________________
Morality, Authority and Society' : The Problem of Dharmaprāminya
111
within a framework of assumptions about human nature, human action, the role, status and destiny of an individual and so on the distri bution of power (both political and legal) and the validation of authority regarding the regulation and control of human affairs contubute to the emergence, persistence and change in the endes of knowledge and conduct. The role of Sabda-pramāna therefore is to be viewed in this perspective Of course highlighting Indian scriptural prescriptivism in this manner does not mean that there was no role of reasoning in Hindu ethics. Reasoning however, was einnloyed only to clarify, establish or refute certain positions operating within the sphere of revealed morality. We find that in the epics, there are beautiful moral discourses or moral counselling sessions where tarka is employed for the purposes of defending a particular course of action within the framework of scripturally sanctioned dharmas. The framework itself however is never given up. Reason operated within the framework of revealed morality, it could not, form its own resources, establish moral conclusions from nonscriptural premises.
Given this contexr, nothing can be gained by finding out parallels between Bradley and the Gita or Kant and the Gita. Neither Kant nor Bradley ever offered scriptural prescriptivism as the basis for the justification of morality, though they had their own metaphysical arguments, Kant's categorical imperative is totally non-scriptural. Kant and Bradley were not talking about divinely sanctioned scheme of duties in a relation to a fixed social order reinforced by cosmic laws Given these fundamental differences, similarities between Kant's ethics or Bradley's ethics on the one hand and Hindu ethics on the other, do not amount to a significant understanding of either of the systems.
We may therefore conclude our discussion by pointing out that the history of dharmasastras provides us with a very rich source both for the study of history of ethics as well for the study of epistemology of ethics i.e. the problem of dharmaprāmānya. In our search for the new moral, social and legal deals and for a new justification for them, an understanding of the social and intellectual history of dharmaprämānya will prove to be very rewarding
NOTES
1 Dasgupta, IV, p. 2 2 Dasgupta, TV, P 3 3 Dasgupta, II, p. 483 4 Kape, V, p. 1261 5 Kane, V,"p' 1264
