The Hindus (36 page)

The members of the Trio are often said to be separate but equal. Sometimes they work together; thus, for example, one can have sex for the sake of offspring (dharma), for the sake of gaining political power (
artha
), or for sheer pleasure (
kama
), or for some combination of the three (KS 1.5.1-12). Yet the Trio tended to be hierarchized.
¹²
The
Artha-shastra
and
Kama-sutra
rank dharma first and
kama
last, but Manu, oddly enough, hedges: “Dharma and
artha
are said to be better, or
kama
and
artha
, or dharma alone, or
artha
alone, here on earth. But the fixed rule is that the Trio is best (2.224).” The three aims form a sort of rock-paper-scissors arrangement, in which one is constantly trumping the others in an eternal merry-go-round. Some people attempted to correlate the three aims with the triad of the qualities of matter in a kind of unified field theory, (dharma with
sattva
,
kama
with
rajas
, and
artha
with
tamas
). The members of the Trio are, like the strands of matter, dynamic, inescapably interrelated, and in constantly shifting relationships to one another.

The poet Ashvaghosha was born a Brahmin but converted to Buddhism. He lists the aims in what was generally agreed to be their ascending order of importance: One should not use
artha
for
kama
, since
artha
is more important than
kama
, nor dharma for
artha
, since dharma is more important than
artha
. To supply the first element,
kama
, with a precedent, he invokes an exaggerated, hence less desirable form of the element itself (ecstasy in contrast with mere pleasure), and when he reaches the last aim, dharma, which, to continue the pattern, should not be allowed to compromise a subsequent element higher than itself, he invokes as that subsequent element violence (
himsa
). One might have expected
ahimsa
here, but
himsa
, in its place, evokes the specter of Vedic sacrifice, which makes a very different point: In an ideal (pre-Buddhist) world, no one should perform Vedic sacrifices (involving violence to animals) for the sake of dharma.

Yet even dharma must not be honored at the expense of the other aims. The thirteenth-century commentator on the
Kama-sutra
(1.1.2) tells this story of the interdependence of the three aims, here regarded as divinities:

Pururavas, a mortal king, is married to the celestial nymph and courtesan Urvashi. Artha makes Pururavas so greedy that he violates one of the basic principles of dharma—never, ever, steal from Brahmins—and that is his undoing.
^dv

The texts we have considered above, and many others, regard the Trio as triple. But sometimes the aims of life are listed not as a Trio but as a quartet (
chatur-varga)
, in which the fourth aim is
moksha
. The texts on each of the aims of life do not, by and large, deal with
moksha
when they deal with the other three aims, either because they did not take it seriously or, more likely, because they felt it operated in a world beyond the range of their concerns. The three worldly aims of life generally resisted the arriviste renunciant fourth; significantly, Ashvaghosha uses the Trio rather than the quartet in the verse we have cited. To use the Indian metaphor of the Yugas, the dice are loaded three to one in favor of worldliness;
kama
,
artha
, and dharma (as defined in the
dharma-shastra
s) are all for householders. Yet
moksha
was far too important to be ignored, and that is where the problems arise. From the time of the Upanishads, the interloping fourth was usually transcendent, the banner of a shift away from worldliness (the path of rebirth) to a life of renunciation and asceticism (the path of Release).

Not surprisingly, the
Kama-sutra
in general gives very short shrift to
moksha
(1.2.4) and even applies the term, surely tongue in cheek, to the courtesan’s successful jettisoning (“setting free”) of an unwanted lover (6.4.44-5). On the other hand, other texts regard
moksha
as far superior to the other aims, or, rather, in a class apart. Some authors also attempted various unsatisfactory, overlapping correlations between the four aims and other quartets/triads, such as the three (twice born) classes, with
moksha
and dharma for Brahmins; all three of the original Trio for Kshatriyas; and
artha
for Vaishyas. It works better with the colors and qualities: white lucidity for Brahmins, red energy for Kshatriyas, and black torpor for the lower classes. But the matchmaking is generally a doomed attempt to put a square peg in a round hole.

To this basic triad-become-quartet others were soon assimilated.
¹³
The Vedas are usually regarded as a triad, and many Hindus to this day are named Trivedi (“Knower of Three Vedas”). But the Vedas are also regarded as a quartet, including the
Atharva Veda
, and other Hindus are named Chaturvedi (“Knower of Four Vedas”). (A foolish Brahmin in a seventh-century CE play naively brags that he will be honored even by Brahmins who are Panchavedi, Shadvedi—Knowers of Five Vedas, Six Vedas.
¹⁴
) Even the triad of qualities (
gunas
) was squared, when female
prakriti
(“matter, nature,” consisting of the three qualities) was contrasted with male
purusha
(“spirit, self, or person”), the transcendent fourth. Similarly, where once the Hindus had formulated a group of three passions—lust (
kama)
, anger (
krodha
), and greed (
lobha,
or, in some formulation, fear [
bhaya
])—now a fourth metaphysical, epistemological emotion was added: delusion (
moha
). The new fourth often involved the concept of silence: To the three priests of the sacrifice was added a fourth priest (called the Brahmin) who was merely the silent witness; to the three Vedic modes of experience (waking, dreaming, and dreamless sleep) was added a fourth stage, just called the fourth (
turiya
), a stage of merging completely into
brahman
.
¹⁵
When keeping time in music too, Indians count three “heavy” beats and a fourth “empty” beat.
¹⁶

There are also some quartets that never seem to have been triads, such as the four Ages of time, or Yugas, named after the four throws of the dice. Yet the first three ages form one group (Eden, the way it was
in illo tempore
), while the last (the Kali Age) forms the other group (now, reality). The score, as usual, was not four, but three plus one.

