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110 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY the vagueness sometimes met with in its use. But, however diverse the significance, dharma is essentially what bears fruit in a future life and implies moral purity as a necessary condition of earning it. So persistent is this idea that in popular mythology it comes to be identified with Yama or the god of death, who allots rewards and punishments to men in another life according to their deserts. The authority for deciding what is dharma or adharma is the Veda and tradition traceable to it. This is the significance of the term vidhi which about this time comes to be used, and stands for a behest from above. That is, dharma in its technical sense is extra-empirical and can be known only through a channel other than common experience, viz. a divine or traditional code. Apastamba explicitly says that the principles underlying the conventions and observances of the Aryas are not knowable in the ordinary way: 'Dharma and adharma do not hover about us saying-'We are so and so."'? Where empirical considerations alone sufficiently explain conduct, there is no need for such a code. The cultivation of worldly prudence is all that is needed.
(2) Yoga.--This term is cognate with English 'yoke' and means 'harnessing.' It is essentially a process of selfconquest and was not unoften resorted to in ancient India for the acquisition of supernatural or occult powers.3 But we are at present concerned with yogic practice as the means of securing release. In this sense it is practically the same as upăsana taught in the Upanişads (p. 78), and is predominantly associated with Absolutism. We should remember that yogic meditation is to follow intellectual conviction regarding the unity to be realized and is therefore very far from being an artificial process of self-hypnosis or anything of the kind. It has, on the other hand, been compared to the entirely healthy and joyous phenomenon of aesthetic contemplation.'4 Yoga is thus really a joint aid
1 Cf. ADS. I. xxiii. 6.
* ADS. I. xx. 6. 3 Cf. ADS. II. xxvi. 14, which implies a distinction between two kinds of ascetics one described as dharma-para and the other, as abhicāra-para, which may respectively be rendered as 'benevolent' and 'malevolent.'
+ See PU. P. 383.
