The "Four Aims of Life" Were Written Down as Three — Even the Kamasutra's First Line Salutes Only Dharma, Artha and Kama

Mysore, 1905: a librarian, a manuscript, and a sentence about money

The Mysore Government Oriental Library received a manuscript from a pandit of the Tanjore District. With it came a commentary, by a writer named Bhattasvamin, on a small part of the text. The librarian was R. Shamasastry. The manuscript was the Arthaśāstra, the "science of artha", a manual for kings. The introduction to his translation would later credit him with "practically discovering the work". He began printing a tentative English translation in the Indian Antiquary "in 1905 and following years". The Sanskrit text came out in 1909 as volume 37 of the Bibliotheca Sanskrita of Mysore. A full English translation followed in 1915. These details come from the introductory note that J. F. Fleet, of the Indian Civil Service, wrote for that translation, dated 20 November 1914.

Fleet also noted a difficulty. Shamasastry "had only the one manuscript". The text, Fleet wrote, "is laconic and difficult to a degree".

In Book I, chapter 7, a short run of sentences lays out a theory of what a human life is for. A king, it says, should enjoy pleasure without violating dharma and artha. "He shall never be devoid of happiness." He may pursue the three aims equally, because they are bound to each other. Any one of them, pursued to excess, damages the other two and itself.

Then the author speaks in his own name, as he does throughout the book when he disagrees with older teachers. In Shamasastry's English: "Kautilya holds that wealth, and wealth alone, is important, inasmuch as charity and desire depend upon wealth for their realisation."

That sentence shows that the "aims of life" were not a quiet list of virtues. They were a live argument, and Kautilya took a side.

At a glance

• Kautilya names three aims and ranks one first. "artha eva pradhāna iti kauṭilyaḥ" — wealth alone is important, because dharma and kama are "rooted in" it. (Arthaśāstra 1.7.6–7, Kangle ed. via GRETIL; Shamasastry 1915, Book I ch. VII)
• The same reason recurs three times. "arthamūlau (hi) dharmakāmau" appears at 1.7.7, again at 8.3.31 (voiced by the Parāśara school, whose conclusion Kautilya rejects), and at 15.1.14 as a textbook example of a "reason". (Arthaśāstra, GRETIL)
• The Kamasutra opens with a salute to three, not four. Its first sutra is "dharmārthakāmebhyo namaḥ" — "Salutation to Dharma, Artha and Kama". (Kāmasūtra 1.1.1; Burton 1883, Introductory Preface)
• Manu reports four rival opinions and rules for the group of three. (Manusmṛti 2.224; Bühler 1886, pp. 70–71)
• The Mahabharata stages a five-speech debate. Vidura argues for dharma, Arjuna for artha, the twins for dharma first and then artha, Bhima for kama; Yudhishthira answers with moksha. (Mahābhārata, Critical Edition 12.161, 48 verses; Ganguli, Śānti Parva section 167)
• The epic itself calls moksha "a fourth", with "a separate aim". "caturtho mokṣa ity eva pṛthagarthaḥ pṛthaggaṇaḥ". (Mahābhārata 12.59.30)
• The word "puruṣārtha" is absent from the Arthaśāstra and the Kamasutra, and occurs once in Manu — where it names a four-step rule about wealth. (word search of the GRETIL texts; Manu 7.100, Bühler p. 232)

First, the words a beginner needs

Puruṣārtha. From puruṣa, "person", and artha, "aim" or "purpose": an aim of a human being. Today it is the standard name for the four aims together. It is not the name the oldest texts use.

Trivarga. "The group of three": dharma, artha and kama. This is the term the Arthaśāstra, the Kamasutra and Manu actually use.

Dharma. Right conduct: duty, law, religious merit, the order that holds society together. Old translators could not agree on one English word. Shamasastry wrote "charity", "religion" and "righteousness" in different places; Bühler wrote "spiritual merit"; Ganguli "Virtue"; Telang "piety"; Pope "Virtue".

Artha. Wealth and power: the means of a livelihood. The Arthaśāstra defines it as "the subsistence of mankind", and also as "the earth which contains mankind" (15.1.1, Shamasastry).

Kāma. Pleasure and desire, in the widest sense. The Kamasutra defines it as the senses engaging with their objects under the guidance of the mind (1.2.11). It is not only sex.

