***Note: The following work is solely that of Elizabeth Jordan.  Any attempt to copy it without permission from the author is plagiarism and not worth it since you will be caught.***

Dharma in Samskara
Written for Religions of South Asia
Sophomore Year - Fall 1998

In Hinduism, a person is offered many paths towards salvation depending on his or her caste. The only toll to pay on this path is that of dharma, or duty. If one fulfills one’s dharma, then one comes closer to liberation (moksa). For a woman, this means obeying her husband. For a brahmin man, this means living his life according to the four life-stages (asramas) and practicing the vedic rituals. In the novel, Samskara, U.R. Anantha Murthy contrasts many possible paths to salvation including that of Naranappa and that of Praneshacharya; at first glance, a sinner and a saint. However, throughout the novel it becomes less clear who, if either, of these two is actually performing their dharma. I do not believe that either Naranappa nor Praneshacharya are successful at performing the dharma of a brahmin man because neither fulfilled both the life stages and the performance of the rituals.

Dharma can be loosely translated to mean "duty... religion... justice... law... ethics... religious merit... principle... and right." (Flood 52) It is the idea that each person in society has a certain path or duty to follow and it is by following this path that a person obtains salvation. It is most important in Hinduism to act according to your dharma rather than just to believe that it is good to do so. (Flood 12) Dharma differs for each caste in Hindu society. For the brahmin male, in particular, it involves performing the vedic rituals and progressing through the four life stages, or asramas. "The four stages are: that of the celibate student (brahmacarya), householder (grhastha), hermit or forest-dweller (vanaprastha), and renouncer (samnyasa)." (Flood 62). In Samskara, both Naranappa and Praneshacharya are brahmin males living in the agrahara, Durvasapura. Praneshacharya is considered the wisest brahmin in the agrahara because he studied the Vedas in Kashi. Naranappa, on the other hand, cast off his brahminhood for more hedonistic ways. (Murthy 21) He leaves his wife for Chandri, a low-caste woman and begins to eat meat and keep company with Muslims. At the beginning of the novel, Chandri tells Praneshacharya that Naranappa has died. Thus, the central question of the first part of the novel becomes whether or not the brahmin men in the agrahara may perform the funeral rights for Naranappa. In other words, did Naranappa still possess his brahminhood despite the way he lived his life?

In attempting to answer this question, Praneshacharya begins a spiritual journey in which the question becomes whether or not he has truly fulfilled his dharma in the way he has lived his life. Murthy makes it obvious to the reader that this is the most important question in the novel by having Chandri secretly cremate Naranappa’s body. Thus, the question of the funeral rites no longer exists and the reader is forced to turn to the issue of Praneshacharya’s dharma and path to salvation.

Praneshacharya obviously experienced the life stage of a celibate student. His education is mentioned and praised many times throughout the novel. In the life stage of the celibate student, a brahmin man is expected to abstain from sex and study the Vedas. (Flood 62) The celibacy of this stage is necessary to retain energy for the study of the Vedas. It is a Hindu belief that semen contains energy that "can be sublimated for a religious purpose." (Flood 63) After a period of study is complete, the brahmin boy is expected to marry and enter the stage of the householder. However, I believe Praneshacharya never truly crossed to this stage because he married Bhagirathi, an invalid woman.

Part of the householder stage of life is experiencing desire, including sexual desire. However, with Bhagirathi as a wife, Praneshacharya was never able to experience that desire. More importantly, he purposefully chose to marry Bhagirathi in order to completely avoid sexual desire and intercourse. He attempted to move from the life of a celibate student to the life of a renouncer or forest-dweller in which a brahmin gives up desire. However, I believe that in order to make the life stages of the forest-dweller and renouncer meaningful, one must first experience desire. He tries to skip the stage of the "man-in-the-world" (Flood 89) and move directly to the life of a renouncer. Praneshacharya tries to have the best of all worlds by combining all four life stages. He attempts to exist in the social world among the brahmins while still attaining the spirituality and separateness of a renouncer or forest-dweller. He never seems able to give up the world of any stage in order to move to the next stage.

Naranappa, on the other hand, represents the other extreme. He sets out to experience desire whenever he can. He sleeps with Chandri, eats meat, and drinks liquor. He knows desire and gives into it at every moment he can. He leaves his wife, ignoring his duties as a householder and casts off the traditions of brahminhood altogether. Thus, neither Praneshacharya nor Naranappa completely fulfill their dharma. However, only Praneshacharya is given the opportunity to discover his past mistakes and perhaps learn from them.

The entire novel represents a samskara, or rite of passage, for Praneshacharya in which he attempts to discern the correct path to salvation by becoming a part of the world instead of a being beyond it. Praneshacharya had spent his whole life studying the Vedas and the Puranas without once knowing for himself what the desire they spoke of was like. He knew only of those things transcendent to this earth. Worldly desires were foreign to him because he avoided them. Praneshacharya’s samskara takes place in three phases similar to those of other Hindu samskaras like the upanaya for brahmin boys in which a young man is initiated into his time of learning the Vedas.

