that prevents or
discourages her husband from taking a second wife. She should treat her hus-
band like a god. Vatsyayana sets out the numerous and laborious ways the wife
should seek to hold her husband’s heart: the close attention to home cleanli-
ness, the garden she should plant, the careful supervision of domestic expenses,
the beautification and adornment of her own body, and her sexual availability
to her husband. And she should bear sons, for if she fails to bear c hildren or gives
birth only to daughters, she may well be supplanted by a co-wife. Vatsyayana
recommends that, if she does not have children, the wife be the one to suggest
that her husband take on another wife. But she must then use all her powers to
ensure that she prevails as the higher or senior wife. The junior wife treats her
co-wife outwardly as a mother, says Vatsyayana, but she may eventually be able
to dislodge the s enior wife and assume the role of the only wife. And when many
wives share a husband and h ousehold, Vatsyayana advises the female on how to
form alliances, provoke quarrels, and gain the upper hand with the presiding male,
the husband. The domestic world of husbands and wives, as Vatsyayana sets it
out, is a patriarchal one centered on the male husband, where the female wives
must engage in active calculation and sometimes aggressive domestic politics.
392 C h a p t e r 1 1
While most females in the world of the Kamasutra must gauge their pursuits
with reference to the males on whom they depend, t here is one category of females
who act as autonomous agents: the ganikas, or high-class courtesans. They even
insist that their own voices be represented in the male-authored Kamasutras.
Vatsyayana explains that his chapter on the courtesans draws on an independent
work by Dattaka, commissioned by the courtesan community of Pataliputra.
Dattaka was uniquely qualified to compose this, according to a well-known
story. It seems that he had once, during a festival to bless a pregnant woman,
touched the god Shiva with his foot. For this polluting faux pas, Dattaka was
cursed by Shiva to become a w oman. Later, he persuaded Shiva to remove the
curse, and he transitioned back to his e arlier male identity. But he had profited
in experience from his time as a w oman. His double knowledge as both female
and male, it was said, made him especially qualified to represent authoritatively
the perspective of female courtesans.9
In many ways the courtesan is the female counterpart of the nagaraka. She
participates in the social get-togethers and garden parties of the affluent men, and
courtesans may hold their own drinking parties and invite men. Like the man-
about-town, the courtesan should be proficient in the arts, and she displays her
skills at t hose gatherings. They might include singing, playing musical instru-
ments, or impromptu composition and recitation of poetry.
The courtesan should also be proficient in the sixty-four erotic arts, as out-
lined by Babhravya. But for her, sexuality is not just about Kama; it also involves
Artha. Vatsyayana begins the chapter:
For courtesans, there is both pleasure and livelihood in their sexual relations
with men. Having sex for the sake of p leasure is natural; doing it for wealth
is artificial. Even so, the courtesan should make it appear natural, b ecause men
trust w omen who are motivated by desire. (KS 6.1.1-4)
Dissimulation is part of the skill set of the working courtesan. In one sense she
also depends on males for her livelihood, just as wives do, but the courtesan is
able to seek her own ends with a greater degree of autonomy. “Courtesans,” says
Vatsyayana, echoing the views of the Pataliputra courtesans, “examine lovers and
join with them. In joining with them, they enchant them. From those who are
enchanted, they get their money. And in the end, the courtesans release them”
(KS 6.3.45-46). Within marriage, if a wife fails to satisfy, the husband has the op-
tion of taking on another wife. In the world of the courtesan, she retains the
capability of cutting off her relations with men who fail to please or support her
adequately. She operates as a businesswoman, pursuing Artha.
Artha: The Science of Statecraft

Like Kama, the Sanskrit term Artha covers a wide-ranging semantic field. In its
broadest sense, Artha points to the aim or purpose of anything. The term appears,
for example, in the compound purusha-artha to denote the aims of human life.
In grammar, Artha refers to the sense of meaning of a word; the Artha is the
signified of a signifier. It can designate many of the ends to which h umans direct
themselves, such as wealth, property, power, influence, or fame. In the context
of the set of three worldly aims, Artha refers primarily to the pursuit of worldly
gains.
The text of the Arthashastra, as we have it, reflects a complex compositional
process. The author identifies himself as Kautilya, but there is a long tradition
in India—dating back at least to the fifth century CE—that connects Kautilya with
Chanakya of Mauryan fame. As we have seen, Chanakya’s shifty machinations
on behalf of Chandragupta Maurya were legendary, and it is possible that his
pragmatic approach to royal politics stimulated the beginnings of p olitical sci-
ence in India. But Kautilya’s work came into form during the Kushana Era, cen-
turies after Chanakya’s lifetime.10 It is clear that Kautilya saw himself as part of
a long-standing intellectual discipline of knowledge. He refers often to other ex-
perts in the field of p olitical science. As he announces at the start of his first
chapter, “This Arthashastra has been composed by collecting into one work all
those treatises on Artha composed by past teachers, for the purposes of gaining
and protecting the earth” (ASh 1.1.1). Kautilya often stages debates with other
experts within his own work, in which not surprisingly he gets the final word.
(In Indic scientific discourse, the views or arguments of others form the “pre-
liminary position,” or purvapaksha, while the author’s own final statement is the
“perfected conclusion,” or siddhanta.) Kautilya’s synthesis of other experts was
evidently so successful that the other works to which he refers have not been
preserved. Kautilya’s Arthashastra is the dominant treatise in the field of early
Indian kingship.
For many modern observers, Kautilya’s work is often reduced to a s imple West-
ern comparison: Kautilya is the “Indian Machiavelli.” Certainly the Arthashastra
shares with The Prince a focus on the ruler and an attitude of political realism,
but the comparison does not do justice to the comprehensiveness of Kautilya’s
investigation and prescriptive explication of all sorts of m atters regarding state-
craft. The Arthashastra provides far more details of nitty-gritty concerns in the
world of the authoritative monarch than Machiavelli would do many centuries
later. Here, we can touch on just a few features of this expansive work—the
394 C h a p t e r 1 1
education of the ruler, the broad shape of the monarchy, and the role of religion
within Kautilya’s vision of society.
Education of the Monarch

Kautilya’s treatise on Artha, the Arthashastra, addresses itself especially to the king
and the royal court.11 The king, a fter all, is a figure particularly concerned with
the exercise of power and the prosperity of the kingdom. This work sets out in
great detail a science of monarchical politics or statecraft, as envisioned in clas-
sical India.
Kautilya assumes that monarchy is the normal form of the state. He does ac-
knowledge the existence of other types of polities, such as confederations and
tribal communities, but kingship clearly prevailed over those other modes of gov-
ernance in early India. The king was crucial to stability and social order. With-
out a king—as in Bhishma’s origin story—human society is liable to be overcome
by destructive forces of unfettered desire and greed. Kautilya refers to this state
of anarchy as the “rule of the fishes” (matsyanyaya). In the absence of a powerf ul
king, the strong devour the weak. But in contrast to Bhishma’s account, Kautilya
posits no divine intervention to create the first king. Kingship is a pragmatic in-
stitution born of coercive force, not a theistic one instituted by the gods. Kautilya
uses the royal staff or rod of punishment (danda) as synecdoche for the king’s
coercive power. The king is the “staff-wielder.” And through the king’s judicious
application of his powerf ul staff, he brings order and prosperity to the kingdom.
Through the wise exercise of the staff, says Kautilya, the king “obtains what has
not been obtained, protects what has been obtained, increases what is being pro-
tected, and distributes that increase upon worthy recipients” (ASh 1.4.3). So, he
concludes, the workings of the world depend on the king’s governance.
All political power is vested in the person of the king. Kautilya is deeply con-
cerned, therefore, with the education and training of the king. In a sense, this is
the central purpose of the Arthashastra. Kautilya sets out a curriculum of study
for a prince and a daily schedule for the king. From the age of three, the young
prince should learn writing and arithmetic. Once he has undergone Vedic initia-
tion, he studies the Veda, critical inquiry, economics, and the science of gover-
nance (as exemplified in the Arthashastra). Moreover, Kautilya adds, he should
remain chaste u ntil the age of sixteen. As an adult, education and training con-
tinue. In the morning, the king should practice the four types of military train-
ing: elephants, horses, chariots, and weapons. During the next part of the day
he should listen to a variety of subjects, including ancient traditions, reports of
current events, stories and illustrations, Dharmashastra, and Arthashastra. The

