International Journal of Hindu Studies 8, 1–3 (2004): 1–27 © 2005 by the World Heritage Press Inc. Being Hindu or Being Human: A Reappraisal of the Puru‚årthas Donald R. Davis, Jr. Man is predominantly a creating animal, doomed to strive consciously towards a goal and to occupy himself with the art of engineering….But man is a frivolous and unseemly being, and perhaps, similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself (Dostoevsky 1993: 31, 32). In contemporary studies of Hinduism, the four “aims of humanity,” or puru‚årthas, namely, virtue, wealth, pleasure, and liberation, are regularly said to be among the foundational and unifying concepts of Hinduism and Hindu identity. For example, in his influential introduction to Hinduism, Gavin Flood describes the original three-fold conception of the puru‚årthas: “Traditionally, the high-caste Hindu householder has had three goals of life (puru‚årtha)” (1996: 34, see also 2000: 11). Similarly, Klaus Klostermaier, following V. Raghavan and R. N. Dandekar in the classic Sources of Indian Civilization (1988), states that the later four-fold typology of puru‚årthas “deeply influenced the personal and social history of Hindus and Hinduism.…Its structure…reflects what Hindus understand to be the essence of Hinduism” (1994: 337). 1 Some scholars take the matter even further. Madeleine Biardeau has argued that the puru‚årthas, beyond being mere philosophical categories, are embedded in the social structure and culture of Hindu society such that “there is a single hierarchy of four terms which everyone knows by heart and must respect” (1989: 41). By far the most far-reaching assertion regarding the place of puru‚årthas in Hinduism, however, comes from Arvind Sharma. At the end of his concise, but thorough, monograph on the puru‚årthas, Sharma writes: “This