Dharma

Topic: Society in Early India: Kinship, Varna-Jati, Women · NCERT: Class 6, Ch 7 "India's Cultural Roots"; Class 7, Ch 5 "The Rise of Empires"; Class 9, Ch 5 "State and Society up to 1000 CE"

Meaning

Dharma comes from the Sanskrit root dhri ("to hold up"). It means the duty, right conduct and moral order that hold society together. It does not simply mean "religion". In early India, the Brahmanical idea of dharma also included rules that were different for each varna (one of the four ranked social orders), for men and women, and for kings.

It matters because a whole body of Sanskrit rulebooks, the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras, was written to define dharma. These books are one of the main sources historians use to study early Indian society. Historians also have to read them with great care.

Explanation

Background: why dharma was written down

• From c. 500 BCE, Brahmanas began writing down rules of dharma in the Dharmasutras. Later texts on the same subject are called the Dharmashastras.
• Why at that time?
• New cities in the Ganga valley (the second urbanisation) brought new groups of people, new wealth and new ideas.
• Buddhism and Jainism were questioning old beliefs.

• The Brahmanas responded by writing down social rules at the very moment those rules were being doubted.

• These texts are smriti ("that which is remembered"). Smriti explains and organises Vedic thought, but it is held to be less authoritative than shruti (the Vedas themselves). [3]

Main features: what dharma covered

• Manusmriti is the most important dharma text. It covers a very wide range of subjects: [3]
• how the world began, and what dharma means
• the eight forms of marriage
• rules for guests, funerals and food
• purity and pollution (the idea that some people, acts or things make others "impure")
• rules for women and wives
• the king's law and court matters

• gifts, penance (acts done to make up for wrongdoing), karma, the soul and punishment

• Duties, not rights. The Dharmashastra style lists what each person must do. It does not list what a person is entitled to. [3]

• Different duty for different people:
• Each varna was given its own ideal work: Brahmanas were to study and teach the Vedas, Kshatriyas were to fight and rule, Vaishyas were to farm, raise cattle and trade, and Shudras were to serve the other three.

• Women were placed under the supervision of male relatives. [3]

• Raja-dharma (the duty of the king): the king was to protect his subjects, punish wrongdoers and keep the social order in place. So dharma guided kings as well as their subjects.

How it changed over time

• Dharma was not set down in one book. It was a tradition that kept growing:
• Major Dharmasutras: c. 500–200 BCE
• Manusmriti: c. 200 BCE – 200 CE (NCERT range)

• Other Dharmashastras: still being written c. 300–600 CE

• Buddhist dhamma: Pali is the language of early Buddhist texts. In Pali the word becomes dhamma. There it means the Buddha's teaching and the moral path, not duties based on varna.

• Ashoka's dhamma: this was a set of moral rules for everyone, whatever their religion. People were to respect elders, be kind to slaves and servants, and respect other beliefs.

Results: what dharma texts can and cannot tell us

• They are normative texts: they say what people should do.
• They are not descriptive texts, which show what people actually did.
• A rule in the Manusmriti tells us what its Brahmana authors wanted. It is not proof of what happened in a village.
• Repeated insistence is a clue. If a text keeps repeating a rule, the rule was probably being broken.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: c. 600 BCE – 600 CE. Dharma texts were written from c. 500 BCE to c. 600 CE.
• Region: the Ganga valley was the first setting. Brahmanical norms later spread across the subcontinent, though local custom stayed strong.
• Key texts:
• Dharmasutras (Sanskrit, c. 500–200 BCE)
• Manusmriti (Sanskrit, c. 200 BCE – 200 CE). Britannica dates it to "about 100 CE" and counts 2,694 stanzas in 12 chapters. [3] Keep the NCERT range for the exam.
• Later Dharmashastras (c. 300–600 CE)

• Mahabharata (over 100,000 verses, composed over about 1,000 years from c. 500 BCE). It sets out dharma and also shows its heroes breaking it.

• How we check the dharma texts:

• Inscriptions name real donors, traders, artisans, nuns and guilds. They show real people, not ideal ones.
• Pali texts (the Tipitaka, c. 500–100 BCE), Prakrit inscriptions and Jaina works, and the Tamil Sangam corpus show that Brahmanical norms were accepted as authoritative but also questioned and sometimes rejected.
• The Critical Edition of the Mahabharata was begun in 1919 under V.S. Sukthankar at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune. [2] More than half its pages are regional variants. This shows that local practice survived alongside the Sanskritic rules.

Don't confuse with

• Dhamma (Ashoka): Ashoka's dhamma was a non-sectarian moral code (one that did not belong to any one religion) that the king spread through his edicts. Brahmanical dharma laid down different duties for different varnas.
• Dharmasutras vs Dharmashastras: both are Sanskrit codes of conduct. The Dharmasutras are earlier (c. 500–200 BCE). Dharmashastras such as the Manusmriti came later, and new ones were still written c. 300–600 CE.
• Smriti vs Shruti: dharma texts like the Manusmriti are smriti (remembered tradition). Shruti means the Vedas, which are held to be more authoritative. [3]
• Dharma vs "religion": dharma means duty and moral order. It is not a word for a faith or a form of worship.

Prelims Hooks

• Writing down of the Dharmasutras/Dharmashastras began c. 500 BCE. The Manusmriti dates to c. 200 BCE – 200 CE.
• Manusmriti is smriti, not shruti. Britannica counts 2,694 stanzas in 12 chapters. [3]
• The Manusmriti describes eight forms of marriage. [3]
• The Dharmashastras stress duties rather than rights. [3]
• Pali dhamma = Sanskrit dharma. The Tipitaka is in Pali (c. 500–100 BCE).
• Trap: later Dharmashastras were still being written c. 300–600 CE. Dharma was a growing tradition, not a single fixed book.

Mains Points

• Normative is not descriptive. Dharma texts show the social order a Brahmana elite wanted. Inscriptions and Pali, Prakrit and Tamil texts show that this order was accepted as authoritative but also challenged. An answer on varna or the position of women should state this method first.
• Dharma was written down in response to change. The Dharmasutras appeared as cities grew and Buddhism and Jainism questioned old beliefs. They show an attempt to fix social rules in writing when those rules were being doubted, not proof that society was stable.
• Continuity and change in meaning. The same idea took different forms:
• duties tied to varna and gender in the Dharmashastras
• the moral path of Buddhist dhamma
• Ashoka's universal ethics

Together these show that early Indian thought argued about dharma. It was never a single code that everyone accepted.

Related concepts

• Dharmasutras
• Dharmashastras
• Manusmriti
• Narada Smriti
• Yajnavalkya Smriti
• Mahabharata
• Critical Edition of the Mahabharata
• V.S. Sukthankar

Read more

• How historians reconstruct social history