rest of the time, he ought to review what he has heard and also apply himself to
new subjects. “From what is heard, intellect arises. From intellect comes disci-
pline, and from discipline comes mastery of the self ” (ASh 1.5.16). And this, Kauti-
lya concludes, is the great value of the sciences (vidya).
Because the king enjoys tremendous power and access to riches, Kautilya
stresses the importance of the king’s self-mastery. Through his training in the sci-
ences, the king gains control over his senses. (Kautilya uses the appropriate
martial term, jaya, or victory, for this mastery.) He does this by overcoming the
“six internal enemies”: desire, anger, greed, passion, pride, and lust. He brings
the senses u nder restraint by ensuring that they do not engage improperly with
the sensory qualities. A king who fails to gain this self-control w
ill come to ruin.
Like Vatsyayana, Kautilya cites many past kings who w ere destroyed when the
internal enemies got the better of them. Ravana’s pride in not returning the wife
of another man, Duryodhana’s greed in refusing to give up a portion of his king-
dom to his cousins, Janamejaya’s anger at the Brahmins—“t hese and many other
kings who failed to master their senses and came u nder the power of the six en-
emies w ere destroyed along with their kinsmen and their kingdoms” (ASh
1.6.11).
The Shape of the Royal State

In the classical Indian state, the king may be a unitary sovereign, with all political
power grounded in his person. But the king is also understood to be an expan-
sive being, with “limbs” (anga) that extend his authority outward. These are usu-
ally listed as seven: the king himself, the ministers, the territory, the fortified
city, the treasury, the army, and the allies. Instead of “limbs,” Kautilya uses the
term prakriti, the seven “natural elements” of the monarchical polity. As head of
state, the king must employ these limbs or elements as his agents. For example,
to continue the bodily m etaphor, he uses spies to extend the power of his eyes
throughout the realm. The army is his metaphorical arm. A great plethora of
ministers are involved in extending the sovereign will of the king. “Because the
king must carry out many actions in many places simultaneously,” Kautilya states,
“he should employ ministers to perform them in his absence, so that optimum
time and place for those actions not be wasted” (ASh 1.9.8).
The science of royal statecraft, therefore, requires an examination of the many
constituents of governance. Kautilya envisions an elaborate system of admin-
istration and reiterates that the king himself must be energetic, for only then do
396 C h a p t e r 1 1
eople in his s ervice also act with vigor. At the innermost circle are the ministers
p
who consult directly with the king and act on his behalf. Under these high offi-
cials, there are departments that are responsible for the collection of revenue
through taxation on agricultural produce, tariffs on trade, and taxes levied on
other profitable enterprises. The king is responsible for the administration of jus-
tice, and for this he appoints ministerial judges to adjudicate disputes and to
conduct trials. The king also assigns superintendents for all sorts of enterprises
within the realm: mines, the mint, liquor, gambling, courtesans, elephant for-
ests, prisons, shipping, and many more.
Governing a kingdom in early India required attention both to its internal
prosperity and to its external relations with other kingdoms. Kautilya assumes
that a ruler w ill seek to expand his resources, to obtain what has not yet been
obtained. But one kingdom is surrounded by others, and these, too, the king must
presume, w ill seek their own growth. A monarch therefore requires knowledge
of the other surrounding polities. He must be able to form alliances, engage in
negotiations, make calculations of relative strength, and conduct military cam-
paigns against other rulers when prudent and promising.
As a framework for t hese calculations, Kautilya introduces a model of the
“circles of kingdoms” (mandala). The innermost circle is one’s own state. One
begins from the assumption that bordering kingdoms are by nature adversaries,
since they are likely to covet their neighboring territories. The circle of one’s own
kingdom, then, is encircled by other enemy kingdoms. These kingdoms, too, have
their enemies, so the kingdom on the other side of one’s neighbor is an enemy of
one’s e nemy and therefore potentially an ally. T hings become complex quite
quickly in this abstract modeling of interstate politics, but it offers a useful start-
ing point. Based on these assessments, a king could employ a variety of methods—
Kautilya outlines a sixfold strategy—to achieve the best outcome for his kingdom.
But in the monarchical world envisioned in the Arthashastra, the king’s position
is always precarious, since other polities are likewise motivated toward their own
interests. Hence, Kautilya stresses the importance of careful analysis and rational
deliberation, within a royal policy we would term realpolitik.
Religion and the Pragmatic King

For a ruler adhering to the guidelines of the Arthashastra, religion is a pragmatic
matter. Kautilya distinguishes the realm of humans from that of the gods. In the
human realm, he says, h uman agents may pursue good policies or bad ones, and
their visible results with be successes or failures. In the divine realm, by contrast,
one may obtain good fortune or bad fortune, but the c auses of these outcomes
remain invisible. “One can think rationally about action in the h uman realm; the
divine realm is outside rational comprehension” (ASh 6.2.6). Within the h uman
realm, Kautilya argues, the king should act as a rational agent, employing good
policies to achieve beneficial outcomes for the kingdom. This involves support
of religious institutions as part of the existing social order.
At a personal level, Kautilya recommends that the king study the Veda and
perform some daily ceremonies. These activities are part of the discipline and
training of the ruler. He appoints as his chief counselor (purohita) a Brahmin
learned in the Vedas and its auxiliary disciplines, and expert in divine omens as
well as in the science of Artha. “The king should follow his counsel like a pupil
follows his preceptor, a son his f ather, or a servant does his master” (ASh 1.9.10).
He should also employ Vedic Brahmins as his court priests, and they should ob-
serve the prevailing ritual practices. In the Arthashastra, Kautilya assumes that
this royal ceremonial will be in the Vedic sacrificial lineage. But he is not con-
cerned with the liturgical rites by which one becomes a king ritually, such as the
Rajasuya, nor with imperial rituals like the Horse Sacrifice. T hese Vedic rituals
may impart a divine quality to the king, but Kautilya’s overriding concern is with
the king as a human actor.12
The Arthashastra recognizes the multiplicity of religious specialists and in-
stitutions within early Indian society. Kautilya mentions Shramana groups like
Buddhists and Ajivakas, renouncers, and ascetics as well as Vedic Brahmins. The
king can make use of them for his own benefit. For example, the peripatetic life-
style of homeless ascetics makes them particularly useful as royal spies, since
they can wander into other territories and other kingdoms with impunity. Vedic
Brahmins are valuable for settling the countryside and thereby increasing its
productivity. Kautilya recommends that the king give land grants to Brahmins,
exempt from all fines and taxes. The actual farming labor in these Brahmin settle-
ments would be carried out mostly by Shudra agriculturalists, while the Brah-
min males are left f ree to pursue their ritual and pedagogic activities. Farther
afield, in marginal land that is not suitable for cultivation, the king should pro-
vide tracts to Brahmin renouncers for Vedic study and sacrifice. In the towns also,
the king should have temples for the gods placed in the center, and shrines for
Yakshas acting as guardian spirits placed on the outskirts.
The pragmatic king envisioned in the Arthashastra acts for the good of himself
and for the polity over which he presides. He protects the security of the kingdom
and seeks to increase its prosperity. Religion can be useful in this. The king stud-
ies the Vedas and the sciences to gain self-mastery, and he employs Brahmins as
398 C h a p t e r 1 1
counselors and ministers. He supports the various religious groups within the
kingdom and gives special consideration to Vedic Brahmins through land grants
and provisions for renunciatory ashrams. But this forms a minor part of his royal
activities. If religion concerns itself primarily with the divine realm, as Kautilya
would see it, the king focuses his greatest effort within the h uman realm.
Dharma and the Righteous Society

