Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Dāna
Summary
(Devanagari: दान, IAST: ) is a Sanskrit and Pali word that connotes the virtue of generosity, charity or giving of alms, in Indian religions and philosophies.
In Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, dāna is the practice of cultivating generosity. It can take the form of giving to an individual in distress or need, or of philanthropic public projects that empower and help many.
Dāna is an ancient practice in Indian traditions, tracing back to Vedic traditions.
Dāna (Sanskrit: दान) means giving, often in the context of donation and charity. In other contexts, such as rituals, it can simply refer to the act of giving something. Dāna is related to and mentioned in ancient texts along with concepts of Paropakāra (परोपकार) which means benevolent deed, helping others; Dakshinā (दक्षिणा) which means fee one can afford; and Bhikshā (भिक्षा), which means alms.
Dāna is defined in traditional texts as any action of relinquishing the ownership of what one considered or identified as one's own, and investing the same in a recipient without expecting anything in return.
While dāna is typically given to one person or family, Hinduism also discusses charity or giving aimed at public benefit, sometimes called utsarga. This aims at larger projects such as building a rest house, school, drinking water or irrigation well, planting trees, or building a care facility, among others.
The Rigveda has the earliest discussion of dāna in the Vedas. The Rigveda relates it to satya "truth" and in another hymn points to the guilt one feels from not giving to those in need. It uses da, the root of word dāna, in its hymns to refer to the act of giving to those in distress. Ralph T. H. Griffith, for example, translates Book 10, Hymn 117 of the Rig veda as follows:
The Gods have not ordained hunger to be our death: even to the well-fed man comes death in varied shape,
The riches of the liberal never waste away, while he who will not give finds none to comfort him,
The man with food in store who, when the needy comes in miserable case begging for bread to eat,
Hardens his heart against him, when of old finds not one to comfort him.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.