DHARMA. — This Sanskrit word, etymologically connected with the Latin firmu-s, is one of the richest in meaning: statute, custom, law, duty, virtue. Indian d. comprises human and divine laws, sanctions more duties than rights, and although it issues from the Vedic priestly schools, it draws not only upon revelation (śruti), but also upon tradition (smṛti). Collections of rules concerning the duties and rights of priests, kings, householders, and ascetics served as a norm for the brahmins (v. BRĀHMANA) in decisions concerning sacred and secular law, so long as the administration of justice was entrusted to them. They became law codes with the establishment of tribunals. The oldest collections, in aphoristic prose, such as that of the school of Āpastamba (āpastambiya-dharmaśūtra, of the 5th or 4th century B.C.), are customarily called sūtra, aphorisms, whereas collections in verse are generally called śāstra, treatises.
But the two names are often used as synonyms. In the sense of “righteousness,” d. forms part of the triad: virtue, profit, and love (d., artha, kāma), regarded as the three elements of human happiness and therefore as the purpose of life. Treatises on the religious and moral duties of the Indo-Aryans (d.-śāstra) are consequently matched by treatises on how to acquire and preserve wealth (artha-śāstra), and on the art of love (kāma-śāstra). The best known are: the Ar-
thaśāstra of Kautilya (kautilya-arthāśāstra, ca. 300 B.C.), which is largely a treatise on politics for the use of the king, like Machiavelli’s The Prince, and the Kāmaśūtra or Kāmaśāstra of Mallanāga Vātsyāyana (ca. 4th century A.D.). Naturally, political treatises admit only the morality that accords with utility, and are therefore rejected as false by the Buddhists. In Buddhism, d. (Pāli: dhamma) forms part of another triad, to which the neophyte appeals in his profession of faith: the Buddha, the doctrine, and the monastic community (buddha, dhamma, aṅga). Here d. means “the Buddhist doctrine.” D. is also a god, the personification of Justice, who appears three times in the Mahābhārata: in Book I (114, 1–3), to unite miraculously with Kunti and beget Yudhiṣṭhira, the eldest of the Paṇḍuīdi brothers, of whom Paṇḍu is the putative father; in Book III (114, 18–19), to promise the Paṇḍuīdi that their stay in the capital of the Maṭṣya will remain undiscovered; and in Book XVII, 3, in the form of a dog, to accompany Yudhiṣṭhira to the heaven of Indra, at whose threshold he resumes his divine form and praises the steadfastness of his son, who is ready to renounce heaven rather than part from the faithful dog, whom Indra forbids access to the celestial worlds.