At the start of his Dharmashastra, Manu sits in meditation.13 A group of sages
approach, pay their respects, and ask him to instruct them in Dharma. The scene
is not unlike those that begin with the Buddha Shakyamuni and his disciples on
Vulture Peak. But in this case, Manu will instruct his listeners in the shastra that
he alone received from Svayambhu Brahman, who composed the master treatise
at the beginning of creation.
As we have seen, Dharma is a multivalent term in early Indian religious dis-
course. For Manu, Dharma is grounded in the Veda.
The root of Dharma is the entire Veda, and also the remembered tradition
(smriti) and virtuous conduct of those who know the Veda, the actions of wise
people, and what is pleasing to the soul. Any Dharma that Manu has declared
for anyone—all that is stated in the Veda, for it is the basis of all knowledge.
A wise person should consider this fully through the eye of knowledge and
then follow one’s own Dharma, with the Veda as its authority, for those who
follow Dharma based on the Veda and remembered tradition w ill obtain a
good reputation in this world and an unsurpassed happiness when they pass
on. (MDhSh 2.6-9)
Dharma may be singular in its Vedic foundation, but it is also diverse in its
application. For that reason, Manu speaks of “one’s own Dharma” (sva-dharma).
Dharma applies to all members of h uman society, but it differs according to class,
gender, stage of life, and other distinguishing individual factors. Even so, Manu
asserts that all who follow their own proper Dharma will achieve the desirable
results of a good reputation while alive and a happy outcome afterward.
The C
areer of the Smarta Brahmin
As a historical work, scholars date Manu’s Dharmashastra to roughly the second
century CE. The Dharmashastra grows out of the e arlier Dharmasutra literature
of Smarta Brahmins loyal to the Vedic tradition and expands its range. H
ere, too,
the lives of Brahmins are a major concern, and the male B rahmin h ouseholder
continues to be a model and religious ideal. Manu is extravagant in praising him:
“The Brahmin is lord of all creation, according to Dharma, b ecause he arose from
the highest part of the creator, because he came first, and because he bears in
himself the Veda” (MDhSh 1.93). But Manu extends his attention well beyond
the Brahmin focus of the Dharmasutras. Following the paradigm first set out in
the Rig Veda’s Purushasukta hymn, Manu envisions all of society as a hierarchi-
cal organic unity, with the four ranked classes assigned appropriate duties based
on that original emanation. The Brahmin class came first and emerged from
the head, the highest part, of that Highest Being. This orderly society, in Manu’s
view, requires the supervision of a king guided by knowledgeable Brahmins.
His guidebook to Dharma, therefore, addresses the lives of Brahmins, the duties
of all classes, the training and conduct of the king, the administration of justice—
all necessary to realizing the ideal of a Dharma-based social order as Manu envi-
sions it.
In Manu’s righteous society, each of the four classes has distinct responsibili-
ties. These were set out in the beginning by the Creator.
For the preservation of this entire creation, the Splendid One assigned
separate duties to t hose born of his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet. For Brah-
mins, he assigned reciting and teaching the Veda, offering and officiating at
sacrifices, giving and receiving gifts. To the Kshatriya, he assigned protection
of all creatures, giving gifts, offering sacrifices, reciting the Veda, and remain-
ing unattached to sensory objects. To the Vaishya, he assigned protection of
animals, giving gifts, offering sacrifices, reciting the Veda, and pursuing
livelihoods such as commerce, moneylending, and plough agriculture. To
the Shudra, the Lord assigned one task only—to serve these other classes with-
out resentment. (MDhSh 1.87-91)
Within this class system, the Veda constitutes a key status marker. The three upper
groups are “twice-born” classes, since t hose males are eligible to be initiated into
the Veda. Hence they are qualified to recite the Veda themselves and offer sac-
rifices on their own behalf. But only Brahmins are entitled to transmit and teach
others the Veda and to officiate at sacrifices on behalf of o thers. The Brahmin
stands at the head of society, and even among Brahmin males t here are further
rankings. Learned Brahmins are good, those who perform rites are better, and
experts in the Veda are best of all.
The life path of the Smarta Brahmin male, accordingly, rests on the f oundation
of the Veda. As in the Dharmasutras, Manu’s Dharmashastra emphasizes the study
400 C h a p t e r 1 1
and continuing recitation of the Veda, the p erformance of domestic Veda-based

rites such as the “five g reat sacrifices,” and the maintenance of an austere mode
of life. Manu codifies this life path into a scheme of four stages (ashramas): stu-
dent, householder, forest dweller, and wandering ascetic. Manu clearly favors
the Brahmin householder as the one whose activities support all society. “Just as
all beings subsist depending on air, so all the stages of life depend on the
householder. Since the householder supports those in the other three life stages
every day with knowledge and food, the householder is the preeminent stage of
life” (MDhSh 3.77-78). With his five great sacrifices, the Brahmin householder
extends his support to the Vedic sages, the ancestor spirits, the gods, the semi-
divine bhutas, and the guests.
Despite this strong preference, Manu acknowledges the value of renunciation
and incorporates it into the final two stages of life. He allows that one may seek
the more individual spiritual goals of the ascetic. But, he insists, a Brahmin (or
other twice-born male) should only enter these stages after he has fulfilled
his social obligations as student and h ouseholder. This includes ensuring that
his lineage continues. “When a h ouseholder sees that he is wrinkled and gray,
and when he sees the son of his son, then he may take refuge in the forest”
(MDhSh 6.2). Clearly Manu wishes to counter the Shramana groups like the
Buddhists and Jains, who encouraged renunciation at any age. If a Brahmin
should undertake renunciation without having studied the Vedas, fathered sons,
and offered h ouseholder sacrifices, Manu warns, he w ill sink into the under-
world (MDhSh 6.37).
In the first step of his retirement from t hese duties, the Brahmin removes him-
self from home and village and becomes a forest dweller (vanaprastha). He may
take his wife with him or e lse entrust her to the care of their male c hildren. He
carries with him the domestic fires and continues in his new location the chief
domestic activities of this earlier life, recitation of the Veda and the five great
sacrifices. But he gradually assumes a more austere way of life, wearing bark gar-
ments, leaving beard uncut, matting his hair. He may inflict still more rigorous
mortifications on his body. During the summer, for example, he may follow the
five-fire vow, during the rainy season stay outside with only the clouds for shel-
ter, and in the winter months wear wet clothing. This harsh regime may lead him
to the next step, as a full ascetic renouncer.
The Brahmin who chooses this final stage gives away all his possessions, de-
posits the sacred fires within himself, and wanders off alone. There is no option
for his wife to accompany him in this final step. His only possessions will be a
bowl for begging, the foot of a tree for shelter, rags for clothing, solitude, and
equanimity to all this. (This parallels the austere promise the Buddha Shakya-
muni gave to new members of his following.) Manu says nothing about Vedic
recitation at this stage, and the ascetic’s sacrificial practices are solely internal ones.
Now, the Brahmin engages in the yogic practices of breath control and medita-
tion. And through meditation, the wandering ascetic may attain oneness with
brahman, the final liberation as envisioned by the Upanishad teachers.
As for women, Manu is notorious for his insistence that females be dependent
on males at every stage of their lives.
When she is a child, a young woman, or an older woman, a female should not
carry out any duty independently, even in her own h
ouse. As a child she should
live u
nder control of her f ather, as a young w
oman under her husband, and
under her sons when her husband has passed away. A woman should not have
independence. She should not wish to separate herself from her f ather, hus-
band, or sons. By separating from them she would bring disgrace on both
families. (MDhSh 5.147-149)
Manu stresses the ideal virtues of the good housewife: cheerfulness, cleanliness,
and frugality. She should honor her husband as her god and not carry out any
religious rites on her own. Manu’s emphatic concern h ere appears to rest on the
patriarchal idea that females are particularly susceptible to sensual pleasures. Bet-
ter able to gain self-mastery, males should exercise control over the women
dependent on them. But if a woman sticks to this female Dharma of dependence
and self-restraint, she too gains rewards in this life and in the afterlife—with her
husband. “The wife who is never unfaithful to her husband and keeps her mind,
speech, and body restrained is called a good w oman by good people, and she at-
tains the heaven of her husband” (MDhSh 5.165).
The Shape of the Righteous Society

