Rebirth is absent in the Vedas. How prevalent was it at the Buddha's time?

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Thomas McEvilley discussed pan-cultural ideas about rebirth, which he found to be an extremely widespread belief. But he identified three characteristics of rebirth belief that were found only in the leading Indic religions (Buddhism, Brahmanism, Jainism) as well as the older Greek philosophers.

  1. rebirth is a (more-or-less) endless cycle
  2. rebirth is determined by one’s actions (karma)
  3. the goal of spiritual life is to be free from this cycle

Now, it seems clear from kaccayanagotta’s piece that point 1 was true of the Vedas, although jayarava’s qualification is important:

It is also clear that all three points obtained by the time of the Upanishads, which introduced the idea of liberation.

What is less clear to me is the second point: what exactly was the role of kamma as moral deeds, as opposed to kamma as ritual?

It’s not uncommon for a religious class to uphold correct ritual performance, mediated by priests, as the gateway to heaven, while also maintaining that ethical conduct is necessary (see: Catholic Church). What do we know about the pre-Buddhist relation between these things?

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Yes, this is something to investigate. In Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth (Obeyesekere 2002), the author discusses how rebirth eschatologies are common all across the world and share an elementary structure. He discusses how many scholars have been mistaken in thinking that karma explains rebirth in Indic systems. Rather, he points to the fact that ethical action (like karma) driving the process is actually a later development from earlier systems of rebirth that we find across the globe. I posted an image of this basic structure in my post above. Usually though the idea is that ancestors live their life, die, and then live in some kind of ancestor realm or other world for a time before coming back to a body within their kin group or in some relation to it. A common theme/motivation behind this process is that ancestors will come back to their body and be among their family again. In other words, rebirth and the gaining of a new body is seen as a positive thing.

These same themes are underlyingly present in Brahmanical texts before karma was heavily ethicized and saṁsāra a major idea. As several scholars I’ve linked to discuss, it seems probable that the idea of kṣatriyas (or non-brahmins) influencing beliefs in rebirth in the Brahmanical tradition may be true of the ideas surrounding karma (rather than the idea of rebirth itself as was previously assumed).

I also think that the line we may draw today between “ethically good/bad” and “ritually good/bad” was not the same line that would have been perceived by the brahmins themselves. The vocabulary surrounding the performance of ritual link ethical words with proper gesture, performance, and behavior. I think we should keep in mind that ritual was not just some theatrical offering for luck; in the Brāhmaṇas, a major theme is giving the ritual meaning by demonstrating how ritual constructs and maintains the universe and social order itself via metaphysical connections (bandhu). The Upaniṣads go into more secretive connections of the same sort. Performing proper ritual then is pleasing to the gods, to your deceased ancestors/fathers, to the universe, to one’s afterlife, etc. This would be rather important and it could be devastatingly “evil” to do a wrong ritual. If we think in terms of Catholicism, saying a series of pre-determined prayers can turn one into a ritually pure/good person if they have sinned. In Judaism or Islam, breaking a rule like eating one type of meat over another is immoral. Brahmanism may have had more elaborate ritualistic schemes, but the concept of ritual=ethos is not too foreign. Ṛta as a kind of cosmic harmony maintained between the gods and men via ritual, love, community, etc. is an extremely prevalent theme, and we see already a mix between religious performance and ethos that is heavily intertwined.

The Upaniṣads are also where we see heavy internalization of ritual. Things like breathing replace outer fire rituals and so on. If we internalize proper ritual in actions, we also internalize ethical behavior in bodily action. I personally see a very clean shift towards internalization of karma → ethicization of karma (and this may have been influenced by surrounding religious ideas). Hopefully someone more knowledgeable on the connection between ideas of karma comes along though. This is definitely an avenue I’ll pursue to see what can be learned.

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Rta is the foundation of vedic ethics. And as far as I know it is based in amity, companionship, diplomacy, alliance, treaty, contract. (This has an archaeological record). The figure is Aditi (light) and the two brothers, the Adityas, Mitra (solar god)-Varuna (god of horizon). Varuna is the big guy who causes you to suffer if you don’t honour the bond (because it is natural law). He’s the one who carves out and maintains the tracks of the universe.

I should also add, personal relation with Varuna is indicated in the Rgveda.

