Dominant Ideas in the Formation of Indian Culture

Abstract

EVERY ADJECTIVE and noun in this title needs definition, and most if not all could be variously defined. For the purpose of this paper I shall use the following definitions, without meaning to deny the possibility of others. An idea 1 is a word or a phrase. A phrase is a group of words forming a syntactic unit; in the sense here used, it includes sentences. A dominant idea, in a people's culture, is a word or phrase which occurs, in approximately identical or semantically equivalent forms, frequently in texts of the language or languages of that people, and which appears to have been regarded by the authors of those texts, and by their cultural kinsmen and successors, as important for its bearing on human life and conduct. (In the case of living people, oral speech may take the place of texts as source material.) Definitions of culture are especially numerous and variant. I shall understand it here as meaning a total way of human life viewed as a norm, and as such approved or at least tolerated, by a people as a whole, or by its articulate representatives generally. Indian culture is the norm of human life approved or accepted generally by the civilized inhabitants of India (Hindus) since roughly round about four or five hundred B. C. Its classical expression is found in literature from about that time on, in the Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit languages, and later in other languages, some IndoAryan, some Dravidian (especially Tamil 2 and Telugu). It may properly be spoken of as approximately a unit in some important respects, and in most of these respects it is still the dominant cultural pattern over the greater part of India. It was however preceded by at least one earlier pattern of which we have a good deal of knowledge. I shall call this latter the Vedic culture. It was rather different from 'Indian' culture in some of these important respects. The word formation I take to mean historic origin. In short, then, I shall suppose that I am asked to pick out words and phrases which, in my opinion, have been regarded by Indians since some centuries B. C. as specially important in their bearing on the conduct of human life, viewed as a norm; and to suggest how I think they were related to earlier words and phrases, or to the same words occurring in earlier phrases and perhaps bearing different meanings. At the very outset this quest is complicated by a striking dichotomy in Indian culture. There are two radically different norms of human life and conduct, both at least tolerated, indeed in some sense accepted and approved, each in its own sphere. I shall call them the ordinary and the extraordinary norms. One strange thing is that one of them seems to involve a complete negation or rejection of the other as an acceptable norm. The first is the only one possible for the great mass of mankind, short of some future spiritual regeneration of the entire race. In this ordinary way of life, Hindu texts constantly speak of three broad aims, or aspects of the cultural norm, all of which are normal and acceptable, and which include everything that a normal man can, or at any rate ought to, aim at. These are, in Sanskrit, dharma, artha, and kIma; they are called the Group of Three, trivarga. Dharma is propriety, socially approved conduct, in relation to one's fellow men or to other living beings (animals, or superhuman powers). Law, social usage, morality, and most of what we ordinarily mean by religion, all fall under this head. Artha is profit, worldly advantage and success. It includes personal advancement in wealth, politics, business, professional and social activities of all sorts. Kdma is love: success in dealing with the opposite sex. In each of these three departments we have many extensive treatises called sastras, at the same 1 Cf. Leonard Bloomfield, Language or Ideas? in Language 12. 89-95 (1936). The title of my paper was not formulated by me; I hope my interpretations are not too far from the intent of its proponents, the Program Committee of the Centenary Meeting. 2 Some Tamil literature may be older than much which is called Classical Sanskrit.