Mokṣa. Release: freedom from the cycle of rebirth. Burton's Kamasutra glosses it as "release from further transmigration"; Bühler's Manu says "final liberation"; Ganguli's Mahabharata says "Emancipation".

Caturvarga. "The group of four". In the Arthaśāstra this word means something else entirely: the four vices born of desire, "hunting, gambling, women and drinking" (8.3.38, Shamasastry).

Śāstra. A technical manual or science. Arthaśāstra, Kāmaśāstra and Dharmaśāstra were separate disciplines, one for each of the three aims.

The claim we are testing

The popular version: "Hindu tradition teaches four aims of life — dharma, artha, kama and moksha — in a fixed order, with dharma governing the middle two and moksha as the final goal. This has been the scheme from the beginning."

1. Dharma, artha and kama are an ancient, named group of life's aims. True. All five texts read for this piece name them together; the Arthaśāstra, the Kamasutra and Manu call them the trivarga.
2. Dharma always comes first. Not in every text. The Kamasutra ranks dharma first and Manu makes it the boundary for the other two (4.176), but Kautilya says artha is primary (1.7.6), the Kamasutra makes artha first for a king (1.2.15), and Manu records four competing views before ruling (2.224).
3. The list was always four. Unsupported. The oldest rulebooks list three. The Mahabharata calls moksha "a fourth" with a separate aim (12.59.30). The idea of moksha was older than its place in the list; the four-item list is the later step.
4. Moksha simply crowns the other three. Contested in the texts themselves. Yudhishthira reaches moksha by stepping outside all three (12.161.42); the Gita treats clinging to all three as a "passionate" frame of mind (18.34).

"Wealth, and wealth alone": what Kautilya actually wrote

The Arthaśāstra's chapter 1.7 is headed, in the GRETIL text, the life of a "sage-like king"; Shamasastry called it "The Life of a Saintly King". Its argument about the aims takes five sentences. Here they are in Sanskrit, with plain English.

1.7.3: "dharmārthāvirodhena kāmaṃ seveta, na niḥsukhaḥ syāt" — let him enjoy pleasure without conflict with dharma and artha; let him not be without happiness.

1.7.4: "samaṃ vā trivargam anyonyānubaddham" — or let him pursue the group of three equally, since they are bound to one another.

1.7.5: "eko hy atyāsevito dharmārthakāmānām ātmānam itarau ca pīḍayati" — for any one of dharma, artha and kama, served to excess, harms itself and the other two.

1.7.6: "artha eva pradhāna iti kauṭilyaḥ" — "artha alone is the chief", says Kautilya.

1.7.7: "arthamūlau hi dharmakāmāv iti" — because dharma and kama have artha as their root.

First a balanced rule, with happiness required, not merely allowed. Then "iti kauṭilyaḥ", the book's signature for the author's own verdict, tilts it.

Shamasastry's English renders dharma here as "charity". In Book I, chapter 10, he renders the same group as "religion, wealth and love"; in Book IX, chapter 7, as "wealth, virtue, and enjoyment". One Sanskrit word, three English ones, in one translator's hands. A reader of English alone could not tell that these were the same idea.

Book IX uses the same three words for the kinds of gain a king may win on campaign. "artho dharmaḥ kāma ity arthatrivargaḥ" — "Wealth, virtue, and enjoyment form the aggregate of the three kinds of wealth", in Shamasastry's words, and "it is better to secure that which is mentioned first" (9.7.60–61). Here too, artha leads the list.

The same reason, "arthamūlau dharmakāmau", returns at 8.3.31. This time it is spoken by the school of Parāśara. They argue that ruining a person's money is worse than harsh physical punishment, since "good deeds and enjoyments depend upon wealth". Kautilya replies "No" (8.3.34–35). "In preference to a large amount of wealth no man desires the loss of his own life," in Shamasastry's English. Even the author who put artha first would not let it outrank a life.

The sentence returns a third time in the last book, which lists the 32 devices a treatise uses. The fifth is the hetvartha, "the purport of reason". Kautilya's example is his own line: "For charity and enjoyment of life depend upon wealth" (15.1.13–14).

Why would a manual for kings rank wealth first? Its own definition answers: "The subsistence of mankind is termed artha" (15.1.1). For a ruler, artha is the treasury, the army, the harvest and the land.

