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Journal of Indian Philosophy (2006) 34:479496 Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10781-006-9002-4
PAUL HACKER
DHARMA IN HINDUISM*,1
Hinduism is a label for the indigenous religion of India that orients itself toward the Veda, the sacred texts from the oldest Indo-Aryan period, without actually being Vedic in either its myth or ritual; the religion, that intends to cultivate and pass down the religious customs of the
Aryas, but that nevertheless absorbed and created anew many things that did not belong to the original
Arya religion.
The word Hinduism came into use only in the 19th century; it would be more correct historically to speak of the
Arya religion or
Arya religions. The word
Arya denotes thereby a cultural community, the elite classes of which called themselves
Arya throughout the centuries. The religion of this cultural community, which spread throughout the immense area of India, is in truth a group of religions which have much in common between them, but in which there are also many dierences and contrasts highly visible diversity of myths, rituals, customs, teachings, and religious views.
Among the commonalities belonging to this group of religions is a peculiar concept denoted by the word dharma. I should just mention that Buddhism, which does not recognize the Veda and, therefore, cannot be considered part of Hinduism, also has a concept of dharma, but I cannot consider it here.
What then is dharma in Hinduism? I do not want to engage in etymological explanations; these are more often than not misleading. I will also set aside the question of how the Hindu concept of dharma
the group of
* This essay was originally published as Dharma im Hinduismus in Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 49 (1965): 93106, and reprinted in Kleine Schriften: Paul Hacker. Ed. Lambert Schmithausen. Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag (1978): 496509. The original page numbers are indicated in the translation at the appropriate points.
1 I presented the content of this article in a somewhat shorter form as an inaugural lecture on the occasion of my assuming the Chair of Indology at the University of Munster.
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PAUL HACKER
may be dierentiated from what the Vedic texts understood by dharma.1a I will rst address two cases in which the Hindu notion of dharma came into contact with...