Dharma in Hindu Ethics (An Old and Rare Book)

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DOES DHARMA, SO CENTRAL IN INDIAN culture in the past, continue to be of pervasive importance in Hindu life and thought, granted the changes that have transpired in modern India? And if dharma continues to have a formative role, how is its content to be determined in order to supplant those forms of social and personal life that have been altered in recent generations?

These questions are addressed by Professor Creel in Dharma in Hindu Ethics, examining a wide range of writing by philosophers and others whose work has philosophical import, seeking to discover the dominant currents in Hindu ethical reflection today. In the light of the historic role of dharma and the modern developments which have dislocated important facets of the practice of the past, the book examines the contemporary attention to values and to norms relevant for ethics. The manifold problems of cultural reintegration are an important dimension of the study.

The author notes a number of continuing issues for Hindu ethics, the most disturbing of which concerns the compatibility of the idea of dharma with the many modern expressions of endorsement of the unending quest for human enrichment representative of the "open society." Such questions, it is suggested, need the attention of philosophers and all thoughtful people who care about Indian culture.

AUSTIN B. CREEL IS PROFESSOR OF RELIGION and Chairman of the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, Gainesville, U.S.A. He has served as the University's Director of Asian Studies and is President-elect of the Southeast Conference of the U.S. Association for Asian Studies. His teaching and research concentrates on ethics and the religions of India, with, as the present volume indicates, a special interest in ethics in the Hindu tradition. His study of Hinduism has included two visits to India; articles in Religion and Society (Bangalore), Journal of Religious Studies (Patiala), Philosophy: East and West (Honolulu), International Philosophical Quarterly (New York); and papers presented at meetings of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, the Association for Asian Studies and the American Academy of Religion. He has also done a bibliographical study of the modern literature of Hindu ethics for the American Academy of Religion's research quarterly, Religious Studies Review, and is a contributor to the volume on Indian Philosophy in the series, Resources for the Study of Asian Philosophies and Religions, sponsored by the Foreign Area Materials Center of the State University of New York.

The examination of the concept of dharma on which this book is based began as a part of my graduate studies, resulting in a dissertation on "Reformulating Dharma in Contemporary Hindu Ethies" at Yale University in 1959. At that time I postulated that the period just ahead would witness significant further attention to dharma in Hindu philosophy, and I have undertaken to follow recent consideration of what is here called "the problem of dharma"

Because 1 have followed contemporary Indian philosophy with various degrees of closeness for more than twenty years, initiated by a visit to India in 1952-53, the list of people who have contributed to the process of understanding dharma is enormous, While much of the aid is here described in general terms, each person who helped in very specific ways continues to be the recipient of the author's gratitude. To Librarians-and their Libraries-the debt is immense. At Yale University Sterling and Divinity School Libraries, the University of Pennsylvania South Asia Library and the New York Public Library during graduate study at Deccan College during our residence in Poona in 1965-66, and at the University of Florida since 1957, I have invariably received unstinting aid. Specifically at the University of Florida colleagues in the Library have through the years been extraordinarily helpful in locating references, acquiring works for the India collection, obtaining material from other libraries, and making available a cubicle and other facilities that support and encourage research. I hope my Library friends and associates recognize in this acknowledgment how great my gratitude is. I would also like to express appreciation for other ways by which the University of Florida has fostered my work, including providing some time for sustained study. I am particularly grateful to the Division of Sponsored Research and the Center for Studies in the Humanities for manuscript typing.