ABSTRACT
The term “āśrama” in mainstream Brāhmaṇic thought generally refers to four distinct social locations within which the Hindu male may pursue cultural as well as specifically religious goals. These social locations—often correlated with particular spatial locations as well—are quite clearly “places of toil or exertion.” Such “exertion” (śram) was ultimately perceived to serve a moral and/or spiritual purpose. The correlation of āśrama with ascetic activity is evidenced by the repeated pairing of the roots śram and tap in Brāhmaṇic literature (Kaelber 1989: 30; Olivelle 1993: 9–11). The term “āśrama” takes on its best-known meaning in the context of a preeminent construct of Hindu theology or self-interpretation: the “āśrama system,” a system of four “orders of life.”