The Kamasutra's first line, and a pigeon today

The Kamasutra is famous for one subject. Its opening chapters are about another: how to arrange a whole life.

Its first sutra is a salute: "dharmārthakāmebhyo namaḥ" (1.1.1). Burton's 1883 English, printed "for private circulation only", heads the preface "Salutation to Dharma, Artha and Kama". Three aims. No fourth.

The next sutras give a myth of origin. The Lord of Beings, Prajāpati, created people and set out the means to the group of three in "one hundred thousand chapters" (1.1.5). Manu took the dharma portion, Bṛhaspati the artha portion, and Nandī the kama portion, in a thousand chapters (1.1.6–8). Each aim got its own science.

Chapter 1.2 then gives a plan for a life. "śatāyur vai puruṣaḥ" — a man's life is a hundred years. He should divide his time and serve the three aims so that they are bound together and do not damage one another (1.2.1). In childhood, artha such as acquiring learning (1.2.2). In youth, kama (1.2.3). In old age, "dharmaṃ mokṣaṃ ca" — dharma and moksha (1.2.4). Or, since life is uncertain, each as the occasion arises (1.2.5).

So the fourth aim is in the Kamasutra after all. It appears once, attached to old age, beside dharma. The book's organising word remains trivarga.

The definitions are concrete. Dharma is what the scriptures teach about acts whose fruit is unseen (1.2.7). Artha is the acquisition of learning, land, gold, cattle, grain, household goods and friends, and the increase of what has been acquired (1.2.9). Kama is the senses each engaging with their own objects, guided by the mind and the self (1.2.11).

Then a ranking. "eṣāṃ samavāye pūrvaḥ pūrvo garīyān" — when they meet, each earlier one outweighs the next (1.2.14). Dharma over artha, artha over kama.

Then an exception: "arthaś ca rājñaḥ. tanmūlatvāl lokayātrāyāḥ. veśyāyāś ca" (1.2.15). Artha comes first for a king, because the world's livelihood is rooted in it — "and for the courtesan". Read as written, the courtesan's priority is also artha. Burton's English says the opposite: "Kama being the occupation of public women, they should prefer it". The Sanskrit does not say that, and Doniger and Kakar's 2002 translation agrees: artha is most important "for a king ... and for a courtesan".

The chapter then answers four objections, among them those of materialists, fatalists, and those who put artha first. Two are given here.

The materialists, the Lokāyatikas, say: do not practise dharma. Its fruit lies in the future and is doubtful. "What foolish person will give away that which is in his own hands into the hands of another?" Then a proverb: "varam adya kapotaḥ śvo mayūrāt" — better a pigeon today than a peacock tomorrow (1.2.21–24). Among his answers: farmers throw away seed in hand for a crop to come (1.2.25).

The artha-thinkers say: do not chase kama. Pleasure ruined King Daṇḍakya, Indra, Kīcaka and Rāvaṇa (1.2.32–36). Vatsyayana answers that pleasures are like food, needed by the body, and the fruit of dharma and artha (1.2.37). "No one refrains from cooking food because there are beggars to ask for it," in Burton's English, "or from sowing seed because there are deer to destroy the corn" (1.2.38).

The chapter closes with a rule in verse (1.2.40). Do an act that serves all three aims, or two, or even one. Do not do an act that serves one aim and damages the other two. This is Kautilya's 1.7.5, turned into a test you can apply to any single choice.

Manu reports four opinions, then rules

Manu's law book, the Manusmṛti, was translated by Georg Bühler in 1886 for the Sacred Books of the East. Bühler placed its composition between the second century BCE and the second century CE.

At 2.224, Manu does something a reader might not expect from a law code. He lists rival views before ruling.

"dharmārthāv ucyate śreyaḥ kāmārthau dharma eva ca | artha eveha vā śreyas trivarga iti tu sthitiḥ"

In Bühler's English: some declare that the chief good consists in spiritual merit and wealth; others in desire and wealth; others in spiritual merit alone; "and (others say that the acquisition of) wealth alone is the chief good here (below); but the (correct) decision is that it consists of the aggregate of (those) three."

Four positions, then a verdict for the group. The fourth of those positions — wealth alone — is Kautilya's.