Oh and I will also add that, based on preliminary looks, this particular set of beliefs maybe could belong to a seafaring folk who were concerned with the well-being of a royal who was distant by sea. There are definite connections to the Levant, and lately I have been reading something about a connection between Elamite, semitic languages and archaic vedic (sanskrit).

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"1.2 The Buddha: Problematizations of the Veda and Vedic sacrifice

“Buddhist critiques of the Veda and Vedic sacrifice began with works attributed to its founder.
There are several suttas that directly take up the subject of Vedic sacrifice.
25 However, in those suttas, the Buddha does not reject the notion of sacrifice itself. Following his trait of reinterpreting others’—mostly Brahmanical—concepts and thus assimilating them into Buddhist vocabulary, 26 the Buddha, rather than advising his Brahmin interlocutors to dispense with Vedic sacrifice, proposes to perform “reinterpreted” sacrifices infused with Buddhist values.27 The proposal is, according to the Buddha, not only to perform sacrifice in a more perfect form; it is also to avoid unwanted consequences that would befall the performer as the result of the sacrificial act. That is to say, the Buddha’s reinterpretation lies in showing that Brahmin sacrifice is not the path to the goal that it claims to be fulfilling and that it instead brings negative effects due to its immoral aspects.”—Hyoung Seok Ham

AN 4:39

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Thanks everybody for the discussion. I can’t respond to everybody in detail, of course, so I’ll just respond to this:

Thanks. I read Jurewicz before, but the others are new to me.

But these three papers are actually good examples of the kind of arguments you need to be willing to allow to read rebirth into the early Vedas:

  • Jurewicz’s arguments are very philological, essentially arguing that everybody else, including the commentary, has interpreted certain passages incorrectly. (That’s not disproving anything, but in my experience already doesn’t bode well. :laughing:) Her—I’m assuming the pronouns—translation suggestions seem far-fetched and out of context. I can expand if anybody wants. For example, she’s reading two grammatical cases in one single word in the same time (“to the afterlife” and “from the afterlife” in one word), which is very unnatural at best. Plus it does not even disprove the standard reading of just one case of “to the afterlife”, in which case the idea of rebirth disappears from that line. And the context is cremation, at which point one naturally passes to the afterlife; not coming back from there.
  • When discussing rebirth belief in the early Vedas Shushan repeatedly says things like “possibly suggesting”, “seems to convey”, “it is not entirely clear what actually happens”, and such—all of which shows that it is not all that obvious even if you are open to the idea. Also, Shushan says there is a variety of after-death beliefs.
  • Lopez suggestion that food in the afterlife is impermanent and that therefore “dying again” of the Brahmanas refers to rebirth is nothing much more than an inference on his part. As he says, very similar to Shushan actually, “the texts never make clear what happens when [again-dying] takes place, whether one returns to this world or not.” Moreover, he says about the early Vedas including the Rig Veda that “for the most part, immortality is understood as permanent”, meaning there is little or no talk of rebirth there. So the problem is, this single word “again dying” is according to Shushan the clearest reference to rebirth, but even he says it can be interpreted differently (e.g. a kind of permanent death even in the afterlife), and it is not found in the earliest strata of texts.

It is no wonder, then that even Jurewicz admits that “lots of scholars” disagree with rebirth being present in the Vedas. I think it is a stretch to suggest she heavily disproved them, at least in this paper you referred.

The very fact that scholars have this discussion in the first place is telling in itself. If rebirth were a fundamental tenet of the Vedas, wouldn’t we expect it to be stated unambiguously at least once? I mean, the idea would be fundamental to (parts of) the religion, and it’s not hard to say something like “he will be born again”. But such statements just aren’t there, and the best we have is basically inferences and grammatical ambiguities.

And even if rebirth is mentioned in the Vedic texts, clearly it was an extremely marginal idea. And the Upanishads treat it very inconsistently as well. So then it still supports my suggestion: that the orthodox brahmins may not have been open to the idea.

All that said, I’m not sure exactly how much all of this matters. :smiley: (To be completely fair, when I started this discussion I was mainly intending to keep the bhava thread clean of it, and didn’t expect I would be (so far) the only one to agree with the scholars I quoted—which just fyi aren’t minor figures as far as I know.)