First, Praneshacharya is isolated from society. When he sleeps with Chandri, his immediate reaction is that he has lost all of his authority in the community. He feels that he is no better than Naranappa and that the other brahmin men should not pay attention to what he says. The action of sleeping with Chandri is the moment of his psychological separation from the community of the agrahara. He believes that he has fallen from grace for giving into his sexual desires.

Praneshacharya compares this fall from grace to "a baby monkey losing hold of his grip on the mother’s body." (Murthy 75) In other words, salvation was something Praneshacharya worked for his entire life. He laid out his path to salvation when he was sixteen by marrying Bhagirathi and never allowed desire or any other obstacle steer him from that path. The Lord did not choose Praneshacharya; Praneshacharya chose the Lord. The gambler in Praneshacharya’s story, however, was chosen by the Lord. A brahmin gentleman addicted to gambling could not rid himself of his vice no matter how hard he tried. After being shunned from his community he prayed to the Lord: "‘O, Lord! Why do you make me a gambler?’" (Murthy 48) The gods answered his call instead of appearing to the brahmins in the temple. The life of conflict turned out to be the quicker path to salvation than a life like Praneshacharya’s in which conflict was avoided at all costs.

After his psychological separation from the community, Praneshacharya experiences a physical isolation, as well. He leaves the agrahara after he cremates his wife and begins to wander the forest. At this point he exists in a phase of transition which lasts the rest of the novel. This is the usual second stage to a samskara. During this time, Praneshacharya becomes more aware of the physical world around him. He recognizes beauty (in Chandri) and ugliness (in his wife) for the first time. But, at the same time, his transition is not yet complete. He expects people to recognize him as the "Crest-Jewel of Vedanta Philosophy." (Murthy 115) He is still primarily unable to look at the world from a view other than a transcendent one. He still sees himself as not yet of the world but above it.

It is at the car-festival that Praneshacharya reaches a revelation about his place in the world. Taking in all the spectacles of the festival he suddenly realizes: "That art Thou." (Murthy 121) Everything around him, is also part of him; and he, in turn, is a part of it all. The narrator in the essay, "‘All That is You,’" comes to the same realization. At first it seems exciting and beautiful to the narrator. She sees herself in all the good things of the world. But then she comes to understand that she is not only part of the good but the bad as well. She cannot say to a butterfly: "That is you." unless she also says of Hitler and the Nazis: "They are you." Up until this point at the car-festival, Praneshacharya most probably did experience a sense of oneness with the world, but only with the transcendent world. He certainly saw himself in the Vedic teachings and in his teachers when he was a student. But he never allowed himself to carry that feeling out to other parts of the world. At first he probably felt that way about his friend Mahabala at Kashi but as soon as Mahabala fell from grace Praneshacharya ceased to see himself as part of that "sinner." At the car-festival, Praneshacharya finally realizes that he is not only part of the brahmin world but of the low-caste world as well. In other words, he belongs not only to the transcendent but to the earthly. This brings him one step closer to knowing that he is part of the whole world.

Praneshacharya comes to the knowledge that he is not immune to "desire," nor should he be a stranger to its "fulfillment." (Murthy 121) Throughout his life, Praneshacharya had struggled to avoid desire in order to attain salvation. He planned his path to salvation while he was still a child and did only those things in life that allowed him to continue on this path, including marrying his wife. At the very beginning of the novel, Praneshacharya says that marrying Bhagirathi makes him "‘ripe and ready’" (Murthy 2) the implication being that it made him ready for salvation. At the end of the novel, it begins to become clear to Praneshacharya that he married Bhagirathi not because he felt compassion towards the invalid woman to follow his path to salvation. He did not marry Bhagirathi because he was compassionate but because he was selfish.

When the novel ends, Praneshacharya is still in his liminal phase. He comes to no concrete conclusion about what to do. He merely gets on the cart to Durvaspara. It is clear that Praneshacharya was unable to fulfill his dharma as a brahmin because he never let himself experience any of the life stages fully. Naranappa did not completely fulfill his dharma either because he did not follow the vedic rituals. Murthy makes the point in Samskara that brahminism in must be a combination of the two forms exhibited by Praneshacharya and Naranappa. A brahmin cannot afford to be completely of the world as Naranappa was because he will lose the qualities that have made him a brahmin since the beginnings of vedic tradition; namely, the rituals. But he cannot afford to be completely beyond the world either as was Praneshacharya because then he will not know conflict or desire and; thus, to renounce them would be meaningless. To live either as Praneshacharya did or as Naranappa did is too easy and will not lead to salvation. To be able to do both; to live part of your life as a householder, experiencing the worldly desires, and then to be able to shun those desires and live as a renouncer, is the hardest thing of all and perhaps the only way to fulfill the dharma of a brahmin.

Works Cited

Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996.

Karve, Irwati. "All That is You." The Experience of Hinduism. Editors: E. Zelliot and H. Bernsten. Translated by: Jai Nimbkar.