Manu does not let the three float free. At 4.176 he tells the graduate householder to "avoid (the acquisition of) wealth and (the gratification of his) desires, if they are opposed to the sacred law". Dharma is the boundary.

And Manu has a firm view about when moksha may be sought. At 6.35: "When he has paid the three debts, let him apply his mind to (the attainment of) final liberation; he who seeks it without having paid (his debts) sinks downwards" (Bühler, p. 205). The next verses name the debts: Vedic study, sons, and sacrifices (6.36–37). Liberation is for the end of a life, after its obligations.

One more detail. The word puruṣārtha, "human aim", appears in Manu once. At 7.100 (Bühler's numbering) it sums up a king's four-part rule about wealth (7.99): gain what is not yet gained, guard what is gained, increase what is guarded, and give the increase to worthy people. Bühler: "Let him know that these are the four means for securing the aims of human (existence)" (p. 232). In Manu, the "four" next to the word puruṣārtha are steps of economics.

One evening, five speeches

The Mahabharata is the epic of the war between the Pandava brothers and their cousins. After the war, the old warrior Bhishma lies on a bed of arrows and teaches Yudhishthira, the eldest Pandava, how to rule and how to live. That teaching fills the Śānti Parva, the twelfth book. The text used here is the Critical Edition prepared at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, with Kisari Mohan Ganguli's English (published 1883–1896) beside it.

In chapter 12.161 (Ganguli's section 167), Bhishma falls silent. Yudhishthira goes home and puts a question to his brothers, with Vidura, their uncle, as the fifth: the world rests on dharma, artha and kama. "Amongst these three, which is the foremost, which the second, and which the last, in point of importance?" The Sanskrit asks which is garīyān, middling and laghu: heaviest, middle and lightest (12.161.2).

Vidura speaks first, for dharma. "Virtue, O king, is foremost in point of merit. Profit is said to be middling. Desire, it is said by the wise, is the lowest of the three" (12.161.8).

Arjuna speaks for artha. "This world, O king, is the field of action." Agriculture, trade, cattle and the crafts are artha. "Without Profit or Wealth, both Virtue and (the objects of) Desire cannot be won" (12.161.10–11).

Nakula and Sahadeva, the twins, speak together. Seek wealth "sitting or lying, walking and standing", but wealth joined with dharma is "like nectar". Their order: "One should first practise Virtue; next acquire Wealth without sacrificing Virtue; and then seek the gratification of Desire" (12.161.21–26).

Bhima speaks for kama. "One without Desire never wishes for Wealth. One without Desire never wishes for Virtue" (12.161.28). Sages do penance out of desire; traders, farmers and herdsmen act out of desire; some dive into the ocean out of desire. "As butter represents the essence of curds, even so is Desire the essence of Profit and Virtue" (12.161.34). Then, at the end, he steps back: dharma, artha and kama "should all be equally attended to". One who serves only one is the lowest; one who serves two is middling; "the best of his species" attends to all three (12.161.38).

Yudhishthira answers last, and changes the question. In Ganguli's English, the narrator says he thought all those speeches "false philosophy". The person who is liberated is the one "who is not employed in merit or in sin, he who does not attend to Profit, or Virtue, or Desire", and "who regards gold and a brick-bat with equal eyes" (12.161.42). All beings praise moksha, he says, "mokṣaṃ praśaṃsanti na taṃ ca vidmaḥ" — "We do not know, however, what Emancipation is" (12.161.43).

The scene ends with the brothers delighted, hands joined, praising his words (12.161.47–48). Nobody refutes anybody. The epic leaves five answers on the table.

"A fourth, with a separate aim": how moksha joined the list

If the old lists have three items, how did the scheme come to have four?

The Mahabharata gives its own account, at 12.59. The gods, afraid that the world is losing its way, ask Brahmā for help. He composes a treatise of a hundred thousand chapters — the same number the Kamasutra gives at 1.1.5. The Sanskrit is precise about its contents:

"tato 'dhyāyasahasrāṇāṃ śataṃ cakre svabuddhijam | yatra dharmas tathaivārthaḥ kāmaś caivānuvarṇitaḥ | trivarga iti vikhyāto gaṇa eṣa svayaṃbhuvā | caturtho mokṣa ity eva pṛthagarthaḥ pṛthaggaṇaḥ" (12.59.29–30).