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I think part of the problem is that you seem to be expecting the RgVeda to be like a Buddhist sutta. These texts are not religious treatises on philosophical ideas that state in abstract language what they think. They use layers of complex figurative language and symbolism to convey highly polysemous and intentionally ambiguous content open to interpretation from other poets and brahmins who induce religious experience and come to cognize these religious states for themselves (in their belief system). It can seem highly “philological” and yet be entirely intentional from the composers: these are poems using word play and symbolism to convey mystical ideas.

As for the line you find implausible, that is only one line. There are several passages in the RgVeda that all point to this, and consistent developments in expected patterns on account of this reading in later exegesis. Jurewicz if anything tends to favor the intelligence and comprehension of exegetical commentators, not go against them. If by commentary you mean modern anachronistic commentary in smrti tradition, then this makes sense: these commentaries often read ideas into the texts that are not there according to their needs.

Of course, yes. There are a variety of beliefs and ideas and nobody is claiming rebirth was a mainstream assumption everybody had. What is being said is that these concepts go back a long time. Even Obeyesekere 2002 thinks rebirth was not explicit in earlier Veda and yet he predicts, based on other evidence, that the Vedic people very probably had some kind of rebirth belief assumed in their society and belief system (before the other arguments from the above citations were around).

As these authors and others here have said, the question of the afterlife itself is hardly described until the later strata of the RgVeda where we find these ideas. Moreover, inference from consistent ideas is essential to interpreting the Veda. For instance, if all food is impermanent and food is what people subsist on, and we also find several references to people transforming into rain to rejoin their offspring, and transformation from the Sun to Rain is a consistent idea elsewhere, and these same concepts are later made explicit in models of rebirth, we start to get the idea that rebirth is pretty much implied without being stated. Absence of direct statements is not evidence of absence of those concepts.

The earliest strata of the RgVeda is much further removed from the Buddha’s context either way. Early Vedic society was not the Gangetic Plain circa 500-400BCE.

I understand where you’re coming from, but would just like to push back on some of the underlying reasoning here. It seems appealing, but in reality this is just how the Vedic texts are: full of polysemy, intentional homophony, inference, underlying concepts left unspoken that need drawn out, ambiguity, etc. We can say with almost certainty that these ideas are there. When we look and analyze the actual meaning of the statements, it becomes clear. But I would also like to say that yes, it is not as though this were like the Buddhist suttas where a complex and consistent rebirth eschatology is made explicit in abstract language; that does not come up until the Brāhmanas (JB, JUB). And as I said:

If a pre-Buddhist Brāhmana contains clear descriptions of rebirth, this school of brahmins clearly followed this as their authoritative text for understanding the Veda and their religious praxis. Whether or not one agrees with the RgVeda’s relevance then, this fact is undeniable: schools of brahmins pre-Buddha had canonical explanations of rebirth. When we take all of this into account, we can also add in the evidence from the suttas: many brahmins are presented as having no qualms or in fact receiving teachings from the Buddha on how to be reborn in realms/deities that are borrowed over from Brahmanical pantheons and cosmologies. Therefore,

I do not think there is evidence from the suttas for this idea, nor from the Veda. I can see the argument that brahmins would have disagreed that some kind of immortal heaven wasn’t possible (this disagrees with the contemplative Upanisads even, who understand the brahmaloka to be permanent), but being reborn in various realms and sometimes returning seems to be assumed. Again, the idea of ‘this world and the other world’ is what we are asked to accept in MN 117—a more Brahmanical phrasing than Buddhist one. In other words, it seems to me that what brahmins may have disagreed with is that “all bhavas are impermanent,” but not that there is rebirth for some beings/people and that there are other realms with an afterlife in varying dimensions that are not always permanent (and many, as evidenced by JB, would have had sophisticated ideas about rebirth).

Mettā

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I’m not expecting them to be like the suttas. What I’m saying is, as you seem to be agreeing actually when you say it’s “intentionally ambiguous content open to interpretation”, that rebirth is not “extremely apparent” in the Vedas, that not “any critical read” will obviously show this, that Jurewicz doesn’t “heavily disprove” the opposing ideas.

And all I’d personally ask for is just one reference to rebirth that isn’t this ambiguous. I don’t think it’s a big ask from such a big body of work.