Brahmins may be the support of all, as Manu sees it, but they require in turn a
supportive social order. First of all, the righteous society of Dharma requires a
king. When the world was without a king, Manu reminds his audience, p eople
fled in all directions out of fear. In order that all could be protected, the Lord cre-
ated a king by extracting everlasting particles from the deities Indra, Vayu, Yama,
Surya, Agni, Varuna, Chandra, and Kubera. Manu’s origin story largely parallels
the one Bhishma tells to Yudhishthira in the Mahabharata, but it emphasizes
Vedic deities and omits the role of Vishnu. B ecause the king bears t hese divine
elements, he should be regarded himself as a great deity. The king holds the rod
402 C h a p t e r 1 1
of punishment, to thwart disorder. With the king acting as protector of order,

people in all classes and at all stages of life are enabled to pursue their own in-
dividual Dharma.
Manu gives much greater attention to the topic of kingship than was the case
in the earlier Dharmasutra literature. He covers briefly many aspects of statecraft
that Kautilya does in his treatise, and Manu no doubt borrowed from experts in
the developing science of Artha. Like Kautilya, Manu stresses the importance of
education and self-mastery among the royal elite. He summarizes the formation
of the royal bureaucracy, the strategies of external state relations, and the admin-
istration of law. But much more than Kautilya, Manu emphasizes the importance
of Brahmins, both as royal ministers and as recipients of royal patronage. It is
clear that Manu envisions important roles for Brahmin experts in the science of
Dharma at court as advisers and jurists. At the same time he stresses that the wise
king w ill take a role in supporting Smarta Brahmin communities and their Vedic
educational institutions. The king “should honor Brahmins who have returned
from their teachers’ homes” a fter completing their Veda study, says Manu, “for
the Veda is said to be an imperishable treasure for kings” (MDhSh 7.82). In this
view, the study and transmission of the Veda is a public good for the kingdom.
And the king reaps rewards for his beneficence. Manu sets out a strong hierarchy
among recipients of royal donations. If the king makes a donation to a non-
Brahmin, he receives a merit equal to the value of the gift. H ere Manu has in mind
gifts to Shramana mendicants, most likely. A donation to a “Brahmin in name
only” (i.e., not learned in the Veda) warrants double merit; one to a learned
Brahmin gains 100,000 times the merit; and one given to a Veda master showers
infinite reward on the royal donor.
The full shape of a righteous society ruled by a righteous king rests on the four
classes. Drawing on the Vedic origin story, Manu portrays these as natural, given
at the dawn of creation and necessary for its proper preservation. These classes
are assigned occupational roles according to their inborn n atures (svabhava). And
they are ranked according to their access to the Veda. The upper three classes are
“twice-born,” since their second birth comes with initiation into the Veda. Below
them, Manu says, Shudras have only a single birth, since they are excluded from
the Veda. There is no fifth class, he emphasizes.
Within this clear ideal order, however, Manu also recognized the existence of
other corporate groups. The Dharmashastras most often call these the jatis (birth-
groups), and in modern times this designation is generally translated as “caste”
(from the Portuguese term for “class”). Manu fits these into his social hierarchy
by asserting that these groups derive from the mixture of the four primary classes
due to transgressions of the proper order of t hings. Males and females o ught to
mix with members of their own class. However, Manu admits, this is not always
the case. “The mixture of classes originates from adultery across classes, from
marriage with t hose one should not marry, and from abandonment of one’s own
proper occupations” (MDhSh 10.24). Historically, the groups he mentions mostly
represent real existing communities of the time, but Manu’s theory of origina-
tion places them all in a subordinate role to the purer varna classes. Manu goes
on to set out a kind of matrix of interbreeding. A Brahmin male and a Vaishya
female produce an Ambashta, a Brahmin male with a Shudra female give birth to
a Nishada, a Kshatriya male and a Brahmin female lead to a Suta, and so on. Manu
observes that many of the resulting birth-groups follow specific occupations or
forms of livelihood: ship workers, animal trappers, medical workers, trades-
men, fishermen, carpenters, and others. This enables him to generate the histori-
cal complexity of social and occupational groupings in early India from the
Vedic model of four original classes.14
Among the derivative communities, t here are some that are truly at the bot-
tom of the social heap. T hese are the Chandalas and the Shvapachas (“dog cook-
ers”). Manu sets out special restrictions applying to them. They must reside
outside the town and must not venture into town at night. They get their clothes
from the dead, and they eat out of broken vessels. They carry out unwanted tasks,
such as serving as executioners for the king, and they carry away the corpses of
those without relatives to do so. Those who follow Dharma should have nothing
to do with Chandalas, says Manu. If they do, they are considered to be polluted
by that contact, and they should take a bath to restore their normal state of pu-
rity. From this, the Chandalas and other deeply marginalized groups in early
India and subsequently came to be known as “untouchables.” In modern times
their descendants are preferably designated as Dalits.
Manu and Changing Times