In plain words: in it dharma, artha and kama were described; the Self-born named this group the trivarga; a fourth, moksha, has a separate aim and a separate set of qualities. Ganguli renders the last line: "He treated of a fourth subject called Emancipation with opposite meaning and attributes."

That is the fourth aim entering the list, by the epic's own description: added, and marked as different.

The idea of moksha itself is older than this list. The philosopher M. Hiriyanna made the point in his essay "Philosophy of Values". Works like the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahabharata "often refer" to the three alone, he wrote, but they "refer to it also", and "the ideal of moksa is at least as old as the Upanisads". His explanation for the three-item list: such works addressed ordinary people, "for whom the final ideal of moksa is of little immediate interest".

So liberation was an old goal; its place as the fourth item of the list is the later step.

A Tamil classic shows the same shape. The Tirukkuṟaḷ is divided, in G. U. Pope's 1886 description, "into three BOOKS treating of Virtue, Wealth, and Pleasure". Pope quotes the later Tamil grammar Nannūl, which says a treatise should serve "Virtue, Wealth, Enjoyment, Heaven (Deliverance)". "Our author treated of only three of these," Pope writes, and asks whether the work was left "incomplete" (Introduction, p. vii). Pope also prints a note by the earlier translator Beschi at chapter 35, "Renunciation". Beschi says this material "should form the fourth book", but sits inside the first, "since only by virtues can 'emancipation' be sought" (p. 47).

The Gita's move: the same word, two verdicts

The Bhagavad Gītā is part of the Mahabharata's sixth book. It does not discuss the trivarga as a ranking problem. It changes the question to how one acts.

The Gita can sound hostile to desire. At 3.37, Krishna names the enemy: "It is desire, it is wrath, born from the quality of passion; it is very ravenous, very sinful. Know that that is the foe in this world" (Telang 1882, p. 57).

Four chapters later, the same word is part of God. "dharmāviruddho bhūteṣu kāmo 'smi bharatarṣabha" (7.11): "I am love unopposed to piety among all beings" (Telang, p. 74). Kama that does not conflict with dharma is divine. That is the trivarga rule of Kautilya 1.7.3 and Kamasutra 1.2.1, stated in the first person by a god.

The Gita's real objection is to attachment. At 2.47: "Your business is with action alone; not by any means with fruit" (Telang, p. 48). And at 18.34 it names the trivarga directly. The firmness (Telang: "courage") "by which one adheres to piety, lust, and wealth, and through attachment wishes ... for the fruit" is rājasī — "passionate", of the quality of passion (Telang, pp. 125–126). The Sanskrit is "yayā tu dharmakāmārthān dhṛtyā dhārayate".

Telang's footnote on that verse is the clearest one-line statement of the four-aim scheme found in these sources: the three are "Three of the aims of mankind, the highest being final emancipation". He adds a warning: "In the view of the Gita, piety, leading only to heaven, is of doubtful benefit."

So the Gita does not reject dharma, artha or kama. It rejects holding them for their rewards.

Read the actual document

"With uplifted arms I am crying aloud but nobody hears me. From Righteousness is Wealth as also Pleasure. Why should not Righteousness, therefore, be courted? For the sake neither of pleasure, nor of fear, nor of cupidity should any one cast off Righteousness. Indeed, for the sake of even life one should not cast off Righteousness." — Mahābhārata 18.5.49–50, the "Bhārata Sāvitrī", trans. K. M. Ganguli, Svargarohanika Parva section 5

The Sanskrit of the first part: "ūrdhvabāhur viraumy eṣa na ca kaś cic chṛṇoti me | dharmād arthaś ca kāmaś ca sa kimarthaṃ na sevyate" (18.5.49).

These lines come in the last chapter of the epic, in verses it calls the "Sāvitrī of the Bhārata". The poet shouts with raised arms, and no one listens. His last word on the trivarga: dharma is not one aim competing with two others. It is their source. Then he goes further than any rulebook read here: do not give up dharma even to save your life. Kautilya would not let wealth outrank a life (8.3.34–35). The epic says dharma does.

The strongest case for the other side

There are two serious objections to the story told here. One says the four-aim scheme is less coherent than it looks. The other says moksha was never really "added".