There isn’t. But in the suttas we generally have the more open-minded/heretical Brahmins discussing with the Buddha, I would assume. It’s the ones who were already disappointed with the tradition of sacrifice and so forth. Still, there are quite a few references in the suttas to these very old Vedic practices as well, which suggests many Brahmins were still very conservative, possibly holding on to the afterlife beliefs they’ve had for a long time too.

Anyway, it would be interesting to see how often the Brahmins introduce the topic of rebirth and how often the Buddha does.

But that’s the thing, only in the Buddhist context these words unambiguously refer to rebirth. If we take them literally, for Brahmins they could simply have referred to this world and the afterlife, without necessarily implying rebirth, akin to how Christians talk of “this world and The World To Come”. It wouldn’t be the first time that the Buddha adopted brahmin terminology but twisted it around.

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Did anyone ever notice that the Rsi stopped composing poetry? I have no idea about the story of the missing Rsis.

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For the record, I was referring to the ideas that rebirth is just thrown into the Upaniṣads and does not fit in, that no such ideas are expressed pre-Upaniṣad, etc. The RgVeda, as I said, is another matter. I would say that it is very clear that there are several passages referring to rebirth once one is familiar with the philosophical context of the RgVeda, and I will quote some below (@Meggers has already quoted a passage). Also, it is somewhat of a ‘big ask’ to ask for a clear, abstract, philosophical statement about the nature of the afterlife process in the RgVeda—these types of texts are simply not how the RgVeda operates. But either way, as I said several times, the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa contains a description of two paths of the afterlife with rebirth, and the Brāhmaṇas were the main texts that schools of brahmins used and compiled for understanding ritual/exegesis, etc. The descriptions in the JB, JUB, CU, BĀU, etc., no surprise, all have rebirth doctrines that match up with what we see in the RgVeda—people going to astral bodies from cremation fires, being converted into food/water, eventually brought back for people to give birth to them.

Also, the paper I sent is a short excerpt analyzing a few portions of the RgVeda. Joanna Jurewicz, in her ~450 pg. monograph on the RgVeda which is extremely well esteemed, has two entire chapters dedicated to the afterlife/sacrifice in the RgVeda with several different sections of the 10th mandala referring to rebirth and also how these ideas are integrated throughout the entire philosophical system of the text itself. Other chapters elaborate some of these ideas as found in other sections of the text. I would recommend reading that (Fire and Cognition in the RgVeda) and then ‘Fire, Death, and Philosophy’ which discusses the RgVeda, Atharvaveda, Brāhmaṇas and early Upaniṣads. These texts cannot just be quoted and understood at face value; they take detailed analysis and deconstruction (again, unlike the Buddhist suttas for instance which make much clearer philosophical statements in abstract terminology).

In the 10th Mandala, people are cremated, rise up to the sun (which is understood as a cosmic sacrificial fire), drink Soma/enjoy ultimate bliss, and then become the oblation in that same Sun-fire in the form of rain falling back to earth. This is found all throughout RV 10.16 and RV 10.14.8. I will not use it as “evidence” because understanding the RgVeda takes hundreds of pages of analysis, not a simple quotation. Instead, I will quote from the Brāhmaṇas which spend lots of words on describing the rebirth process. Nevertheless, this is a more “abstract” passage that is not filled with such complicated metaphor:

sáṁ gachasva pitÉbhiḥ sáṁ yaméneṣṭāpūrténa paramé vyòman |
hitváyāvadyám púnar ástam éhi sáṁ gachasva tanvã suvárcāḥ || (10.14.8)
Unite with fathers, unite with Yama, with sacrifices and good deeds in the
highest heaven! Leaving evil, come back again to the house, unite with your
body, o beautifully radiant!

Jurewicz (2010) builds on what Renou (1956) thought in agreeing that this is probably in reference to rebirth after drinking Soma on the Sun. One comes back to their body having been purified and essentially cleansed by the heat of the Sun (as is a common Vedic theme).

JB 1.17-18 and 1.45-50 are where we see descriptions of the Five Fires and afterlife paths with rebirth.
I will quote just one relevant section from JB 1.45 from Bodewitz (1973). There is simply too much material to quote it all on the forum here.

