---
type: Concept
bundle: mimamsa-dharma
bundle_version: 0.10.0
id: dharma
title: Dharma (Mīmāṃsā)
iast: Dharma
devanagari: धर्म
description: 'In Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā, dharma is codanā-lakṣaṇa artha, the good knowable only through Vedic injunction; NOT religion, NOT ethics-by-reason, NOT the general sustaining-order, NOT autonomous duty.'
darshana:
- Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā
text_source: Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.2
tags:
- dharma
- mimamsa
- codana
- injunction
not:
- term: 'religion (a faith or belief system)'
  why: 'Religion imports a deity to worship, a creed to believe, and an institution; Mīmāṃsā''s dharma has none of these. The school is famously non-theistic about ritual efficacy: the enjoined act works through its own unseen force, not through a god''s favour. Dharma is what the injunction reveals, not what one believes.'
  instead: 'Render dharma here as the enjoined good made known only by the Vedic imperative, not a religion or a faith.'
- term: 'morality or ethics (grounded in reason or welfare)'
  why: 'Ethics derives obligation from reasoning about consequence, virtue, or the good. Mīmāṃsā holds that dharma cannot be reached by perception or inference at all; only codanā (injunction) reveals it. An act can be dharma with no discernible worldly benefit, and beneficial with no dharmic status.'
- term: 'the cosmic or natural sustaining-order'
  why: 'That broad sense of dharma (as ṛta-like order) is a different, older concept, treated in dharma-foundation. Mīmāṃsā''s technical dharma is narrower and sharper: it is only the injunction-characterised good, an object of a special means of knowing.'
- term: 'autonomous Kantian duty'
  why: 'Kantian duty is legislated by one''s own reason. Mīmāṃsā dharma is heteronomous to the Vedic word: its authority is the injunction, not the agent''s rational will. (Prabhākara''s kārya comes closest to duty-for-its-own-sake, but the source is still the impersonal directive, not autonomous reason.)'
related:
- /concepts/codana.md
- /concepts/vidhi.md
- /concepts/arthavada.md
timestamp: '2026-07-08'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Dharma (Mīmāṃsā) -- धर्म

**Not:** religion, ethics-by-reason, the sustaining-order, autonomous duty

## What It Actually Means

The founding sūtra of the school is *codanā-lakṣaṇo 'rtho dharmaḥ* (MS 1.1.2): dharma is the *artha* (the good, the purpose) whose defining mark is *codanā*, injunction. This is a deliberately narrow, technical definition. Dharma is not what is good by nature, nor what reason approves, nor what sustains the world; it is precisely and only what the Vedic imperative enjoins. Because the injunction reveals something no sense-organ perceives and no inference reaches (an *ought*, and an unseen result), Mīmāṃsā makes dharma the object of a distinct means of knowledge: the Vedic word itself. Everything else in the school follows from this: the authorlessness of that word (apauruṣeyatva), the unseen link between act and result (apūrva), and the whole apparatus for reading which sentences actually enjoin.

## Why the Definition Is So Narrow

Jaimini restricts dharma to the injunction on purpose. If dharma could be known by reasoning about welfare, the Veda would be dispensable and dharma would collapse into ordinary prudence. By tying dharma to codanā alone, Mīmāṃsā secures both the Veda's necessity and the category's independence from visible profit and loss. This is why a Mīmāṃsaka can hold that an enjoined rite is dharma even when its fruit is unseen and deferred to another life.

## Audience Metaphor

Think of the difference between "what is healthy" and "what this prescription says." Health can be reasoned about from evidence; a prescription is known only by reading it, and it binds you to a specific act whether or not you can see why. Mīmāṃsā's dharma is the prescription, not the health: an obligation legible only in the enjoining text, not derivable from looking at outcomes.

## Citations

1. Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.2 (*codanā-lakṣaṇo 'rtho dharmaḥ*) -- see [references/mimamsa-sutra.md](../references/mimamsa-sutra.md)
2. Śabara-Bhāṣya on MS 1.1.2 -- see [references/sabara-bhashya.md](../references/sabara-bhashya.md)
3. Cross-bundle: the broader sustaining-order sense of dharma is treated in dharma-foundation v0.1; the ethics-as-alignment sense in dharmic-ethics v0.5. Same word, different technical object.