Manu’s ranking of a Veda master infinitely above a non-Brahmin recipient
reminds us that his Smarta Brahmin audience was in competition with other re-
ligious communities in early India, most notably the Buddhists and other Shra-
mana communities, for support from kings and other elites. If we view Manu not
as the mythical “first man” passing on parts of Brahman’s original treatise, but as
a human author and expert in Dharma composing his text in northern India
during the Kushana Era, we can place the Dharmashastra in its broader histori-
cal setting. In relation to the e arlier Smarta Brahmin Dharmasutras, Manu’s
404 C h a p t e r 1 1
treatise was an expansive and innovative step forward. But in relation to the
dynamic Indian society of the period, Manu articulates a conservative response.
Manu’s compelling vision of an orderly righteous society is in many ways a throw-
back. Manu reiterates the key values of the Vedic tradition—the centrality of the
Veda, the efficacy of sacrifice in binding h umans and gods in shared prosperity,
and the preeminent status of the Brahmin male householder—in the face of a
changing and expanding religious landscape.
Vedic Brahmins faced multiple challenges in the early centuries CE. First, they
confronted competition for economic resources. Buddhists and other Shramana
groups had been highly successful in gaining patronage from affluent social
groups, thereby reducing the provisions that could be directed toward Vedic ritual
practices. Against this, Manu emphasizes the great value—infinitely greater—of
donations made to support Brahmin masters of the Veda. Brahmins had also
found themselves challenged for religious primacy in the royal courts. Starting
during the Mauryan period, Shramana groups challenged the older mutuality
of Kshatriya and Brahmin. Some imperial rulers like Ashoka and Kanishka had
allied themselves forthrightly with Buddhist advisers. In response, Manu empha-
sizes the importance of maintaining educated Brahmins as court advisers and
royal officials. More generally, Manu refers to the Shramana groups as “atheists”
(nastikas) and advocates a policy of social exclusion. He includes atheists in his
long list of those who committed sins that entailed loss of class—along with cow
killers, adulterers, and usurers. A respectable Brahmin householder should not
invite an atheist to ancestral rituals or other domestic rites at his home.
Despite this disdain toward Shramana communities, Manu also recognizes
the strength of some of their criticisms of the Vedic order. This is best seen in Ma
nu’s treatment of meat-eating. Jains and Buddhists, as we’ve seen, were deeply
critical of the violence in Vedic animal sacrifice and advocated a personal practice
of nonviolence, entailing the abstention from the eating of meat. Manu also favors
nonviolence and the avoidance of meat.
One can never obtain meat without doing violence to living beings, and the
slaughter of living beings does not lead to heaven. Therefore one should avoid
meat. Reflecting that meat originates in the binding and killing of their bodies,
one should refrain from all eating of meat . . . There is no greater sinner than
the one who wishes to feed his own flesh with the flesh of another creature—
unless it is used in sacrifices to the ancestors or the gods. (MDhSh 5.48-52)
Manu inserts an important exception in that final sentence. The time-honored

sacrificial use of animals in Vedic rituals, for Manu, takes precedence over the
general principle of nonviolence. “The Self-created Brahman himself created ani-

mals for the purpose of sacrifice, and sacrifice is for the well-being of the entire
world,” proclaims Manu. “Therefore, within sacrifice, killing is not killing”
(MDhSh 5.39). Dharma itself arises from the Veda, and so when the Veda pre-
scribes sacrificial slaughter of animals, that should not be classified as violence
antithetical to Dharma.
Manu is wary also of the new practices of image worship and the fledgling
shrines for deities. Some Brahmin shakhas, as we have seen, invested themselves
during this period in developing new protocols for honoring gods in image form.
Manu suggests that a Brahmin should show honor by circumambulating an
image-shrine, just as he should circumambulate other worthy objects such as a
cow, ghee, a crossroads, or an honored tree. But as for t hose priests (devalakas)
who officiate at such a shrine, they, too, should be shunned, just as much as one
should avoid atheists.15 Neither does Manu place much value in the new divine
claimants to supremacy, such as Vishnu Narayana and his avataras in the Sans
krit epics. For Manu, the older Vedic gods still serve, though only the creator god
Brahman, the svayambhu or “self-born one,” receive special attention in Manu’s
pantheon.
During a period of far-reaching trade and broad cultural contacts throughout
the Asian ecumene, Manu advises Smarta Brahmins to stay within their privi-
leged zone of the Aryavarta. As we’ve seen, Manu and others in classical India
designated certain lands as the “home of the Indo-A ryans.” This included the
lands from the Himalayas in the north to the Vindhya mountains to the south,
stretching across the subcontinent from the Arabian Sea in the west to the Bay
of Bengal in the east. Manu adds that this territory, where the blackbuck ante-
lope wanders naturally, is known as the land suitable for sacrifice. Beyond that
is the land of the Others (mlecchas). “Twice-borns should make a diligent effort
to live in the Aryavarta,” says Manu, “but a Shudra can live in any land, if pressed
for livelihood” (MDhSh 2.24). The stay-at-home policy that Manu recommends,
especially for Brahmin religious specialists, offers a striking contrast with the Bud-
dhist order of the Kushana Era, whose missionary monks took advantage of the
open trade routes to spread their teachings to far-flung new territories. It con-
trasts also with the more expansive, pan-Indian imperial perspectives seen in the
Sanskrit epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Manu’s agenda was to preserve an
older order in its purity, at a time of change that was disorienting for Brahmins
loyal to the Veda.
Even so, Manu’s treatise and the developing science of Dharma proved to be
resilient, and it has had a broad, long-lasting impact on Indian society right up
406 C h a p t e r 1 1
to the present. Manu’s treatise is the earliest surviving Dharmashastra, but writ-
ing a century or two later, Yajnavalkya lists twenty authors of Dharmashastras.16
In classical and medieval India, kings did endow the educational institutions of
Vedic Brahmins, much as Manu advised, and recorded their gifts of brahmadeyas
(Brahmin landholdings) in the permanent form of copper-plate inscriptions. Edu-
cated Brahmins in turn brought their knowledge of Dharma to the royal courts.
From the eighth century on, learned Brahmin scholars wrote commentaries and
digests of the Dharmashastra literature, establishing it as a significant h
uman sci-
ence within Indian society. And when the British established a beachhead of
colonial control over eastern India in the eighteenth century and sought to
govern Indians according to “their own legal codes,” they turned to Brahmin
pandits (panditas) and the Dharmashastras—with vast and often unfortunate
consequences. But that is another story.17
Moksha and Meditation

