| Certainly wealth
and enjoyment of it are not in any sense opposed to righteous conduct or perfect morals.
Giving and service purify acquisition. Among the for purusharthas, dharma is always
mentioned first. This order is never changed. The four purusharthas are also referred to
as chaturvarga and the first three, dharma, artha and kama frequently go together and are
referred to as trivarga.
Dharma
It is said that Dharma is a word of protean significance. The phenomenon of some words
acquiring wide significance is not peculiar to Indian words alone. The English word
"Law" may mean many things and ranges from a local byelaw to the natural
sequence of the universe-Law of the Universe. Dharma is an ancient word found in the
Rig-Veda and the suktas in which the word occurs are mentioned in Kane's History of the
Dharma Sastra, Volume 1. It is curious the word is often used in the Veda in the neuter
gender. It is not clear as to when in the history of the evolution of the meaning of
this word it came to be used in the masculine gender as "Dharmah". The
probability is that the change must have synchronized with the evolving of a clear-cut,
abstract conception of "Dharma" when the use of the word came more and more to
approximate to the objective value known as Dharma in the same manner as truth, goodness
and beauty came to denote abstract conceptions in Greek and Other western philosophies. |
