Maryada – Searching for the Boundary | EXTRACT

What does it mean to be good? ‘Maryada’ is a commonly used word for ‘boundary’ in Sanskrit which also means ‘propriety of conduct’. In the context of the Ramayana, the word carries special weight because it comes to be used as the defining virtue of Rama, the ‘maryada purushottama’.

What better day to explore what it means to be good, than the day before Diwali, which is considered the day of the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Read this extract from Arshia Sattar’s new book Maryada that shows us that when we choose one way of being and doing over another, we will be as often wrong as we are right.

While we are accustomed to acknowledging that the Mahabharata does not provide us with either a consistent or a coherent idea of what dharma is, we look to the Ramayana with great hope to resolve the most fundamental of human questions: What does it mean to be good? The Mahabharata tells us over and over again that dharma is ‘sukshma’ – subtle, elusive, hard to know. It is a refrain, almost, in this rich and complex Sanskrit text of one hundred thousand verses, attributed to Vyasa but composed over centuries, which folds within itself many and different ideas of dharma. The Ramayana, however, composed alongside the Mahabharata over the same centuries and in the same political and social milieu, subject to the same influences and tensions, never tells us that dharma is beyond the reach of human understanding, and therefore, of human action. On the contrary, each of the Ramayana’s principal characters believes that it is possible, and that it is necessary that they act on the basis of this slippery code which governs each and every aspect of an individual’s life.

Rather than provide a conclusive definition of dharma in the Ramayana, the essays in this book seek the various boundaries that different ideas of dharma come up against, boundaries beyond which actions become transgressive and deserving of punishment. ‘Maryada’ is a commonly used word for ‘boundary’ in Sanskrit. It also means ‘propriety of conduct’, and with this additional connotation, it holds within itself the idea that the boundary it refers to cannot be crossed without some kind of retributive action. In the context of the Ramayana tradition, the word maryada carries a special weight precisely because the word comes to be used as Rama’s defining virtue. Within the tradition, and especially after the later Ramayanas, Rama becomes known as the ‘maryada purushottama’, the ideal man. In fact, it could well be that the meaning of ‘maryada’ as ‘good conduct’ comes from Rama’s essential association with the concept of propriety itself.

Despite the fact that the Ramayana’s hero, Rama, is regarded as the epitome of dharma in his thoughts and deeds, the Ramayana cannot provide us with a single template for right action. Unlike the Mahabharata, the Ramayana shows us, with compassion and tenderness, that whoever we are, dharma is always and everywhere about a multiplicity of appropriate choices, that when we choose one way of being and doing over another, we will as often be wrong as we are right. When Rama tells his mother Kaushalya that he will obey his father’s wish and go into the forest for fourteen years, her anguished question to him is why he privileges his duty as a son to his father over his obligations to her as a mother. When Vibhishana decides to do what he believes to be right, his alliance with Rama is predicated on the betrayal which leads to the killing of his brother. When Kaikeyi deprives Rama of his right to be king, she acts for the benefit of her son and legitimately asks for the redemption of boons she was given as well as for the fulfilment of a promise made to her father. But she humiliates her husband and makes a mockery of Kosala’s widely held reputation as a kingdom of righteousness. The actors in the Ramayana can see all the choices before them; their problem is not that dharma is sukshma, it is that dharma presents the individual with more than one equal and legitimate choice.