Dharma

Veena R. Howard, Rita D. Sherma

"Dharma is central to all the indigenous religious traditions of India, which cannot adequately be understood apart from it. Often translated as "ethics", "religion" or "religious law", dharma possesses elements of each of these but is not confined to any single category. Neither is it the equivalent of what many in the West might usually consider to be "a philosophy". This much-needed analysis of the history and heritage of dharma shows that it is instead a multi-faceted religious force, or paradigm, that has defined and that continues to shape the different cultures and civilizations of South Asia in a whole multitude of forms, organizing many aspects of life. Experts in the fields of Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Sikh studies here bring fresh insights to dharma in terms both of its distinctiveness and its commonality as these are expressed across, and between, the several religions of...