A Study of Etymology, Philosophical Depth, and the Living Significance of the Tradition's Self-Understanding
Abstract: The term Sanatana Dharma is used frequently,
by practitioners and commentators alike, often without adequate attention to
what either of its two Sanskrit words actually means or what their combination
is pointing toward. Sanatana is translated as eternal, but the word carries
nuances that the English word does not fully convey. Dharma is translated
variously as religion, duty, righteousness, and law, but none of these
translations captures the full depth of the concept. This article explores the
genuine philosophical content of both terms and their combination, why Sanatana
Dharma is not a name the tradition chose for itself in the way that most
religions have specific founders and specific moments of establishment, what
the tradition means when it claims that its central principles are universal
and eternal rather than historically contingent and culturally specific, and
how this self-understanding distinguishes it from the concept of religion as it
has developed in the Western philosophical tradition.
Keywords: Sanatana Dharma, dharma, eternal, universal,
religion, philosophy, Vedic, self-understanding, Sanatana, cosmic order,
Sanatana Dharma versus religion
Introduction
Most traditions have a specific name that they call
themselves, chosen at some historical moment to distinguish their beliefs and
practices from those of other groups. Christianity is named after Christ. Islam
means submission (to God). Buddhism is named after the Buddha. These are
historically specific names attached to historically specific founders and
historically specific events of revelation or enlightenment. The tradition that
has come to be called Hinduism in modern usage is, in this respect,
fundamentally different: it did not name itself, has no single founder, and did
not arise as a distinct religious system at a specific historical moment that
could be dated and documented.
The name that the tradition uses for itself, when it
names itself at all, is Sanatana Dharma. And the significance of this
self-naming is not merely terminological. It reflects a specific and
philosophically important claim about the nature of what the tradition is: not
a historically specific religion founded by a specific person at a specific
time, but the expression in human thought, language, and practice of universal
principles of cosmic order that the tradition holds to be as old as the
universe itself and as permanent as the laws of nature. Understanding what
Sanatana Dharma truly means requires taking this claim seriously, not as a
piece of religious self-promotion, but as a philosophical position that
deserves genuine engagement.
Sanatana: Not Just Eternal
The Sanskrit word sanatana is commonly translated as
eternal, but the translation is not quite precise enough. Sanatana means more
specifically: that which has always been and will always be, that which was not
created at some point in time and will not cease at some other point, that
which is characterised by a beginninglessness and an endlessness that makes it
categorically different from anything that had a beginning or will have an end.
It is formed from the root sana meaning old or from of old, with the suffix
tana indicating that this oldness is not merely great age but the specific
quality of having no beginning.
एष धर्मः सनातनः।
Esha dharmah sanatanah.
(This is the eternal dharma.)
Mahabharata, Shanti Parva, 109.11
This single phrase, found repeatedly across the
Mahabharata and other texts, is the tradition's most compressed claim: the
dharma being described is sanatana, it has always been what it is and will
always be. This claim is not about the longevity of a specific institution or a
specific set of practices, which are obviously historically contingent. It is
about the underlying principles that the institution and the practices express:
the principle that the cosmos is governed by an order, that consciousness
underlies and pervades the manifest world, that the human being has a specific
relationship to this order, and that the recognition of this relationship is
the foundation of genuine flourishing. These principles, the tradition claims,
are as permanent as the cosmos itself.
Dharma: The Order That Holds
Everything
Dharma is among the most philosophically rich and most
difficult-to-translate words in Sanskrit. Its root, dhri, means to hold, to
support, to maintain. Dharma is therefore, in its most fundamental sense, that
which holds things together, that which supports the structure of existence,
that which maintains the order without which everything would collapse into
chaos. In the cosmic sense, dharma is the order of the universe itself: the set
of principles that govern the relationship between all beings and between
beings and the cosmos. In the social sense, dharma is the principle of
righteous conduct that holds communities together. In the individual sense,
dharma is the specific set of obligations and possibilities that constitute the
individual's relationship to the larger order.
