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eBook details

• Title: On Atmatusti As a Source of Dharma.
• Author : The Journal of the American Oriental Society
• Release Date : January 01, 2007
• Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 226 KB

Description

The sources of Hindu dharma have been discussed in places too numerous to mention exhaustively (see, e.g., Jolly 1928: 1-4; Kane 1962-75: 1.6-7; Lingat 1973: 3-17). Three sources or "roots" (mula) are most commonly mentioned in the standard Sanskrit texts on religious law: 1) sruti, or the Vedas, i.e., unassailable revelation, 2) smrti, the recorded "memory" of great sages, and 3) acara, the standards or "customary laws" of communities. The nature of an occasionally mentioned fourth source, atmatusti, (1) "what pleases oneself," has sometimes been cited as an inner source of morality, an appeal to conscience, and so forth. (2) In this interpretation atmatusti is described as opening a door to the internal world of moral choice in Hindu thought in which a highly relativized or personal sense of right and wrong is deemed valuable by a tolerant and inclusive Hinduism. This understanding is part of the "neo-Hindu" elevation of personal experience, intuition, and "mystical empiricism" over scriptural authority promoted by thinkers such as Debendranath Tagore and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Halbfass 1988: 381, 396). (3) The modern subordination of Hindu sacred texts to the "inspirations of the heart" radically inverted the classical Hindu theology on dharma. Recently some scholars of Hindu law have appropriated this modern Hindu perspective without due consideration of its differences from the classical position. Perhaps the most ambitious interpretation in this direction is Menski's recent attempt to describe the Hindu law tradition as a system of "self-controlled ordering" that "is the first and foremost method of 'finding' dharma, i.e., ascertaining the relevant Hindu law. This method, which results primarily in the invisible process of internal self-examination of one's conscience, may well settle nearly all disputes or situations of insecurity" (2003: 126). (4) Following Menski, though with greater attention to the relevant texts, Francavilla has gone so far as to claim that atmatusti is "the ultimate criterion to judge the appropriateness of a behavior" (2006: 175). Though no direct link is made, these reinterpretations of atmatusti echo "neo-Hindu" efforts to universalize, moralize, and centralize personal experience as the final authority of religious understanding. (5)

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