Sanatana Dharma, Karma and the Cycle of Rebirth

Overview

Recall questions on Sanatana Dharma and rta, karma and its three kinds, motive and freedom, samsara and rebirth, the subtle body, the accounts of moksha, death rites and the ancestors, and Zaehner's view of Hinduism.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Many Hindus prefer to call their tradition Sanatana Dharma rather than Hinduism. What are they claiming when they do?

   Model answer

   That what they follow is the eternal, perennial dharma: not one founder's invention with a datable start, but the enduring order of reality itself, which sages perceived and passed on. The phrase also sidesteps 'Hinduism', a label pinned on the tradition from outside, and it presents the teaching as available in principle to anyone rather than as one competing creed among many.

2. 2

   What is rta, and where does the idea come from?

   Model answer

   Rta is the Vedic name for the underlying order that holds the cosmos, the natural world and moral life together: the regularity by which the seasons turn, and by which truth and right conduct are what they are. It appears in the earliest Vedic hymns, where gods such as Varuna guard it rather than invent it. Later Hindu thought largely folds rta into the broader idea of dharma.

3. 3

   How do rta and dharma relate to each other?

   Model answer

   Rta is the older cosmic term; dharma is the word that came to do most of its work. Both express the conviction that order is built into reality, so that human duty means aligning with something already there rather than inventing values. Dharma adds a personal and social edge: it specifies what that order asks of this person, in this role, at this stage of life.

4. 4

   Explain why the link between cosmic order and personal duty shapes what Hindus actually do.

   Model answer

   If order runs as one fabric from the stars to the kitchen, then ritual, ethics and daily routine stop being separate compartments. Performing the samskaras at their proper times, meeting obligations to family and ancestors, and living out one's own dharma are all understood as sustaining a real order, not as expressing private preference. That is a large part of why Hindu practice is so heavily calendrical and domestic rather than congregational.

5. 5

   To what extent can the claim that Hinduism is eternal and unchanging survive historical study?

   Model answer

   There is real continuity to point to: Vedic recitation, the fire ritual, the authority of shruti, and priestly lineages persist across three thousand years. Against that, historians record enormous change: the move from sacrifice to temple and image worship, the rise of bhakti, the emergence of great deities barely present in the earliest hymns, and the reshaping of the tradition under colonial rule. Many Hindus reply that what is eternal is the underlying dharma, not the outward forms it takes at any one time.

6. 6

   Who uses the language of Sanatana Dharma today, and to what end?

   Model answer

   It is used devotionally, to voice the tradition's sense of itself as timeless. It is also used politically: some Hindu nationalist voices deploy it to define an authentic Indian religious identity. Meanwhile many Hindus, especially in diaspora communities, use exactly the same phrase to stress universality and to resist the idea that the tradition is anyone's ethnic property. The wise move is to ask who is speaking and for what purpose.

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