ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with moral thinking in early India-the Vedic period-and the normative ethics that was developed then, in fledgling fashion, largely on the imperatives of a ritual cosmology and its aligned rites discourse. In due course of time, as perspectives changed, moral dilemmas and antinomies and irresoluble conflicts came to the surface-with other shifts occurring in the fabric of society. Vedic norms came increasingly into question, undermining the erstwhile normative structuration, confidence, violence, and power that this kind of formative moral plank-supposed to embody the originary and founding insights of Indian ethics and law-made possible or sanctioned. The chapter analyzes the rethinking and deconstruction of this transcendental framework during the classical period-when the Epics and the Bhagavad-Gītā emerged with a stronger social and self-reflexive conscience. The legacy of this period and the texts/textuality therefrom have left a large gap in the more logocentrically gounded Indian ethics-with which philosophers, jurists, ethicists, and political thinkers are still grappling.