In his master treatise, Brahman sets off the fourth aim of human life, which he
calls Moksha, or liberation, as a special category of purpose. And rightly so, since
the other three involve primarily this-worldly ends, while Moksha involves a lib-
eration from worldly suffering or bondage. In religious studies, the term “sote-
riology” (from a Greek word for “salvation”) denotes the disciplined study of
doctrines and practices aimed at this transcendent goal.
Human salvation or liberation, as we’ve seen, is a recurrent concern in the
religious cultures of early India. From the time of the Upanishads and the forma-
tion of Shramana communities, Moksha was broadly proclaimed as a possible
goal. It could be pursued and achieved through individual human effort. Mok-
sha was highly desirable; many considered it the “highest good,” the ultimate good
life. It was not, however, an everyday goal. Moksha was reserved for the most
committed religious specialists. It required a deliberate and rigorous religious
training and sustained meditation.
Varieties of Moksha
In Mircea Eliade’s classic 1954 work, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, the historian
of religion introduced four “kinetic ideas” at the core of Indian spirituality.18 These
can serve as a useful point of departure for any discussion of soteriology in early
India. First, he says, t here is a law of universal causality, karman, which is closely
connected with worldly suffering and with the assumption of transmigration. The
second kinetic idea is the process that engenders the cosmos and snares human
beings in ignorance and bondage. This is often called maya, or “cosmic illusion.”
Third, Indians identify an “absolute reality” that offers an alternative to the suf-
fering and limitation caused by karman and ignorance. This is called by various
names—the transcendent, the unconditioned, brahman, Nirvana. Here I am using
the most common general term, Moksha, which points particularly to the lib-
eration or salvation it offers from whatever binds us. Fourth are the effective
techniques for attaining this absolute reality or Moksha. These methods, Eliade
states, constitute Yoga. One will notice that Eliade’s kinetic ideas parallel the four
“noble truths” that the Buddha Shakyamuni had set out long before in his first
discourse at Sarnath.
Like other key terms in Indic religious cultures, however, Moksha does not
have a single uncontested meaning. While the term always refers to the endpoint
in a p rocess of individual salvation, there are basic points of disagreement and
debate. These are grounded in the basic ontological presuppositions held by the
different schools of thought. What is the fundamental problem to which Mok-
sha is the solution? What is the entity that experiences this problematic worldly
situation and seeks a solution? How can this transcendent state be understood
or described? Who is qualified to pursue it? What are the most effective means
of reaching that goal? And what happens when a human does attain the transcen-
dent end of Moksha? In the early centuries CE, teachers in the various religious
cultures of India addressed these basic issues, and argued over them, in a series
of foundational works.
The Jain preceptor Umasvati set out a Jain understanding of bondage and
Moksha in his Tattvartha Sutras, an authoritative Sanskrit work of the second
century CE.19 The non-theistic Jain ontology begins with the soul. According to
Jain premises, t here are multiple individual souls inhabiting all kinds of physical
bodies. Umasvati distinguished two fundamental categories of souls: t hose l iving
in worldly samsara and those that are liberated. The great goal of the soul living in
worldly samsara, he begins, is to attain Moksha, which he defines as perfect
knowledge, perfect intuition, and perfect bliss. However, in worldly conditions
souls are hindered from t hese perfections. The predicament of all worldly souls
revolves around karman. Actions—whether of body, speech, or mind—cause an
inflow of karman, which adheres like particles of darkening matter to the soul
and binds it to the world. Spiritual development leading away from worldly
confinement and toward Moksha involves stopping the acquisition of karman.
This can be done, first of all, by observing the five vows, the ethical founda-
tions of the religious life, which prevent the most pernicious karman. Bodily
408 C h a p t e r 1 1
austerities can wear off existing karman, as well as inhibit new karman. Like-
wise, Umasvati advocates meditation as another means of removing and
preventing karman. Meditation involves “the concentration of one’s thought on
a single object by a person with good bone-joints,” says Umasvati, and then he
goes on to analyze the various types of Jain meditations.20 As deluding karman is
eliminated, omniscience arises. And with the complete elimination of all types
of karman, the soul attains Moksha. At this point, in the Jain understanding, the
liberated soul soars upward to the border of cosmic space, in perfect stasis and
autonomy, which the Jains call Kaivalya.
Like the Jains, the non-theistic Buddhist religious community concerned it-
self fundamentally with the attainment of Moksha. From the time of the Buddha
Shakyamuni, Buddhists most often used the term Nirvana, which emphasizes the
“extinguishing” of worldly suffering and subsequent rebirth. Buddhists insisted
that there exists no i ndependent, enduring “self ” or “soul” (atman). So distinc-
tive was this denial that o thers characterized Buddhists as anatmavadins, those
who proclaim the “no-soul” theory. From an early time Buddhists held to ideas
of thoroughgoing impermanence and dependent causality. With the rise of the
Madhyamika (Middle Way) philosophical school within the broader Mahayana
developments of the early centuries CE, the anti-essentialism inherent in these
formative Buddhist ideas was stretched into a universal principle. In the works
of Nagarjuna, dating to the second century CE, all objects and categories are de-
nied any fundamental or essential being. They can be characterized only by the
negative term shunyata, emptiness. And in the Yogachara school of Buddhism
established in the fourth century CE by two brothers from Purushapura, Asanga
and Vasubandhu, Buddhist anti-essentialism is directed at everyday phenom-
enological experience. Yogachara Buddhism (also identified as the “Mind-Only”
school) insisted that our everyday notion that objects of experience exist exter-
nal to and independent of our own perceiving consciousness is a fundamental
form of ignorance and a cause of suffering. Yogachara proponents emphasize that
one must overcome the mistaken division between oneself as a perceiving sub-
ject and the world as perceived objects.
These ontological commitments form the basis for the Buddhist soteriologi-
cal path. Buddhists often formalize the route from basic worldly suffering to
enlightenment or Moksha in five stages (pancha-marga, literally the “five
roads”). The first two Buddhist roads involve preparation. The Buddhist seeker
begins the quest by cultivating moral conduct, developing the practice of medi-
tation, and learning important doctrinal tenets. These preparations lead one to
the crucial third stage, the “road of insight.” Here the seeker comes to a direct
and intense perception of the true nature of reality just as it is—that is, as the
Buddhist teachings portray it. Here is where different emphases in the path may
occur. A Buddhist monk or nun of the Theravada might come to a profound
recognition of the four noble truths. A Mahayana-oriented seeker might realize
the deep truth of emptiness, and a seeker following the Yogachara orientation
could experience a transformation in consciousness where subject and object are
no longer bifurcated. In all cases, this insight is transformative. The subsequent
stage in this Buddhist route involves the cultivation of t hese insights and aban-
doning any lingering afflictions. The fifth and final “road of completion” is syn-
onymous with attaining one’s goal. The enlightened Buddhist recognizes that all
fetters are eliminated and w ill not return. One is freed from all rebirth since no
causal force of karman remains. With the doctrine of no-soul, there is no endur-
ing entity to fly to the top of the cosmos or go anywhere. T here is Nirvana only.
Groups in the Vedic lineage also promoted the pursuit of Moksha. Two impor
tant soteriological works compiled in the early centuries CE are the Brahmasutras
of Badarayana and the Yogasutras of Patanjali. Both articulated conceptions of
Moksha and set out methods for its attainment, but with differing ontological
premises. Badarayana takes the monist orientation of the Upanishads as the foun-
dation for seeking the highest state, while Patanjali grounds his formulation of
the Yoga path on the dualist premises of the Samkhya (“enumerationist”) school.
Meditation on the Vedic brahman

Badarayana composed the Brahmasutras in the early fifth century CE, as best we
can tell. But he was part of a long learned tradition of reflections on the Vedic
scriptures among Brahmin intellectuals. T hese interpretive considerations led to
two important early darshanas, or philosophical schools. The Mimamsa (“inves-
tigation”) school concerned itself with the interpretation of Vedic texts pertaining
to the ritual p
erformance of sacrifice. Its foundational work was the Mimamsa-
sutras of Jaimini, composed several centuries before Badarayana. The Vedanta
school focused on the more speculative portion of the Vedic corpus, the Upani-
shads. Badarayana refers to seven other e arlier Vedanta authorities, but his Brah-
masutras seems to have supplanted their texts and become the foundational
work of the Vedanta school. According to the Vedanta, the Upanishads provide
a comprehensive vision of the underlying principles of the cosmos and a sote-
riology by which an individual may gain Moksha within that Vedic cosmos. The
Brahmasutras sets out to give a more systematic and concise presentation of that
vision.
410 C h a p t e r 1 1
Badarayana grounds his guide for the attainment of Moksha on ontological

