Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
174Extract 1: P Bilimoria, ‘Indian ethics’ (2001)
Taken from: © A Companion to Ethic s, Bilmoria P, John Wiley and Sons 1993
Singer P ed, S ma rtPart II, Chapter 4, pp. 43–59.
Preamble
It is often asked: ‘Has there ever been ‘ethics’ in India?’ ‘Can one meaningfully
speak of ‘Indian ethic s’?’ ‘Isn’t the idea of ‘ethic s’ a Western invention — like
ant hropology?’ Or, alt ernat ively, does not t he Indian myst ic al and ‘life-denying’
worldview rule out the use of ethic s? There is no gainsaying that the Indian
t radit ion did c onc ern it self wit h a quest for t he ‘morally good life’ and t he at t endant
princ iples, laws, rules, et c t hat might help ac hieve t his goal. And like t heir
c ounterparts elsewhere, Indian thinkers did not shy away from enquiring into the
na ture of morality, of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, even if they went no
further than desc ribing or c odifying the prevailing ‘ethos’, mores, c ustoms and
habit ual t radit ions — t hat is t o say, giving expression t o what in Sanskrit is t ermed
dharma, meaning, very roughly, the moral and soc ial order.
The questions we began with do, however, point to one diffic ulty, namely, that
of loc at ing in t he Indian t radit ion t he sort of ahist oric al, abst rac t and formal
theorizing in ethic s that we have bec ome ac c ustomed to in the West. In India it was
rec ognized t hat et hic s is t he ‘soul’ of t he c omplex spirit ual and moral aspirat ions of
the people, co-mingled wit h soc ial and polit ic al st ruc t ures forged over a vast period
of t ime. And t his is a rec urrent leit mot if in the c ulture’s profuse wisdom literature,
legends, epic s, lit urgic al t ext s, legal and polit ic al t reat ises.
As wit h any ot her major c ivilizat ion whose origins lie in ant iquit y, one c an
naturally expect there to be a variety of ethical systems within the Indian t radit ion.
To cover all of these positions would be an impossible task. Also, to speak of
‘Indian t radit ion’ is t o refer rat her loosely t o an inc redibly diversified c ollec t ion of
soc ial, c ult ural, religious and philosophic al syst ems, whic h have also c hanged over
time. The present discussion has to be selective and it will be confined to the
Brahmanical—Hindu and Jaina traditions, c onc luding with a brief look at Gandhian
ethic s. (Buddhist ethic s, whose Indian c areer would normally be part of suc h a
c hapter, is disc ussed in Art ic le 5.) T he use of Sanskrit t erms is inevit able, in view of
t he lac k of English equivalent s (and vic e versa), but t hey will be explained.
General remarks about early Indian ethics
To start with the most general remark, the early Indian people in t heir prac t ic al
moral judgements, plac ed on the side of the ‘good’: happiness, health, survival,
progeny, pleasure, c almness, friendship, knowledge and truth: and on the side of
‘bad’ more or less their opposites or disvalues: misery or suffering, sic kness and
injury, death, infertility, pain, anger, enmity, ignoranc e or error, untruth, etc. And
these are universalized for all sentient beings, for it is thought that the highest
good is possible when the whole world c an enjoy the good things the cosmos has to
offer. The highest good, however, is identified with the total harmony of the c osmic