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 