Purushartha (The Four Aims of Life)

Definition

Purushartha, also called the chaturvarga, names the four aims a human life can rightly pursue, recognised across the Vedic literature: dharma (righteous law, duty, or your vocation), artha (prosperity, wealth, and material goals), kama (desire, enjoyment, and passion), and moksha (liberation, or spiritual freedom). Authors gloss each aim a little differently, and the word also carries an older sense of right human effort, or purposeful action. Several writers map the four aims onto sets of houses in the chart.

In Tradition

In the modern Jyotish literature the four aims are not a flat list. Moksha, liberation from rebirth, is consistently held to be the highest aim, with the other three valued as supports toward it (Frawley, Bhagat, Sutton). Several authors also share one way of placing them in the chart: dharma in the 1st, 5th and 9th houses, artha in the 2nd, 6th and 10th, kama in the 3rd, 7th and 11th, and moksha in the 4th, 8th and 12th (Sutton, Rao).

In Practice

A jyotishi (Vedic astrologer) reads a chart's spiritual orientation through the four aims. Sutton and Rao sort the twelve houses into four trines (groups of three), each tied to one aim, so the relative strength of the dharma houses (1/5/9), artha houses (2/6/10), kama houses (3/7/11), or moksha houses (4/8/12) shows which life-purpose dominates; Rao keeps these trines in mind when judging any house's spiritual weight. Frawley reads the aims as four kinds of need a balanced life should satisfy. Several authors tie moksha to the 12th house and to Ketu, and to combinations that bring renunciation or final emancipation: Raman holds that moksha is secured when Jupiter sits in the 1st, 4th, 7th, 8th or 10th from the Ascendant, and that Ketu in the 12th from the Karakamsa (a special soul-significator sign) gives final emancipation. Charak uses purushartha in its older sense of right effort, reading certain placements as showing it or lacking it.

Historical Origin

The four aims trace back to the Vedas in origin, and Bhagat attributes them directly to the Vedas. In this corpus, though, the idea reaches us entirely through modern Jyotish writers working in English: David Frawley, Komilla Sutton, Rao, B.V. Raman, Bepin Behari, William R. Levacy, Charak in Elements of Vedic Astrology, and S.P. Bhagat in Significance of Nakshatras. No older classical text is named here.

Further Reading

• Frawley, The Astrology of the Seers
• Sutton, The Essentials of Vedic Astrology
• Rao, Hindu Astrology Easily
• Raman, Hindu Predictive Astrology
• Raman & Gayatri Devi Vasudev, How to Judge a Horoscope, Volume Two
• Raman, Notable Horoscopes
• Behari, Fundamentals of Vedic Astrology
• Behari, Vedic Astrologer's Handbook Vol II: Planets in Signs and Houses
• Levacy, Beneath a Vedic Sky
• Charak, Elements of Vedic Astrology
• Bhagat, Significance of Nakshatras (Stellar) in Astrology