Karma and Rebirth

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 52

Rebirth- A Philosophical Study
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neighbourhood of the body. The unburied dead are supposed to be condemned to wander for ever, aimless and miserable. But some rites seem to imply the belief that soul inhabits the grave or lingers in its vicinity. The aborigines of Australia imagine that the spirits of the dead continue to haunt their native land, specially in some important places like a pond of cool water or a solitary tree. These are the crude beginnings of the concept of the immaterial nature of soul and survival of soul after death. However, belief in a further life is not a belief in immortality in the strict philosophi. cal sense although we are approaching towards it. And as yet conception of the retribution involved in the judgement of souls and their wanderings is not formed. These can be said to be only theories of continuance of the soul and not rebirth on the basis of retribution. The idea of retribution would bring a new element in the scheme of the wanderings of soul. This would bring the conceptions of rebirth and transmigration. The theories of retribution and the consequent idea of rebirth and transmigration are based on deeper experiences than the theories of continuance. In this there is question of moral order. We find this element in later religious thought as in the case of the popular beliefs of the Hebrews and the Greeks.
In ancient Egyptian religious practices there are three different ideas which refer to the changes in the personality : (1) the union with a God (2) tranamigration of soul into an animal for a life-time, (3) the voluntary metamorphosis of the person into another for his own benefit.2 The belief in transmigration among the ancient Egyptian does not seem to be quite pronounced, because there is no reference to it in the Egyptian texts. Two scenes have been supposed to indicate it; these are judgment scenes. But the belief in metemorphosis was general as a magic process. The earliest Egyptian tale turns on a wax model being transformed into a living crocodile. The Book of the Dead has a series of magic practices to giving power to the dead person to get transformed into whatever form he pleases. The Egyptian mummies point out to the evidence that there is a widespread belief in the continuance of life after death,
Among the Hebrews Sheol was the gloomy abode of the dead. It is a land of darkness and of shadow of death without any order. Jehovah was the national God. His dominion was limited to the world of the living and his jurisdiction did not extend to Sheol. With the compactness of national life of the Hebrews, the relation between Jehovah and the worshipper became more personal. Nowhere do we find in the Old Testament a clear and definite doctrine of immortality. We only get scattered anticipations in the Psalms and a few others. However, among the Jewish mystics we get reference to the problem of the transmigration of the soul. In the Jewish tradition Zohar gives
2. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 12, p. 431.