presuppositions drawn directly from the Upanishads. First is the fundamental
principle of brahman. This is the animating essence of the cosmos, “from which
all t hings come, by which they exist, and into which they return upon destruction,”
as Aleksandor Uskokov succinctly puts it.21 As the creative force b ehind things,
brahman also enters into all beings. The defining characteristic of brahman, says
Badarayana, is bliss. In the common Vedanta formula, brahman is sat-chit-
ananda: fundamentally real, conscious, and blissful. At the same time, brahman
eludes positive description. As Yajnavalkya stated in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad, one can only say it is “not this, not that.” It cannot be perceived in
the ordinary, empirical ways we know t hings in the world, and it cannot be
known through inference. Rather, says Badarayana, one can only know brahman
through the Veda and, more specifically, through the Upanishads. It resides there
in the sacred scriptural words (shabda). The Upanishads should not be viewed
as the teachings of h uman teachers like Yajnavalkya or Uddalaka Aruni. Rather,
the Vedanta school asserts that the Veda is apaurusheya, nonhuman in origin and
therefore not subject to human fallibility.
The second key ontological category Badarayana draws from the Upanishads
is the atman, usually translated as “soul.” The individual human soul transmi-
grates, as many schools of thought in early India assume. It moves from one body
to another, in a seemingly endless cycle of deaths and rebirths. For Vedanta, the
individual atman partakes of the universal brahman. As it resides in all creation,
brahman resides within the embodied soul as the “Self of the self.”22 However,
that essential sharing in the brahman is normally concealed from the embodied
self, due to the power of karman.
This is the ordinary human situation, as the Vedanta school sees it: an eternal
soul (atman) dwelling within a physical body and transmigrating through
multiple rebirths due to its bonding karman. But within this atman also resides
brahman as its inner essence. And that inner brahman is the key to the possibil-
ity of Moksha. It is possible, the Brahmasutras assert, for the soul to overcome
the concealment of brahman and to realize that it shares in the brahman as its
essential nature. The profound realization by the embodied atman of its essen-
tial brahman-ness brings about an escape from the cycle of transmigration. For
the human soul, this realization is the highest good, Moksha.
The method for attaining this salvific goal, in the Brahmasutras, follows a path
of knowledge. It is not the fox-like knowledge of many things, in Archilochus’s
(and Isaiah Berlin’s) well-known distinction, but rather the hedgehog-like know-
ing of just one profound t hing. That is, the path does not lead through empirical
or worldly knowledge. It aims instead at a deep realization, vidya (“wisdom,” that

which is to be known, from the same root as the word Veda).
This transformative epiphany is to be attained through meditation. Badaray-
ana speaks of this activity as upasana, or “sitting with,” a synonym for other
terms like dhyana and samadhi. The practice of meditation was shared across
multiple religious communities in early India. The elementary practices of physi-
cal stillness and inward focus are common to most. But the object of meditative
focus often differs. In Badarayana’s guide, the meditator should fix his focus (for
it is necessarily a male) on the text of the Veda, or more precisely on certain key
statements from the Upanishads that give rise to the realization of brahman. These
are known as brahma-vidyas. For example, Yajnavalkya’s teaching to his female
interlocutor Gargi in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad may serve as a seed to con-
templation on the “imperishable” brahman. Uddalaka’s instruction to his son
Shvetaketu is the basis for the meditation that Being (sat) is all-encompassing.
Reciting and meditating on t hese and other brahma-vidyas enables the seeker
to realize, ever more deeply, that brahman is one’s essential self.
This is a long-term practice. Since this meditation requires the recitation and
reflection on the Vedas, it is restricted to t hose initiated males of the three high-
est classes and is most amenable no doubt for t hose of the Brahmin class. In Ma
nu’s Dharmashastra model of four life-stages for a Brahmin male, the lifelong
practice of Veda recitation is inculcated during the student years then maintained
during life as a married householder. One can envision the recitations becoming
less concerned with sacrificial practice and more focused on the Upanishads and
the brahma-vidyas in the later two stages of renunciatory life, where Moksha may
supplant Dharma as the highest priority. Badarayana also recognizes the option
of renunciation that bypasses the stage of householder altogether, for an espe-
cially determined seeker, something Manu would find problematic. When that
meditation becomes perfect, one is said to be a “knower of brahman,” a vidvan.
He is f ree from past karman, and subsequent actions do not cause new karman
to adhere. But this is still not full Moksha, since one must still experience the re-
maining karman that is causing one’s present embodiment. The vidvan goes on
meditating as long as he lives. With the ripening of that final remnant of karman
and the death of the body, the knower of brahman is fully and finally liberated.
Death for the knower brings a full manifestation of the essential unity of the soul
with brahman, and no further bodily rebirth.
Badarayana’s Brahmasutras was foundational for the Vedanta school, with its
several contentious branch-schools. Subsequent Vedanta commentators consid-
ered the Brahmasutras and the corpus of principal Upanishads, along with the
412 C h a p t e r 1 1
Bhagavad Gita, as the three points of departure (prasthana-traya) for the devel-
opment of Vedanta philosophy and practice. In later centuries, this gave rise to
a highly erudite and argumentative literature of explication and interpretation
of t hese core texts. Most famous among the later Vedantins are the Advaita (non-
dualist) proponent Shankara of the eighth c entury, the Vishishthadvaita (quali-
fied nondualist) leader Ramanuja in the twelfth century, and the Dvaita (dualist)
advocate Madhva in the thirteenth century.
Patanjali’s Guide to Yoga

As we have seen, yoga has ancient roots in the Indian soil. Ascetic practices of
bodily austerities, m ental concentration, breath control, and meditation date back
to the milieu of the Upanishads and the Shramana seekers, if not even e arlier.
Development and reflection on these practices continued among renunciatory
communities of religious specialists over the ensuing centuries, among Jains, Bud-
dhists, Brahmins, and o thers. Works like the Bhagavad Gita promoted yogic
disciplines as suitable and effective for those living worldly lives as well as for re-
nouncers. Yoga aimed at Moksha was an ongoing, changing, and debated feature
of the religious landscape of early India.
In the fourth c entury CE, Patanjali sought to present a systematic account and
practical guide in his Yogasutras.23 He describes practices and forms of medita-
tion shared with other communities, but his account of Yoga is based on onto-
logical premises of the dualist Samkhya school. Samkhya was a long-standing and
influential philosophical orientation in early India, described in the Upanishads,
the Mahabharata, and other older texts. In the fourth century, approximately
contemporary with Patanjali, Ishvarakrishna gave a systematic formulation of
Samkhya metaphysics in his Samkhyakarikas.
Patanjali sets out the main h uman problem and the goal of Yoga practice
succinctly in his opening statements. The problem, he says, is that we as observ-
ers identify with the turnings of our thoughts. The aim of Yoga practice is to still
the turnings of thought. The resulting cessation of m ental turbulence enables the
soul to stand in its true relation to the world, as autonomous observer or on-
looker. To understand this terse formulation, it is necessary to look at the basic
ontological presuppositions of Samkhya.
According to Samkhya, there are two fundamental categories: purusha (trans-
lated as “spirit” or “soul”) and prakriti (nature). Samkhya postulates a plurality
of souls; each person has an embodied purusha that lies b ehind all manifest facul-
ties and activities of experience, thought, and perception. Purusha is pure
consciousness, but it is not the same as the contents of consciousness. (And

