The message of Bahagavan Das on the present significance of the Vedic Social Order

of life itself. For Pravritti is followed by Nivritti, which we have called the home-coming, of which the goal is salvation. And therefore even in the outgoing arc of life the whole emphasis of the Manu Code is on the third of the three major aims, which does not come to Man so naturally but is necessary for the right guidance of his life, namely Dharma or Order. But this is not order for the sake of any one class of the community, but regulated according to the triune nature of Man himself and aiming at bringing Mankind and every individual Man through the difficult experience of individual self-consciousness to the final end of Unity of the Whole (Loka-Sangraha) and release from pain and sorrow.

It is not possible in such a short talk to go into any further detail, either of the ordering of society according to Manu or of Bhagavan Das’ commentary on it, but in considering its significance for the present time Bhagavan Das naturally lays particular emphasis on the work of education, which is the main function of the Brahmins. Most significant of all, however, is the very conception of Social Order as a whole patterned after the triune nature of Man himself. Plato describes this again in his Republic, though naturally he works it out differently for Greek thought, but the essential notion Dharma is in fact literally translatable as ‘Dikaiosune’, and it is this notion, so strange to Greek minds, that Plato is trying to express. More recently, Rudolf Steiner worked out for modern times the conception of a Threefold Commonwealth and Dimitrije Mitrinovié gave the impulse for the New Britain proposal, drawn from the works of British sociological thinkers, for a Social State founded on self-governing economic and cultural Guilds culminating in a House of Industry and a Chamber of Culture both separated from the House of Commons.

Since earliest times each of the three classes of society has dominated in turn. First the priestly order, then kings and nobles, and now finally we suffer under the overwhelming domination of the economic world, holding all else in its power. But for the present day, though we can recognise that some are more essentially concerned with the whole world of culture—with religion, science, philosophy, art, education and medicine—others with the world of economics, and others again with the world of political administration, it is no longer constructive to think of three

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