Man is Agni Vai£vanara. Its fuel is speech, its flame sight, its smoke breath, its sparks mind, its coals hearing. In this same Agni VaiSvanara the gods day by day offer food. From this oblation when it has been offered seed [semen] comes into existence.
Woman 7 is Agni Vai^vanara. Its fuel is the vagina, its flame the vulva, its smoke desire (?), 8 its sparks the feelings of enjoyment, its coals the coitus. In this same Agni VaiSvanara the gods day by day offer seed. From this oblation when it has been offered man comes into existence.
Thus in this fifth creation man is born from the gods. At the fifth creation the divine waters speak with a human voice. 9 And when* he goes to yonder world —
46 — his (funeral) fire is Agni VaiSvanara. Its fuel is the herbs and trees, its flame is just the flame (of the fire), its smoke just the smoke, its sparks just the sparks, its coals just the coals. In this same Agni VaiSvanara the gods day by day offer man. From this oblation when it has been offered man comes into existence (and goes) to yonder world. 10 That is for him the world in which he resurges.
Of that god who shines here 11 night and day, the half-months, the months, the seasons and the year are the guards. Night and day are forerunners (who announce his coming). 12 To 13 him one of the seasons, who has a hammer in his hand, 14 comes down along a ray of light and asks him: “Who art thou, man?” 13 In case he has some (but not the perfect) knowledge he may withhold (his name from the interrogator). 16 Then he strikes at him (with his hammer). Of him when he has been stopped the good works disappear in three parts. 16 He (i.e. the Rtu) takes one third. One third diffuses in the air. Together with one third he (i.e. the deceased) descends in the direction of this world. 17 The world which is won by him on account of his gifts, in that he stops. Thereupon even him Death ultimately reaches. Repeated dying is not overcome by him who 18 knows (only) thus.

There is much more in depth analysis of all of this and the other passages that relate to it throughout the text of course from many scholars, and it has long been uncontroversial that this is all about rebirth (the above passage being just one excerpt from one section of the text).

The model of Five Fires is the model of reality conceived in terms of cycles of sacrifice. We find this to explain rebirth in the earliest Upaniṣads as well (BU, CU, KU, JUB, etc.). Basically, there are fires and oblations. In JB 1.4, the fires are: sun, thunder, earth, man, woman. The oblations which are “offered” into these metaphorical fires are: immortality and water, king Soma, rain, food, and semen. When an oblation is offered into one fire, the heat transforms it into the next sacrifice in the line of fires. So for instance, food is offered into man (digested in his stomach), which turns into semen offered into woman. This then forms a cycle of sacrifice in how the world operates. The next one is the cremation pyre (into which man is offered), and from there rises to the Sun (the first in the list) via smoke of the fire. Notice that the person being offered into the sun is “immortality and water” (which is consistent with other Vedic conceptions), and yet this is a cycle of rebirth. “Amrta” (deathlessness/immortality) is not necessarily the state of the person—who will be reborn—but the immortal state to which they temporally go and join their fathers/the Sun. There is a possibility to join the Sun permanently though as well (and thus this would be a permanent form of heaven). Jurewicz (2016) summarizes the two paths:

From what has been said it follows that the JB presents two possibilities for the afterlife which the BU and CU will elaborate more precisely. The first possibility ends with a return to the state of life and death and the second in union with the sun. There are three factors on which the afterlife depends. The first is the deeds deceased performed during his life. The second is knowledge of one’s origin. The third is somehow connected with a properly performed cremation.

Jurewicz (2016), in conclusion to this section of the JB, writes:

Bronkhorst (2007) claims that the difference between the earlier Vedic thought and the culture of Magadha is the belief in transmigration which in the next incarnation depends on previous deeds. He claims that such a belief is not attested in the early Veda (2007: 115). Taking into account the evidence of the JB, the problem is more complex. According to this text, the future incarnation depends on deeds. Firstly, it depends on gifts the deceased gave during his life (in the first path). Secondly, it depends on deeds of those who are still alive and can perform the proper cremation rite (in the second path). This line of thinking is continued in the JUB (see section 5.2). It is worthwhile mentioning that even in the ṚV the concept of deeds (iṣṭāpūrtá, ṚV 10.14.8), which unite with the deceased in the sun, imply their influence on him. … The two possible ways of the deceased are seen as the result of the proper performance of the Agnihotra and the cremation rite. This also weakens Bronkhorst’s hypothesis about the non-Brāhmaṇical source of a belief in rebirth.

