Introduction to Sanatana Dharma

“No beginning?” Meera frowned. “Everything has a beginning. Even the universe, we learned it, thirteen point eight billion years.” Thatha nodded. “Your universe, perhaps. But I did not say the universe. I said this. The dharma, the way. Sanatana means eternal: not founded on a date, not signed by an author. Sit. Tonight I will tell you what the word actually means, where the name ‘Hindu’ really came from, and why every prayer in this house ends with peace said three times.”

The eternal way

Sanatana Dharma is a set of eternal principles, knowledge systems, and practices that people have followed since ancient times. Sanatana means eternal, without beginning or end; dharma means that which upholds, the underlying order of things. In the tradition’s own account, these principles were not invented by any human on any date; they flow from Paramatma — the Supreme Self, the very ground of the universe — and were discovered by the seers (drashtas), the way gravity was not invented by Newton but discovered.

People living in the ancient land of Bharat followed these ways of life. Much later, outsiders named the people living beyond the river Sindhu (Indus) “Hindus,” and the system became known to the world as “Hinduism.” The older, truer name remains Sanatana Dharma, the eternal way.

From the pages of history

Walk the history of that name and you walk half the map of the ancient world. The people of Bharat lived along great rivers — the Sindhu, the Ganga, and the Sarasvati of the old hymns — and archaeology keeps finding continuities that startle scholars: fire-altars, ritual bathing tanks, and motifs from the Sindhu-Sarasvati cities that echo in practices still alive today. Ancient Persians, pronouncing Sindhu in their own way, said ‘Hindu’; the Greeks who came later softened it to ‘Indos,’ which gave the world ‘India.’ So the familiar names — Hindu, India, Hindustan — are all, at root, the name of a river as spoken by travelers. The people themselves needed no label; they simply spoke of dharma. A tradition older than its own name: that is your inheritance’s first surprise.

Well-being of the whole universe

The purpose of Sanatana Dharma is not only the safety of humans but the well-being of the entire universe, trees, animals, rivers, planets, and all beings. This is visible in the tradition’s own prayers. No worship is complete without “Om Shanti Shanti Shanti”, wishing peace three times, for oneself, for those around, and for the whole world. And the tradition’s most generous prayer asks nothing for the one praying:

“Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu.”“May all the worlds and all beings be happy.”, traditional Sanskrit benediction

“Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah.”“May all be happy; may all be free from illness.”, traditional shanti mantra

One truth at the foundation

Underneath the countless practices lies one foundation-stone, stated in a single line of the Rig Veda:

“Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti.”“Truth is one; the wise describe it in many ways.”, Rig Veda 1.164.46

If there is one reality and many honest descriptions of it, then many sincere paths are possible, exactly how science treats nature: one universe, many models that capture different parts of it. The Chandogya Upanishad sharpens the unity: “Ekam evadvitiyam”, “One only, without a second” (Chandogya 6.2.1). While many traditions uphold their own path as the only way, Sanatana Dharma affirms that a single truth underlies all existence and is accessible to every being.

The untranslatable word

Pay attention to why this book keeps saying ‘dharma’ instead of ‘religion’: the words do not mean the same thing, and the difference is the whole subject. ‘Religion’ describes a system of belief. Dharma describes the nature and right function of a thing, any thing. The dharma of fire is to burn; of water, to flow; of the sun, to shine. Ask ‘what is the dharma of fire?’ and you are asking physics; ask ‘what is the dharma of a student, a friend, a daughter?’ and you are asking ethics; ask ‘what is the dharma of a human being as such?’ and you have arrived at this book. One word runs from the laws of nature to the duties of a person without changing its meaning — that which upholds — because the tradition never split the universe into a natural half and a moral half in the first place. This is also why each person’s duty is called svadharma, one’s own dharma: the right action of a thing follows from what that thing is, and you are not generic. The Gita presses this hard: better one’s own dharma done imperfectly than another’s done well (3.35), the fire should not envy the river.

And at the root of all human dharma the tradition placed one principle above the rest: ahimsa, non-harming, ‘ahimsa paramo dharmah,’ the Mahabharata’s famous refrain. Not weakness — the same epic is full of warriors — but the default setting of a civilization that prays for all beings: harm none where you can help it, and let every departure from that carry the burden of proof. When a tradition’s first commandment is addressed to the welfare of every creature, its prayers for ‘all the worlds’ are not decoration. They are policy.

That night Meera wrote in her notebook: ‘Older than its own name.’ But a doubt itched at her, if the truth is one, why does Grandma do puja while Thatha just sits with closed eyes? Tomorrow, she decided, she would ask which of them was doing it right. ❖

There is no beginning.