धारणाद् धर्ममित्याहुर्धर्मो धारयते प्रजाः।
यत् स्याद्
धारणसंयुक्तं स
धर्म इति
निश्चयः॥
Dharanat dharma ity ahur dharmo
dharayate prajah, Yat syad dharana-samyuktam sa dharma iti nishcayah.
(They call it dharma because it
holds everything; dharma holds the people together. That which is joined with
the quality of holding is certainly dharma.)
Mahabharata, Karna Parva, 69.58
Dharanat: from the quality of holding. The word dharma
means what it means because it does what it does: it holds. A society in which
dharma is practised is a society that holds together, that maintains its
integrity, that is capable of sustaining genuine human flourishing over time. A
cosmos in which dharma is the governing principle is a cosmos in which the
specific forms of existence have their proper relationships to each other and
to the whole. And Sanatana Dharma, the eternal principle of holding, is the
tradition's claim that this cosmic holding quality is not invented, not agreed
upon, not historically contingent, but as permanent and as universal as the
cosmos itself.
What Makes It Universal
The tradition's claim to universality is grounded in
its understanding of the content of the dharma it describes. Unlike religious
systems that make their ultimate claims dependent on specific historical
events, specific revelations to specific people at specific times, Sanatana
Dharma bases its claims on what it takes to be universal features of reality:
the nature of consciousness, the operation of karma, the possibility of
liberation from suffering, and the principles of righteous conduct that follow
from the recognition of what the human being is in relation to the cosmos.
These claims, if true, are true regardless of who
makes them or when they are made. The nature of consciousness does not change
based on cultural context. The operation of karma is not a culturally specific
belief system but a specific claim about how cause and effect work at the level
of consciousness and its relationship to action. The possibility of liberation
is either real or not, and if real, is available to any consciousness in any
circumstance that has sufficiently understood its own nature. These are the
kinds of claims that the tradition holds to be Sanatana: not historically
contingent but permanently and universally valid.
Conclusion
Sanatana Dharma, properly understood, is not a
religion in the sense that the word religion has developed in the Western
philosophical tradition, with its connotations of a specific creed, a specific
institution, and a specific historical origin. It is the tradition's claim to
be the expression in human thought and practice of principles that are as old
as the cosmos and as universal as the nature of consciousness itself.
This is an enormous claim, and it deserves to be
approached with both the respect that genuine philosophical seriousness
commands and the critical attention that any serious claim deserves. What the
tradition is asserting is that dharma, the principle of cosmic order, righteous
conduct, and the path of liberation, is not a human invention but a human
discovery: not something that was created at some historical moment but
something that was always there, waiting to be seen and lived by any
consciousness with the clarity and the courage to see it. The tradition's name
for this discovery is Sanatana Dharma, and the name is part of the claim: the
dharma discovered is sanatana, without beginning and without end, as permanent
as what it describes.
सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः
सर्वे सन्तु
निरामयाः। सर्वे
भद्राणि पश्यन्तु
मा कश्चिद्
दुःखभाग्भवेत्॥
Sarve bhavantu sukhinah sarve santu
niramayah, Sarve bhadrani pashyantu ma kashcid duhkha-bhag bhavet.
(May all beings be happy; may all
beings be free from disease; may all beings see what is auspicious; may no one
partake of suffering.)
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.4.14
(traditional prayer)
All beings, sarve. Not all Hindus, not all members of
the tradition, not all people who follow specific practices. All beings. This
universality of the aspiration, the tradition's fundamental orientation toward
the welfare of every conscious being without exception, is itself an expression
of what Sanatana Dharma means: a vision of the dharmic order that is as wide as
existence itself, that has no outer boundary corresponding to a specific creed
or a specific community, and that is as interested in the liberation of the
person who has never heard the Sanskrit term as in the person who has spent a
lifetime studying it.
References and Suggested Reading
Mahabharata, Shanti Parva and Karna Parva
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works, Volume 1
S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life (1927)
Devdutt Pattanaik, My Gita (2015)
P.V. Kane, History of Dharmashastra, Volume 1
No comments:
Post a Comment