The same ideas are continued in the JUB, which is usually understood as an Āraṇyaka (rather than an Upaniṣad) despite what the name seems to suggest, and dates to the Brāhmaṇa period. There, rebirth is also explicitly defined and explained in complex ways via the Five Fires model (and with 3 afterlife paths, as opposed to just two in the JB which relate to knowledge/performance of ritual). JUB 3.13-14 describes how people ascend to the immortal world of heaven/the Sun as per usual, and then how from there they come to be re-born in the human womb and so on via good deeds. All of this is again consistent with the general philosophy of the RgVeda and the specific passages alleged to be about rebirth, and also with the thought of the Brāhmaṇas themselves (rather than some super-imposed external belief). Even the travel path the deceased take through astral bodies and so forth calls on the same passages in RgVeda 10.16.

In my previous post, I discussed how the nature of reality presented in the ŚB in a way necessitates there be some form of rebirth as at least a possibility or factor of existence for some people. Jurewicz (2016) sees the same thing and says the following:

As I have shown elsewhere (Jurewicz 2004), the successive stages of functioning of the cosmos can be seen as the successive acts of offering milk into fire which repeats the first creative act of Prajāpati in which he offered milk to fire and thus redeemed himself from total annihilation (ŚB 2.2.4, see chapter 3.1.1). Viewed from this perspective, the model of the Five Fires presents the functioning of the cosmos in terms of Agnihotra which ensures the safe manifestation of Prajāpati within its frames. There is a close similarity between Prajāpati who creates fire from himself and the sacrificer who, in the Agnyādheya rite, kindles fires which are identified with his breaths, i.e. with his self (JB 1.1-2)28. In this fire-self the sacrificer has to perform the Agnihotra in order to obtain long life and immortality after death as Prajāpati did in illo tempore and does all the time in order to manifest himself as the cosmos. It is worth adding that in the model of the Five Fires the composer of JB 1.45 uses the word visr̥ ṣṭi in reference to the cosmic sacrifices as if he wanted to emphasise the creative role of the processes described in the model.

Gregory Shushan, in the article I posted, also lists many examples from the ŚB that agree with different afterlife paths, some involving being burnt by the sun (offered in oblation→rebirth), impermanence in afterlife realms, etc. as is again expected. This again confirms that the model of the Five Fires / constant sacrifice in relation to rebirth specifically is completely at home within the Brahmanical tradition. Time and again we see how ritual prepares one for the afterlife where there is travel among different bodies or perhaps cycles of cosmic sacrifice, and how one may be reborn in a womb or on earth, or perhaps admit into some kind of eternal existence, perhaps even be annihilated. There is a degree of freedom and choice for those who know the Veda and performed good karma, and rebirth among ancestors or existence in the manifest aspect of reality seem to be occasionally perceived as a positive expression of one’s immortality (as opposed to Upaniṣadic ideas where transcending into the unmanifest aspect is an escape from rebirth into a state of immortality they come to perceive as superior). There are certainly a plethora of ideas, though!

Mettā!

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Just wait until they turn Indra into a white bull, with thunderbolt, cloud, stormy ways, always eager for a fight. But yes, well said.

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I just wanted to pop in here and say, for many years I have been wanting to see a deeper sense of inquiry and understanding of pre-Buddhist Vedic/Upanishadic ideas in relation to the suttas, and I am so happy to see it happening. I’m learning a lot from these threads.

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As nobody mentioned him I’ll throw one more name to the topic, Richard Seaford of University of Exeter. I came across his work recently by listening to a podcast where he introduced his idea that the monetisation (particulary the spread of the coinage) was a crucial factor for a intellectual revolution in the 6th century BCE in Greece and northern India. This revolution consisted of 3 ideas:
1.) monism
2.) the idea of an inner self
3.) and rebirth determind by the ethical quality of the previus life.
He argues that the combination of these ideas in 6th century BCE emerged in India and Greece and nowhere else and money was the main factor here.
I think it is quite interesting, many of his papers can be found on academia, e.g. https://www.academia.edu/41253972/Money_Reincarnation_and_Karma

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Hi @_Gost,

Welcome to the D&D forum!

Enjoy the multiple resources here available: may these be of assistance along the path.

