Concept of Social Welfare in Sanskrit Textual Sources

PROFESSOR VACHASPATI UPADHYAYA

Vice-Chancellor, Sri. Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth,
New Delhi & President, Association of Indian Universities, New Delhi.

Sanskrit Literature has been generally understood as representing major views on ritual and spiritual pursuits of mankind. The vast corpus of both Vedic and classical literature is, factually speaking, endowed with a rich variety of knowledge which mainly concerns with man and the nature. A close study of the entire corpus bears ample testimony to the fact that upliftment of man and the society have been the primary concerns of the thinkers who enriched this literature in one form or the other. Referring to the views embedded in the thought complex of major disciplines is an uphill task within a short duration of a talk. Even then, a sincere endeavor will be made to project some of the major views reflected in authentic sources of Sanskrit Literature.
            It is a well known fact that literary works in Sanskrit, beginning  from the Vedas down to the classical, reveal the manners,  custom and aspirations of not only the upper strata of the society, but they also ventilate the hopes of common people. Quite often, the writings in Sanskrit have been misunderstood and misconstrued in various ways by confining them to certain pre-conceived notions, which again is the projection from particular  segments of narrators and interpretors. Our endeavor is to put the record straight, but even some of these attempts may seem to be quaint to the sophisticated mind of the man belonging to the present century whose mind set-up seems to be engulfed with infotechs. However, we shall refer broadly to the facts available in Smriti Literature as also Kautilya's Arthasastra and Sukraniti in addition to the views culled and mulled from the Upanisadic and other cognate literature. It will not be out of place to mention that the central theme of the talk would be the concept of social welfare and the redeeming feature would be to interpretate the materials available in the Constitution of our great country.