Hinduism came up with various solutions to the potential conflicts between renunciation and the householder life resulting from the addition of the fourth aim,
moksha
.
¹⁷

First, it was said that the goals of sacrifice and renunciation were to be followed not simultaneously but seriatim, one at a time in sequence. When the aims are four and in sequence, they are sometimes grouped with what came to be known as the four stages of life (
ashramas
, also, confusingly, the word for a hermitage). But in the earliest texts that mention them (the early
dharma-sutras
), the four
ashramas
were not stages at all but four options for lifestyles that could be undertaken at any period in a man’s life: the chaste student (
brahma-charin
), the householder (
grihastha
), the forest dweller (
vanaprastha
), and the renouncer (
samnyasin
).
¹⁸
The system was an attempt, on the part of Brahmins who inclined to renunciation, to integrate that way of life with the other major path, that of the householder. The first
ashrama
, that of the chaste student, always retained its primary meaning of a vow of chastity undertaken
at any time of life
.
¹⁹
But by the time of Manu, the four
ashramas
had become serial (M 6.87-94), rather than choices that one could make at any time. From then on they were generally regarded as stages, and eventually the third stage in the quartet, that of the forest dweller, became highly problematic, especially when attempts were made to distinguish it from the fourth stage, that of the renouncer.
²⁰

The fourth aim,
moksha
, clearly corresponds to the fourth stage of life, the renouncer’s stage, and because of that, scholars have often constructed a false chronology regarding the stages as yet another system of an original three plus a later one. But the first three aims do not correlate so easily with the first three stages. This is how the
Kama-sutra
attempts to put them together and to specify the age at which each should be undertaken:

The
Kama-sutra
hedges. It speaks of three aims but then sneaks
moksha
in on the coattails of dharma to include it after all. It does not actually mention the stages of life (
ashramas
) but speaks instead of childhood (
brahma-charya
, where, instead of Vedic learning, the boy presumably learns a trade), the prime of youth (the householder stage), and old age (which might be forest dwelling, renunciation, or neither, just staying home and getting old). And though the author assigns (three) ages for the (three, actually four) aims, he then unsays that division with his remark that one must
carpe
the
diem
at any time. The suggestion that you can indulge in
kama
at any stage of life (except childhood) reflects (or perhaps even satirizes?) widespread arguments about whether you can engage in renunciation (
samnyasa
) at any stage.
²¹

Most Hindus regarded renunciation as something that one did after having children and grandchildren, a decision often indefinitely postponed while theoretically extolled. Many Hindus prayed, with St. Augustine, “Make me chaste, O Lord, but not yet,” while for some, the ideal of renunciation, even of forest-dwelling, functioned as an imagined safety valve to keep them going in the householder stage: “I can always get out if and when I want to.” But making the fourth aim an optional fourth stage trivialized the claims of the full renunciant philosophy, which was fundamentally opposed to the householder life. Other resolutions were therefore proposed.

Second was the argument from symbiosis, or plenitude: The two groups of people, worldly and transcendent, need each other, to compose society as a whole, the householder to feed the renouncer, the renouncer to bless the householder. There are two forms of immortality, one achieved through one’s own children and one through renunciation.
²²
Thus the renouncer’s holiness and knowledge are fed back into the society that supports him,
²³
and the paradox of the renunciant Brahmin is that he must remain outside society in order to be useful inside.
²⁴

The third solution was compromise: Sometimes a householder would renounce for a while (following a particular vow) or in some ways (giving up meat or fasting at regular intervals). The forest-dweller life too, the third stage, was a compromise between the householder and renunciant stages, though, like all compromises, it was hedged with problems.
²⁵

The fourth solution was identification. Thus it was said that the householder
was
a renouncer if he played his nonrenunciant role correctly, that fulfilling one’s worldly obligation was Release (as the god Krishna tells Prince Arjuna in the
Bhagavad Gita
: Do your work well, as a warrior, and you win the merit of renunciation). Thus Manu (5.53) promises that a person who gives up eating meat amasses the same good karma as one who performs a horse sacrifice. A person who understood things properly (
yo evam veda
) could win the merit of the goal he had
not
chosen, even while following the goal he had. It was also said that one must have sons, usually regarded as the goal of the worldly life, to achieve Release. Some Tantrics took this line of argument to the extreme and argued that there was no difference between the apparently opposed paths of Release (
moksha
) and the enjoyment of sensuality (
bhoksha
). So too, in the formulation of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna, the world of rebirth (samsara) was not, as most people thought, the opposite of the world of release from rebirth (nirvana), but the same place. This was a solution that many people gratefully accepted.