IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/psydev/v25y2013i1p195-222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Hindu Concept of Self-refinement: Implicit yet Meaningful

Author

Listed:
  • Usha Menon

Abstract

The article suggests that self-refinement is a significant meta-concept in the Hindu world because it undergirds so much of Hindu thought and behaviour. Unlike purity/pollution or auspiciousness/inauspiciousness, self-refinement has not garnered the same degree of scholarly attention—perhaps because it has not been explicitly lexicalised in Sanskrit. However, this article contends that together with the concepts mentioned above, a focus on self-refinement is essential for understanding and appreciating Hindu cultural reality in all its complexity. The ethnographic foundations for this essay derive from fieldwork done among Odia Hindus living in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, eastern India. The article explores the process of maturing in this community, describing it as a cultural process in which rituals of refinement and of daily life refine and polish the raw human being to create the person, a cultural artifact. It also examines the ways in which Odia Hindu women refine themselves through cultivating self-control and exercising self-discipline, thereby transforming their ‘natural’ sakti into a kind of dharmik sakti (moral authority). Finally, the article looks at aging and the cultural practices that old people are encouraged to adopt in order to successfully disengage from the world in preparation for the final disengagement of death—and again, these practices emphasise the significance of self-discipline and self-refinement within the Hindu worldview.

Suggested Citation

  • Usha Menon, 2013. "The Hindu Concept of Self-refinement: Implicit yet Meaningful," Psychology and Developing Societies, , vol. 25(1), pages 195-222, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:psydev:v:25:y:2013:i:1:p:195-222
    DOI: 10.1177/0971333613477320
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0971333613477320
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0971333613477320?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mohsen Joshanloo & Dan Weijers & Ding-Yu Jiang & Gyuseog Han & Jaechang Bae & Joyce Pang & Lok Ho & Maria Ferreira & Melikşah Demir & Muhammad Rizwan & Imran Khilji & Mustapha Achoui & Ryosuke Asano &, 2015. "Fragility of Happiness Beliefs Across 15 National Groups," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(5), pages 1185-1210, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:psydev:v:25:y:2013:i:1:p:195-222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.