Page - 83 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

significant dimensions of dharma, the ontological and the normative. With regard to the ontological dimension, dharma is understood to structure the cosmos, Barbara Holdrege writes, in an intricate network of symbiotic relations among interdependent parts, in which each part is in its proper place and ensures that every aspect of the cosmic system is properly balanced and coordinated with every other aspect and thus contributes the maximum to its own evolution and to the evolution of the whole system.28 This ontological dimension undergirds the normative dimension, in which, she notes, “the cosmic ordering principle finds expression on the human plane in the ritual, social, and moral orders, particularly as represented in the Brahmanical system of socio-cultural norms”.29 For a human (other animals have their own dharmas), one’s dharma is to live commensurately with one’s inherent nature given one’s birth and social status. Dharma is elaborated still further: varṇāśrama dharma is the traditional Brahmanical social order constituted by class and stage of life and by duties and ob- ligations attached thereto. Meanwhile, each person has his own duty, his svādhar- ma. Finally, women follow obligations commensurate with their sex – that is, strī dharma (literally, “woman’s dharma”). With notions of dharma undergirding Indian filmic ideology, and the epics and the Purāṇas providing much narrative content and form, dhārmik film continued in pop- ularity throughout the silent-film period and into the talkie period, which began in 1931. The height of explicitly dhārmik films was the 1930s to the 1950s, when deities, sants, and bhaktas30 were enshrined in the new medium. Narratives strayed little from those handed down by the epics, various religious sects, and folk traditions. In the subsequent years, dhārmik films continued, but were generally considered “B mov- ies”. A milestone occurred in the 1980s, however, with the production of the epics for television, first Ramayan (Ramananda Sagar, IN 1987–88), then the Mahabharat (Ravi Chopra, IN 1988–90). Unsurprisingly, the producers and directors are both film industry veterans. The Hindi serials boasted a multi-religious weekly viewership of the endless fecundity of the Mahābhārata and Ramāyaṇa through the ages in performative, devo- tional, textual, and now filmic modalities. 28 Holdrege 2004, 213–214. 29 Holdrege 2004, 214. 30 The words bhakta and sant deserve some elaboration. Bhakta is typically used to describe those religious figures who were devotees of an embodied deity; sant is a word related to the Sanskrit sat (truth), used to refer to Maharashtrian non-sectarian poet-saints from the 14th century onwards and those North Indian luminaries of the late medieval period who worshipped a deity beyond or without attributes in the vernacular, while eschewing Brahminical orthodoxy. However, the words are often used interchangeably. 82 | Kerry P.  C. San Chirico www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 73–102