On atmatusti as a source of dharma.

AuthorDavis, Jr., Donald R.

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)

In this article, I reexamine the classical Hindu legal texts on atmatusti and argue against easy characterizations of it as inner morality or conscience, by presenting an extensive, though not exhaustive, series of the commentarial discussions of the concept of atmatusti from the Sanskrit Dharmasastra texts, principally Manava-Dharmasastra (MDh) 2.6 and Yajnavalkya-Smrti (YS) 1.7. I have not included in full the important discussion of atmatusti from the Purva-Mimamsa tradition in Kumarila's Tantravarttika on PMS 1.3.7 (translated in Jha 1924: 188-89), but I have incorporated relevant passages from it to supplement my main focus on Dharmasastra. Kumarila clearly influenced Medhatithi's commentary on MDh, which is largely a summary of Kumarila, and he is cited by Mitra Misra as well.

The parameters of atmatusti were described by Lingat in a way that anticipates the basic conclusions of this article:

... it is only when all the other sources are silent that the rule of dharma may be sought in the approval of one's conscience. The commentators on Manu add the hypothesis that where one has a choice between two ways of acting conscience will show which is to be preferred. They believe, moreover, that the approval of conscience, as a rule of life, is not to be admitted except in the cases of individuals of great virtue. ... When the Mimamsa method came to be applied to the texts of the smrti it left very little room for atma- tusti. (1973: 6) Modifying Lingat's order slightly, atmatusti is severely restricted in the texts 1) to situations of technical option (vikalpa), i.e., to situations in which the texts give contradictory rules about either ritual or legal action; (6) 2) to situations not covered by any of the other three sources of dharma; and 3) to persons of impeccable character, meaning that they have deep training in and knowledge of the Vedas. To translate atmatusti with these restrictions in mind might yield glosses such as "personal preference," "personal choice in trivial matters," and "the discretion of people who know the Vedas," respectively. The last restriction, however, actually undermines Lingat's claim that atmatusti "is a source of dharma [that] does not strike us as quite properly placed here, following upon sources which possess an authority exterior to man" (ibid.). The feeling of pleasure is certainly interior, but the authority for any particular feeling being dharma is uniformly declared to be exterior, namely the Veda in the form of a person's Vedic training (Halbfass 1988: 328-29). Hacker has described this as the "dharma-substance" that accrues to an individual immersed in Vedic knowledge and observance and that imparts a "substantial, almost material, sacredness that is transmissible through contact" (2006: 489). This tangible substantialism of dharma results precisely from the Veda, an "authority exterior to man," even as it is then transmuted into an internally possessed substance. (7)

In the Dharmasutra texts atmatusti is nowhere presented as a source of dharma. The MDh seems to be the earliest text to include it as a fourth source of dharma, (8) and the YS, being heavily indebted to MDh, incorporates it in slightly different terms. Among the other Dharmasastra texts, only the Vyasasmrti (Dharma-Kosa [DhK] 162, 164) includes atmatusti as a source of dharma. The remaining dharma texts either do not explicitly list the sources or give only the standard three found in the Dharmasutras. Furthermore, it is a telling fact that among the Purana texts collected in the DhK's digest of discussions of the means of knowing dharma (dharmapramana), not a single one incorporates atmatusti. Nor do the Mahabharata or Ramayana mention atmatusti as a source of dharma, though phrases similar to this are used in more generic contexts. (9) Of the 287 pages devoted to dharmapramana in the DhK, less than one page is devoted to discussions of atmatusti. The impression one gets then from reading the extant smrti texts is that the MDh's inclusion of atmatusti caused a ripple in this expert tradition that dissipated with time and that the idea was never intended to replace the Vedas, Vedic learning, and Vedic sociality with a sense of moral conviction that might trump these. The paucity and uniformity of commentarial material on the concept further bolster my claim that atmatusti is a severely restricted and generally less important source of dharma than other sources.

I will now present several (and certainly most) of the Dharmasastra commentarial explanations of atmatusti as a source of dharma in Sanskrit and in English translation. The first striking fact is the brevity of the explanations. Even the explanations of Medhatithi and Visvarupa, though long by comparison to the others, are brief when viewed in their original contexts. The mere fact that nearly all of the commentaries on this allegedly central Hindu concept can be translated in the space of one article calls its conceptual significance into question. (10) The second striking fact is the uniformity of opinion or interpretation. At least one, and generally more than one, of the three aspects of, or limitations on atmatusti described above appear in every commentary, a fact that signals that this understanding of atmatusti was the product of a scholarly consensus, a settled matter. After presenting the commentaries, I will examine the arguments of the commentators and, following these arguments, place the concept of atmatusti in an inferior place among the sources of dharma. The commentaries are conveniently collected together at DhK 90-100 for MDh 2.6 and DhK 136-50 for YS 1.7. The excerpts pertaining to atmatusti have been taken from the DhK and labeled by author.

DHARMASASTRA COMMENTARIES ON THE NOTION OF ATMATUSTI

Manava-Dharmasastra 2.6:

vedo 'khilo dharmamulam smrtisile ca tadvidam \ acaras caiva sadhunam atmanas tits fir eva ca

The root of dharma is the entire Veda, the tradition and practice of those who know it, the standards of good people, and what pleases oneself.

Medhatithi:

atmanas tustir eva ca | dharmamulam ity anusajyate | vedavidam sadhunam iti ca | asyas ca dharmamulatvam pramanyenaivety ahuh | yatra hy evamvidhanam anustheye 'rthe manah, prasidati dveso na bhavati sa dharmah | nanu ca yasya pratisiddha evarthe manah prasidet sa dharmah prapnoti | vihite ca kinkathika syat sa na dharma iti | evam etad idrsanam mahat-mandm matimatam mahaprabhavo manahprasado yenadharmo 'pi dharmatam eti dharmas cadharmatam na ragadvesadidosavatam | yatha rumayam yat kirn aid dravyam pravisati tat sarvam lavanasat sampadyate evam vedavidam sahasotpannena manahparitosena sarvam nirma-likriyate | ato yathd pratisiddham api grahanam sodasini vidhinanusthiyamanam na dosaya | na catra grahanavad vikalpah | pratisedho hy atmatustivyatirekenanyatra visaye vyavasthapyate | athava naiva lesam adharme atma paritusyati | yatha visaghnim evausadhim nakulo dasati nanyam | ata ucyate nakulo yam yam disati sa sa visaghniti | iha bhavantas cdhuh | ye vaikal-pikah padarthas tesu yasmin pakse manah prasidati sa paksa asrayitvyah | vaksyati ca dravyasuddhau prayascittesu ca. tasmims tavat tapah kuryad yavat tustikaram bhavet | athava yo 'sraddadhdno nastikataya tasyanadhikaram aha | nastikasya hi na vaidikam karma kurvato 'py atma tusyati | atas tena kriyamanam api karma nisphalam eva | athava sarvakarmavisayo bhavaprasada upadisyate anusthanakale krodhamohasokadi tyaktva pramuditena bhavyam | atas ca silavad asyah sarvasesataya dharmamulatvabhidhanam

"And what pleases oneself" is to be connected with [the phrase] "is a source of dharma" and also with [the phrases] "those who know the...

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