"The puruṣārthas are a myth." The philosopher Daya Krishna, of the University of Rajasthan, published "The Myth of the Purusarthas" in the Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research in 1986. He accepts that moksha was probably added to an original three: "there seems overwhelming evidence to support the contention". But his main attack goes further. Kama, he argues, cannot be a separate aim, because one can desire artha, dharma and even moksha; "everything will come under the category of kama". Moksha, being "a desire for release from desire itself", sits awkwardly with the other three. On the relation between moksha and the rest, he concludes, Indian thought "has never been able to make up its mind". On his reading, the list does not describe human life as neatly as it is taught.

The texts read here give him material. Bhima argues exactly his first point: without desire, nobody wants wealth or virtue (12.161.28). Yudhishthira grants his second: all beings praise moksha, "and we do not know it" (12.161.43).

"Moksha was always there." Hiriyanna's position, quoted above, is the reply. The three-item list was a practical framing for householders, not a statement that liberation was unknown or minor. The Kamasutra itself names moksha (1.2.4). On this view the "four aims" are not a late invention, only a late tidying.

Neither objection changes what the oldest rulebooks literally list.

What we could not prove

• Patrick Olivelle's translations and dating. The brief named Olivelle's King, Governance, and Law (2013) and his Manu (2005). Neither was opened. The datings of the Arthaśāstra cited by Wikipedia from Olivelle (a Kautilya recension about 50–125 CE; a final redaction about 175–300 CE) could not be checked against his text. Fleet, writing in 1914, accepted the text's claim to date from 321–296 BCE (Shamasastry 1915, p. v). We report both; we cannot settle it.
• Donald R. Davis Jr.'s work. His "Being Hindu or Being Human: A Reappraisal of the Puruṣārthas" (International Journal of Hindu Studies 8, 2004, pp. 1–27) and his Spirit of Hindu Law are both behind paywalls. We did not read them and do not cite their arguments.
• When the word "puruṣārtha" first named the four. A word search of the GRETIL texts found it absent from the Arthaśāstra and the Kamasutra, once in Manu (7.100, about wealth), and in the Śānti Parva only in a different sense, at 12.215. We did not find the earliest text that uses puruṣārtha to mean dharma–artha–kama–moksha as a set.
• The date of the Kamasutra. Burton's 1883 introduction says Vatsyayana lived "between the first and the sixth centuries". Doniger and Kakar (2002) put it "probably sometime in the third century of the common era". Neither date can be proved.
• The Arthaśāstra manuscript itself. Some modern accounts call it a palm-leaf manuscript. Fleet's note, the source we opened, says only "a manuscript". We could not see it.

Why it still matters today

In the Hindu wedding rite, the bride's guardian sets a condition before giving her away. Raj Bali Pandey's Hindu Saṃskāras (1949), describing the kanyādāna, the "giving of the girl", from a wedding manual, records it: "In the attainment of Piety, Wealth and Desire, she is not to be transgressed". The groom replies, "Transgress her I will not", and the promise "is asked and repeated thrice" (pp. 373–374). Three aims, the trivarga, written into the vow that starts a household.

The scheme also gives a test that works without belief. Kautilya (1.7.5), Vatsyayana (1.2.40) and Bhima (12.161.38) state the same rule: do not pursue one aim at the cost of the other two. A job that pays well but leaves no time for anyone you love fails it. So does a pleasure that empties your savings.

Verdict

The documents prove that dharma, artha and kama were an established group of life's aims, called the trivarga, across the Arthaśāstra, the Kamasutra, Manu and the Mahabharata. They prove that the order was argued over. Kautilya put artha first and said so in his own name. Manu recorded four rival views. The Mahabharata staged five speeches with five positions and resolved none of them by refutation.

They prove that the Mahabharata itself described moksha as "a fourth" with a separate aim, that the Kamasutra assigned it to old age, and that Manu deferred it until a man's debts were paid.

They do not prove that moksha was unknown before it joined the list; Hiriyanna's point stands. They do not tell us when "puruṣārtha" became the name for the four, which this Investigation could not find.

Our judgment: the "four aims of life" are real and ancient, but they are not a fixed ladder handed down unchanged. They record a long argument about what a life is for. The surprise in the oldest sources is how frankly they valued money, pleasure and happiness, and how carefully they kept each in its place.