Should you have any questions about the forum, feel free to contact the @moderators.

With Metta,
Ric
On behalf of the moderators

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Just wanted to join in the praise. As someone not so familiar with the Vedic stream, these topics are a delightful read.

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Thanks for the added context. I’m wondering, by “nowhere else”, what of the Babylonians and such, and the Chinese: did they not have money by this time?

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This is from one of his articles, not the one I linked before:

In both Greece and northern India archaeology, supplemented by textual evidence, has demonstrated the relatively rapid spread of coins in sufficiently high numbers, and of sufficiently low value to be widely used in everyday life. In the Greek city-states this is known to have begun in the early sixth century. In India the chronology is much more obscure. Recent research points to the second half of the fifth century. In Greece there is a clear temporal as well as a spatial correlation between the spread of coinage and the intellectual revolution. In northern India there is a spatial correlation; for demonstrating a temporal correlation the evidence is insufficient, but does not exclude it. We should also note the possibility that the use of coinage (in trade) may have come to northern India indirectly from the Greeks, and the probability that in both societies some precious metal monetisation preceded the intoduction of coinage.
Along with such uncertainties there is the near certainty that at the end of the fifth century the two societies most pervaded by coined money were (as a result of geographical and political factors that I cannot discuss here) the Greek polis and the northern states of India, in advance of the ancient urban civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant.Again, the only possible exception is China, whose early coinage and philosophical cosmology I briefly discuss in my aforementioned book → (The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India. A Historical Comparison (Cambridge University Press 2020))

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Thanks, that’s excellent context. Given that the historical situation around the time of the Buddha is so unclear, it’s important to carefully interpret evidence, as Jayarava has initiated in the thread on gold-plating.

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I’m currently working on a post all about the RgVedic concepts that surround Soma, immortality, ritual, cremation, cognition, and rebirth. I’ve been inspired to study this in more depth, consider different angles of the question, and try and learn enough detail to present a helpful basic overview. However, I would like to comment here with some more resources surrounding rebirth/karma in the early Veda that I had mostly not left in other comments. These are separate from Jurewicz (2008, 2010) who provides what is probably the most through analysis of the philosophy of the text in history and demonstrates how the rebirth eschatology she reconstructs from the 10th Mandala is consistent with all of the RgVeda as a whole and in fact explains certain previously obscure parts of it.

  • Killingley D., 1997. ‘The paths of the dead and the five fires’. In: P. Connolly, S. Hamilton
    (Eds.). Indian Insights: Buddhism, Brahmanism and Bhakti. Papers from the Spalding
    Symposium on Indian Religions. London: Luzac Oriental, 1-20
  • Tull H. W., 1989. The Vedic Origins of Karma. Cosmos as Man in Ancient Indian Myth and
    Ritual. New York: State University of New York Press
  • Bergaigne A. 1963. La religion védique d’après les hymnes du Rig-Veda. 3 vols. Paris:
    Librairie Honoré Champion (first edition 1878–83).
  • Oberlies T., 1998. Die Religion des Çgveda. Erster Teil. Das religiöse System des Çgveda.
    Wien: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien.
  • Dange S. A. 2000. Images from Vedic Hymns and Rituals. New Delhi: Aryan Books
    International
  • Obeyesekere G., 2002. Imagining Karma. Ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist,
    and Greek Rebirth. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press
  • Lévi, Sylvian, 1966. La doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brāhmaṇas. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1898.
    and Second Edition. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
  • Heestermann J. C., 1957. The ancient Indian royal consecration. The rājasūya described
    according to the yajus texts and annoted. ‘s-Gravenhage: Mouton and Co.
  • Krishan, Yuvaraj, 1997. The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origins and Development in Brāhmaṇical,
    Buddhist and Jaina Traditions. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Pvt. Ltd.
  • Renou L. 1956. Hymnes spéculatifs du Veda. Paris: Gallimard.
  • Kaelber W.O. 1975. ‘Tapas, Birth, and Spiritual Rebirth in the Veda’. History of Religions
    15, 2: 343–386.

Many of these scholars’ findings are based on separate areas of research. For instance, Heesterman sees the ideas of transmigration in the royal consecration rituals/beliefs; Obeyesekere sees it as implied based on research of non-Indic rebirth and the development of it over time in Vedic texts; Dange and Jurewicz analyze the passages from the 10th Mandala and see the same ideas underlying other passages, as does Oberlies; Krishan and Lévi look at the descriptions of karma/ritual action and reward and the consumption of this.

