Comment: Four Purusharthas in Indian tradition. (2004, 20 Marks)
Purushartha means “the aim of a person”. Indian tradition names four legitimate ends of human life: dharma, artha, kama and moksha. It is a theory of value, not a political doctrine, but it decides what place politics may claim in a good life.
The Four Ends
| Aim | Meaning | Science built on it |
|---|---|---|
| Dharma | Right conduct, duty proper to one’s station | Dharmashastra |
| Artha | Wealth, livelihood, security, power | Arthashastra, dandaniti |
| Kama | Pleasure, desire, aesthetic and emotional life | Kamashastra (Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra) |
| Moksha | Liberation from the cycle of rebirth | Upanishads and the philosophical schools |
From Trivarga to Four
The older scheme was the trivarga, the triad of dharma, artha and kama. Moksha entered with the Upanishadic ideal of liberation and renunciation. Patrick Olivelle argues that the trivarga named three domains of beneficial activity, not life-goals, and that purushartha is rare in early texts. The Manusmriti records rival views on the chief good and then declares it to lie in all three worldly aims together (2.224). The Mahabharata already speaks of all four ends.
The ashramas map the aims onto a lifetime. The grihastha (householder) pursues the trivarga; the renunciant (sannyasi) turns to moksha.
Ordering and Balance
- Dharma regulates. Artha and kama are pursued within dharma. That is a condition on how they are sought, not a doubt about whether they should be.
- Kautilya (Chanakya/Vishnugupta) inverts the order of provision. In R. Shamasastry‘s rendering, wealth and wealth alone is important, inasmuch as charity and desire depend upon wealth for their realisation (Arthashastra 1.7). In the same chapter the king must pursue the three aims in balance, since excess in one harms the others.
- Vatsyayana ranks dharma above artha and artha above kama, yet treats pleasure as worth a science of its own.
- The Bhagavad Gita reconciles action with liberation through nishkama karma, action without attachment to its fruits.
Political Significance
- Politics becomes legitimate. Because artha and kama are ends, not concessions, a science of securing the material base is possible; hence an Arthashastra.
- Rajadharma is enabling. The king secures yogakshema, the welfare and security within which subjects can pursue all four ends.
- Continuity, not dichotomy. V. R. Mehta (Vrajendra Raj Mehta) argues that Indian thought refuses the Western split between politics and ethics; the purusharthas hold wealth, pleasure and duty in one frame.
- A modern restatement. Deendayal Upadhyaya‘s Integral Humanism (1965), the Bharatiya Jana Sangh’s official doctrine, mapped body, mind, intellect and soul onto the four aims, with dharma as basic and moksha as ultimate. The BJP names it the party’s basic philosophy.
Critique
- Whose aims? The purusha of the texts is the twice-born male householder. Women and Shudras were barred from Vedic learning and from sannyasa, so the four ends were unequally open.
- Dharma as varnadharma. B. R. Ambedkar (Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar) objected that when dharma means station-specific duty, the pursuit of wealth and pleasure is fenced by caste.
- Moksha as exit. Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966) argued that in India the individual appears only as the renouncer outside society. Liberation leaves the hierarchy it escapes untouched.
- Max Weber read Indian religiosity as world-rejecting; the scheme itself refutes him, since two of its four ends are frankly worldly.
Present Relevance
Bounding artha and kama by dharma speaks to sustainability. India’s Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment), launched in October 2022, appeals to restraint in consumption rather than to growth alone.
Conclusion
The purusharthas give a pluralist but ordered account of the good: wealth and pleasure are affirmed, duty disciplines them, and liberation relativises all three. They serve an egalitarian constitutional order only when dharma is read as a universal ethic, not as duty fixed by birth and sex.