Note on the word Dhamma

The word dhamma—perhaps the most important and frequently used of Pali words—has no single equivalent in English because no English word has both a generalization so wide and loose as the word dhamma in its widest sense (which includes “everything” that can be known or thought of in any way) and at the same time an ability to be, as it were, focused in a set of well-defined specific uses. Roughly dhamma = what-can-be-remembered or what-can-be-borne-in-mind (dhāretabba) as kamma = what-can-be-done (kātabba).

The following two principal (and overlapping) senses are involved here:

1. the Law as taught, and
2. objects of consciousness.

(i) In the first case the word has either been left untranslated as “Dhamma” or “dhamma” or it has been tendered as “Law” or “law.” This ranges from the loose sense of the “Good Law,” “cosmic law,” and “teaching” to such specific technical senses as the “discrimination of law,” “causality,” “being subject to or having the nature of.”

(ii) In the second case the word in its looser sense of “something known or thought of” has either been left untranslated as “dhamma” or rendered by “state” (more rarely by “thing” or “phenomenon”), while in its technical sense as one of the twelve bases or eighteen elements “mental object” and “mental datum” have been used.

The sometimes indiscriminate use of “dhamma,” “state” and “law” in both the looser senses is deliberate. The English words have been reserved as far as possible for rendering dhamma (except that “state” has sometimes been used to render bhāva, etc., in the sense of “-ness”). Other subsidiary meanings of a non-technical nature have occasionally been otherwise rendered according to context.

In order to avoid muddle it is necessary to distinguish renderings of the word dhamma and renderings of the words used to define it. The word itself is a gerundive of the verb dharati (caus. dhāreti—“to bear”) and so is the literal equivalent of “[quality] that is to be borne.” But since the grammatical meanings of the two words dharati (“to bear”) and dahati (“to put or sort out,” whence dhātu—“element”) sometimes coalesce, it often comes very close to dhātu (but see VIII n. 68 and XI.104). If it is asked, what bears the qualities to be borne? A correct answer here would probably be that it is the event (samaya), as stated in the Dhammasaṅgaṇī (§1, etc.), in which the various dhammas listed there arise and are present, variously related to each other. The word dhammin (thing qualified or “bearer of what is to be borne”) is a late introduction as a logical term (perhaps first used in Pali by Vism-mhṭ, see p. 534).

As to the definitions of the word, there are several. At D-a I 99 four meanings are given: moral (meritorious) special quality (guṇa), preaching of the Law (desanā), scripture (pariyatti), and “no-living-being-ness” (nissattatā).

Four meanings are also given at Dhs-a 38:

1. scripture (pariyatti),
2. cause (of effect) as law (hetu),
3. moral (meritorious) special quality (guṇa), and
4. “no-living-being-ness and soullessness” (nissatta-nijjīvatā).

A wider definition is given at M-a I 17, where the following meanings are distinguished:

1. scriptural mastery, (pariyatti—A III 86)
2. truth, (sacca—Vin I 12)
3. concentration, (samādhi—D II 54)
4. understanding, (paññā—J-a I 280)
5. nature, (pakati—M I 162)
6. individual essence, (sabhāva—Dhs 1)
7. voidness, (suññatā—Dhs 25)
8. merit, (puñña—S I 82)
9. offence, (āpatti—Vin III 187)
10. what is knowable, (ñeyya—Paṭis II 194)
    “and so on” (see also VIII n. 68).