Content area
Full Text
ALBRECHT WEZLERDHARMA IN THE VEDA AND THE DHARMAS ASTRAS?In his introduction to a symposium on the sacramental dimension of
religious traditions, Gerhard Oberhammer (1999, 17) states that
dharma has to be regarded as sacrament in the sense intended here
hermeneutics of religion i.e. as an event mediating transcendence
to salvation. His characterization of dharma as the performance of
ritual prescriptions that are revealed in the Veda makes it clear that
he refers to what is dened as codanalaks: an:o rthah: in MS 1.1.2, as
something benecial, the characteristics of which are the Vedic
prescriptions.1 How then is this denition related to other concepts
of Hindu dharma? Let us take, for example, the one Hacker (1965,
93106) has called the most concrete and precise denition he
knows, namely the one from ApDhS 1.7.20.68 which states:
Dharma and adharma ... do not go around and say, That is us.
Nor do gods, Gandharvas, or ancestors declare what dharma and
adharma is. Rather, what the Aryas praise, when it is practiced, that
is dharma; what they condemn, that is adharma. Ones behavior
should conform to the behavior which is unanimously accepted in all
countries by Aryas who are well mannered, matured, self-disciplined,
and free from greed and falsehood.2Admittedly, Hacker speaks also of the relation dharma has to the
Veda. He states further that what is directly demanded in the Veda is
absolutely binding and it leads to an otherworldly salvation. When
he adds, however, that the Veda is the grandest source of dharma
(Hacker, 1965, 98), then it is immediately clear, that it is not or not
only the Veda as the palladium of instructions concerning sacrice
which he has in mind here. Sacrice, he notes later, was recognized as
an automatic medium for the attainment of this- and otherworldly
goals. He has likewise the Veda as the grandest source of dharma in
mind when he concludes:?The original article in German entitled U ber den sakramentalen Charakter desDharma nachsinnend, was published in Oberhammer 1999, pp. 63113. It was
translated into English by Robert Fulton and Oliver Freiberger and revised for this
volume by Patrick Olivelle.Journal of Indian Philosophy 32: 629654, 2004.
2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.630ALBRECHT WEZLERDharma, the contents of which refers to the...