Dharma (dharma)

Dharma is the central and most contested word in the Mahabharata, meaning at once cosmic order, moral law, social duty and the particular obligation that falls on one person in one situation. The epic never reduces it to a rulebook: Bhishma is destroyed by keeping his vow, Yudhishthira gambles away a kingdom while being called the son of Dharma, and Krishna repeatedly advises actions that look like breaches of the code. Its famous formula, that dharma protects those who protect it, sits beside the equally famous admission that the path of dharma is subtle and hard to trace.

Reading the epic is largely an exercise in watching characters try to work out what their dharma actually is.