धर्म की उत्पत्ति

Origin of dharma

Dharma was formulated as the solution to the eternal problems confronting the human race, originating from natural human instincts. vdkeL; fØ;k dfpí`';rs usg dfgZfprà;|f) dq#rs fdfŒpr rÙRdkeL; psf"VreÃA MANU: II: 4 There is no act of man which is free from desire; whatever a man does is the result of the impulse of desire. In the above verse, analysing the human instinct, Manu states that the force behind every action of a human being is his desire (kama). Then the next question was what were the natural desires of man? The natural desire of man was found to be the desire to have enjoyment of wealth ie., material pleasure (artha) as also emotional and sexual enjoyment. Artha is explained by Vatsayana3 as connoting material wealth such as gold, cattle, com, including education or knowledge (intellectual property) necessary to earn wealth. The source of all evil actions of human beings was traced to the desire for material pleasure which in turn gave rise to conflict of interests among individuals. Further, it was found that the desire (kama) of human beings could also be influenced by the other impulses inherent in human beings such as anger (krodha), passion (moha), greed (lobha), infatuation (mada), and enmity (matsarya). These six natural impulses were considered as six internal enemies of man (arishadvarga), which if allowed to act uncontrolled could instigate him to entertain evil thoughts in the mind for fulfilling his own selfish desires and for that purpose cause injury to others. Manu, on this basis, explained the causes of all civil and criminal injuries inflicted by the action of one against the other. Dharma or rules of righteous conduct was evolved as a. solution to this eternal problem arising out of the natural instinct of man. In Shantiparva of the Mahabharata (Ch.59-