Also, I’d like to call MN 93 to our attention: Here, the Buddha explicitly converses with brahmins who believe in rebirth, and he uses their own beliefs to disprove that one is a brahmin from one’s parents, thereby convincing them. Also, in DN 13, two brahmins tell the Buddha that various Brahmanical schools teach differing paths to union with Brahmā. This agrees with the surviving texts we have today from these schools that teach variations between rebirth paths and paths to union with brahma(n)/the Sun according to knowledge and ritual and so on; this disagreement would mean that some schools’ explanation for union with Brahmā would count for general rebirth in another, causing the brahmins to approach the Buddha who was an expert in this matter. This relates to the discussion with @Sunyo on brahmins believing in or denying rebirth.
The article by Kaelber (1975) is a good read in relation to MN 93 and relates to @sujato’s somewhat recent post on the gandhabba and semen. The semen, contained within the father, was understood as the child/embryo itself that was placed into the mother where it was heated or brooded on and grew to maturation; in other words, the father carried the son/person being born within him. There is an extremely prevalent idea throughout the Veda (from the RgVeda down through the Upaniṣads) that a father is reborn in his son, or that the son is equivalent with the father. MN 93 is presenting these same ideas, and yet assuming that the seed in the father is being reborn. We may also say: why is there an ancient association with sons and being reborn, and also talk of coming down from the Sun to rejoin your offspring? It seems, as many of these scholars suggest and demonstrate textually, that rebirth was a part of Vedic society for a long time (even if there were other ideas of immortality co-existing).

EDIT: I am also now looking through the Atharvaveda and its analysis in regards to rebirth. The Atharvaveda is very relevant to the Buddhist-Brahmanism relationship as several scholars have already noted. Here too, the same ideas of rebirth in the form of rain/water from the Sun are expressed. I won’t go into it here and will save it for a later post to give it justice.

Here too I leave a passage from the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa on rebirth conceived in very similar terms to the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa:

ŚB 10.4.3.10-11
té yá evám etád vidúḥ | yé vaitát kárma kurváte mr̥ tvā́ púnaḥ sámbhavanti té
sambhávanta evā̀mr̥ tatvám abhisámbhavanty átha yá eváṃ ná vidur yé vaitát
kárma ná kurváte mr̥ tvā́ púnaḥ sámbhavanti tá etásyaivā́nnam púnaḥ-punar
bhavanti | (10)
sa yád agníṃ cinuté | etám evá tád ántakam mr̥ tyúṃ saṃvatsarám prajā́patim
agním āpnoti yáṃ devā́ ā́pnuvann etám úpadhatte yáthaivaìnam adó devā́
upā́dadhata | (11)
And they who so know this, or they who do this holy work, come to life again
when they have died, and, coming to life, they come to immortal life. But they
who do not know this, or do not do this holy work, come to life again when
they die, and they become the food of him (Death) time after time. (10)
But when he builds the fire-altar, he thereby gains Agni, Prajāpati, the Year,
Death, the Ender, whom the gods gained; it is him he lays down even as the
gods thus laid him down.

Again, I’m starting to see that this whole idea of rebirth being absent until the Upaniṣads seems to be like the situation on the history of Buddhist sects: several scholars seem to have ended up believing and citing the same ideas that can be misproven with more thorough readings of the texts and their philosophies. What’s worse, in the early Upaniṣads (BU, CU, KU, AU, TU), the concepts surrounding rebirth are evoked metonymically (i.e. used indirectly for figurative language to describe something tangential) without explanation, suggesting that these concepts were widespread in the time of the pre-Buddhist Upaniṣads (otherwise they would be unintelligible to the audience). The Upaniṣads are drawing from the Brāhmaṇa period of course, where we see these ideas also. I think it is one giant academic myth that has been slowly busted, TBH.

Mettā :pray:

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For casual reading, Ch.2 of Richard Gombrich’s What the Buddha Thought introduces Seaford’s work with mutual comments between the authors.

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TBH sounds like a few posts in there! if you’re creating a series on the same topic, make a tag to help us find them!

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