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XIV] Conception of Sacrificial Duties in the Gitā 487 a much earlier meaning than the latter-day technical meaning of the word as it is found in Mīmāmsā. Dharma does not in the Gitā mean sacrifices (yajña) or external advantages, as it does in Mīmāmsā, but the order of conventional practices involving specific castedivisions and caste-duties. Accordingly, the performance of sacrifices is dharma for those whose allotted duties are sacrifices. Adultery is in the Vedas a vice, as being transgression of dharma, and this is also referred to as such (dharme nașțe, 1. 39) in the Gitā. In the Gitā, 11. 7, Arjuna is said to be puzzled and confused regarding his duty as a Kşattriya and the sinful course of injuring the lives of his relations (dharma-sammūdha-cetāḥ). The confusion of dharma and adharma is also referred to in xviii. 31 and 32. In the Gītā, iv. 7 and 8, the word dharma is used in the sense of the established order of things and conventionally accepted customs and practices. In II. 40 the way of performing one's duties without regard to pleasures or sorrows is described as a particular and specific kind of dharma (asya dharmasya), distinguished from dharma in general.
The yajña (sacrifice) is said to be of various kinds, e.g. that in which oblations are offered to the gods is called daiva-yajña; this is distinguished from brahma-yajña, in which one dedicates oneself to Brahman, where Brahman is the offerer, offering and the fire of oblations, and in which, by dedicating oneself to Brahman, one is lost in Brahman?. Then sense-control, again, is described as a kind of yajña, and it is said that in the fire of the senses the sense-objects are offered as libations and the senses themselves are offered as libations in the fire of sense-control; all the sensefunctions and vital functions are also offered as libations in the fire of sense-control lighted up by reason. Five kinds of sacrifices (yajña) are distinguished, viz. the yajña with actual materials of libation, called dravya-yajña, the yajña of asceticism or self-control, called tapo-yajña, the yajña of union or communion, called yoga-yajña, the yajña of scriptural studies, called svādhyāyayajña, and the yajña of knowledge or wisdom, called jñāna-yajña. It is easy to see that the extension of the application of the term yajña from the actual material sacrifice to other widely divergent methods of self-advancement is a natural result of the extension of the concept of sacrifice to whatever tended towards self-advancement. The term yajña had high and holy associations, and the · Gītā, iv. 24 and 25.
2 Ibid. iv. 26-28; see also 29 and 30.