this purusha, it is clear, is not in any way the same as the Vedic Purusha, the
single primordial being of the cosmos.) In the Samkhyakarikas, Ishvarakrishna
defines purusha as witness, autonomous, indifferent, inactive, and the observ-
ing subject.
Prakriti denotes the source of everything else. Samkhya analysis traces a
process of transformation or evolution (parinama) by which the manifest world
that we experience comes into being out of unmanifest prakriti. This evolution
moves from subtle categories like intellect, ego, and mind, toward sensory
faculties like sight and smell, to the sensory qualities that t hese faculties per-
ceive, such as visibility and odor, to the most material of elements like earth and
water. It is important to note h ere that things we might consider as parts of our
inner selves (intellect, ego, mind) also evolve from prakriti. Samkhya dualism
is not the Cartesian one of mind and matter, since both mind and matter evolve
from a single source. Ishvarakrishna characterizes prakriti as unstable, dynamic,
changing, fluctuating. The material world and our experience of it, accordingly,
is active and diverse. Ultimately, for Samkhya, it is unsatisfying.
What is the problem here? Purushas enter into the manifest forms of prakriti,
interact with them, and come to identify with them. Most fundamentally, a ccording
to Samkhya ontology, we are purushas who identify our selfhood not with pure
consciousness, but with the fluctuating, ephemeral, unstable aspects of our ex-
perienced world: our intellects, our egos, our minds, our bodies, our capacities
to act and to perceive, and even with material possessions outside ourselves. This
erroneous identification leads to suffering. We fail to discriminate between soul
and nature, between purusha and prakriti.
The goal therefore is to make a separation, in effect to liberate the soul from
its involvement in manifest nature. But how can this best be done? H ere is where
Ishvarakrishna and Patanjali take diverging soteriological paths. Samkhya stresses
the role of knowledge. A purusha must make use of its intellect to realize its dis-
tinction from all the evolutes of prakriti. This is a gradual task of analysis and
discrimination, and it leads the purusha ultimately to a state of autonomy (kai-
valya), where it can act according to its essential nature, as a pure observer. Pa-
tanjali takes a more active approach. Yoga requires disciplined action, to still the
turnings of thought and fin ally to free the conscious soul from all its
entanglements.
Patanjali’s Yogasutras are best known for the scheme of “eight limbs” (ashtanga)
of Yoga practice. T hese form a progressive path of increasingly inward steps,
leading to ever-deeper states of stillness and meditation. Patanjali begins with
414 C h a p t e r 1 1
five moral restraints that any practitioner should adopt as a starting point: non-
violence, truthfulness, avoidance of theft, celibacy, and nongreediness. The same
five ethical foundations of the religious life appear in early Jain and Buddhist
teachings, as we have seen, and Patanjali asserts that they are universal principles.
One need not be a Brahmin initiated into the Veda, or a Buddhist or Jain initiated
into a monastic community to enter onto the path of Yoga. Along with the re-
straints, Patanjali also lists a series of vows or observances: purification of the
body, self-contentment, self-restraint, study of scripture, and dedication to the
Lord of Yoga. (This Lord is sometimes identified as Shiva, but Patanjali’s approach
does not rely on a theistic orientation.) Together the restraints and observances
form the moral and behavioral foundation for successful practice of the following
stages of Yoga.
The third limb is posture or asana. Elaboration of this limb has evolved into
the proliferation of positions and movements in modern postural yoga, often re-
ferred to as hatha-yoga. But for Patanjali, posture means finding a comfortable
position in which one can be steady and easy, relaxing all effort. This steadiness
makes possible the subsequent limbs. Fourth is control of the breath ( pranayama),
in which the Yoga practitioner carefully regulates the rhythm of inhalation, re-
tention, and exhalation. This leads to the fifth limb, withdrawal of the senses
(pratyahara). In early Indian psychology, it was understood that our sense
faculties—sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch—reach outward into the world
to engage with their objects. To withdraw the senses, the yogi must “reverse the
course” or “cultivate the opposite.” That is, the discipline of Yoga, as Patanjali pre
sents it, requires an exercise of human will to go against “natural” forms of or-
dinary activity. Stilling the body, controlling the breath, and reining in the senses
allow one to enter into meditation.
For limbs six, seven, and eight, Patanjali describes three levels of meditative
practice: concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and pure contempla-
tion (samadhi). T hese involve increasingly subtle states of mind. Concentration
requires that the practitioner fix one’s mind on a single spot. This could be a
physical one like the tip of the nose, or it could be a m ental one like a visualized
image. In a theistic setting, for example, one could focus on an interior visualiza-
tion of Shiva as the Lord of Yoga. At the next level, one meditates on a single
object without any interruption or interfering thoughts or perceptions. Finally,
at the stage of pure contemplation, Patanjali says, there is a dissolving of all dis-
tinctions between the meditating subject and the object of contemplation. Here
at the highest stage, despite the ontological differences, Patanjali’s account of
meditative states shows clear parallels with t hose of the other schools, such as
the Buddhists of the Yogachara school.
Through the practice of Yoga in this manner, Patanjali claims, one acquires
supernatural powers (siddhi). The Yoga a dept can know the past and f uture and
can remember previous births. One can gain extraordinary awareness of the
thoughts of o thers. One can enter into the bodies of other persons and can be-
come invisible oneself. These g reat powers, however, are not the same as true
Moksha and can even become a distraction that hinders one from that highest
aspiration. As Patanjali begins his Yogasutras with the central h uman problem
of endlessly turning thoughts, he closes with the attainment of liberation, em-
ploying Samkhya terms. Moksha, he concludes, involves the “reversal of the mani-
fest qualities of prakriti, which are devoid of meaning for the purusha such that
the power of pure consciousness is established in its true form, which is autono-
mous” ( YS 4.34) As the translator Barbara Stoler Miller suggests, citing T. S.
Eliot, the Yoga conception of Moksha finds the “still point of the turning world”
in perfect equilibrium and spiritual calm.24

DAVIS-FourHumanAims-2024

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

DAVIS-FourHumanAims-2024

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

DAVIS-FourHumanAims-2024

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Princeton University Press

Book Title: Religions of Early India

Dhar­ma ­will require the creation of kingship, as Bhishma goes on to explain.

Shastra and Science

Historically, we can look at ­these works as the compositions of learned experts

thought to a degree that is unparalleled in the writings of most other traditions.”3

Kama: Desire, ­Pleasure, and Self-­Mastery

types are female. Vatsyayana speaks inescapably as a male, but in comparison

The Nagaraka, Man-­about-­Town

opportunity for enjoyment. The nagaraka participates actively in religious fes-

Virgins, Wives, and Courtesans

Artha: The Science of Statecraft

Education of the Monarch

current events, stories and illustrations, Dharmashastra, and Arthashastra. The

The Shape of the Royal State

Religion and the Pragmatic King

Dhar­ma and the ­Righteous Society

and continuing recitation of the Veda, the p ­ erformance of domestic Veda-­based

The Shape of the ­Righteous Society

of punishment, to thwart disorder. With the king acting as protector of order,

Ma­nu and Changing Times

Ma­nu inserts an impor­tant exception in that final sentence. The time-­honored

general princi­ple of nonviolence. “The Self-­created Brah­man himself created ani-

Moksha and Meditation

Meditation on the Vedic brah­man

Badarayana grounds his guide for the attainment of Moksha on ontological

or worldly knowledge. It aims instead at a deep realization, vidya (“wisdom,” that

Patanjali’s Guide to Yoga

consciousness, but it is not the same as the contents of consciousness. (And

You might also like

Dharma will require the creation of kingship, as Bhishma goes on to explain.

Historically, we can look at these works as the compositions of learned experts

Kama: Desire, Pleasure, and Self-Mastery

The Nagaraka, Man-about-Town

Dharma and the Righteous Society

and continuing recitation of the Veda, the p erformance of domestic Veda-based

The Shape of the Righteous Society

Manu and Changing Times

Manu inserts an important exception in that final sentence. The time-honored

general principle of nonviolence. “The Self-created Brahman himself created ani-

Meditation on the Vedic brahman