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CONCLUSION
707
interruption, one-sided commentaries on the Gitā would have been left in the back-ground, and the fact that the essence of Ethics and Morality in the Mahābhārata has been described in the Karma-Yoga of the Gītā, would certainly have been realised by people. But, by our misfortune, this revival of the Karma-Yoga was not long-lived.
This, however, is not the place to describe the religious history of India. My readers will have realised from the brief and succinct statement made above, that the religion propounded in the Gitā contains some sort of life, brilliance, and power; and that this power was not lost in spite of the fact, that there was an intermediate fortuitous revival of the Samnyāsa religion. The root meaning of the word 'dharma' (morality) is “dhāraṇāt dharmaḥ" (i.e., “Morality is that which upholds "-Trans.); and it ordinarily falls into the two divisions, (1) 'dealing with life after death' (pūralaukika) and (2) ' dealing with worldly life' (vyāvahārıka), or (1) the philosophy of Release (moksa-dharma), and (2) Ethics (nitzdharma), as has been stated by me in the third chapter. Whether you take the Vedic religion, or Buddhism, or the Christian religion, the principal object of each of them is that the world should be maintained and that man should ultimately attain Release; and therefore, each of these religions deals to some extent or other with worldly notions of Right and Wrong, simultaneously with the philosophy of Release. Nay, we may even say that in ancient times, no difference used to be made between the philosophy of Release and worldly Morality; because, every one then fully believed that in order to obtain a proper state after death, one's conduct in this world must also be pure. Not only was it so, but people used to believe that there is one and the same foundation for happiness after death as for happiness during life. But, as a result of the growth of the Material sciences, this belief has now lost ground in the Western countries, and people have begun (i) to consider whether Morality, that is, those rules by which the world is maintained, can or cannot be based on something other than the philosophy of Release, and (ii) to base Sociology on a Materialistic, that is to say, a visible or perceptible foundation. But, how will all the needs of
