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not necessarily in a one-to-one relationship. A variety of notions of 'souls" in different cultures and at different stages of cultural development necessarily follows from such a broad definition of soul, dependent on diverging perceptions of these functions, forms and relations, or, in other words, dependent on the respective anthropologies or conceptions of (wo)man.
Furthermore, it is necessary to point out that the word "soul" belongs to those words which are employed in everyday usage as a matter of fact and in a number of contexts, even though the speaker may normally not have a clear notion about the precise referents of these words. It seems that such clear notions are not required by the speaker him/herself in this case; moreover, precise definitions of the respective referents of soul" do not appear to be necessary here for the successful functioning of verbal communication. As Antony Flew in dependence on Gilbert Ryle, has stated this further means that we obviously presuppose that we possess something called "soul" and only then, maybe, ask ourselves of what nature this soul" might be, instead of first determining a precise referent and meaning for the word "soul" and then asking ourselves to which things or events in our world it may be applied in this very sense.' This observation made by contemporary philosophers may be partially explained against the background of the variety in which Hasenfratz's power of life" may reveal itself to the individual, not only as determined and codified within a given culture at a certain historical stage, but also as perceived by the individual him/herself.
by the teachings of the Upanişads (cf. I.); the earliest among the relevant group of old, early or "Vedic Upanişads date approximately from the sixth century BCE, whereas the latest works in this group go back to about the beginning of the common era. The teachings of most of these old Upanişads are still part of the intellectual world of ritualistic thinking and have been transmitted, in a form anonymously compiled and edited, as appendices to the ritualistic treatises; however, in their pronounced metaphysical-soteriological, sometimes mystical, orientation the highly inquisitive individual thinkers who stand behind these teachings went beyond that to the exploration of the true nature of the world and of (wo)man, and of their relation, becoming therefore the first Indian philosophers in the broader sense of the word, "broader" because a sufficiently systematic and argumentative as well as self-reflective approach cannot yet be discerned here. The rough chronology as sketched above for the Vedic literature results in a time span of about a thousand years between the earliest and the latest works to be included in this large body of ancient Indian literature.
(2) Second, we have to consider the variety within the social background against which the several ancient Indian concepts of "soul" may have arisen. The authors of the oral corpus of the ancient Vedic tradition, as well as its compilers and editors, were Brahmins, that is, members of the priestly estate, the highest and most prestigious class of the pronouncedly hierarchical social order of Vedic India. Moreover, from the evidence of the Vedic literature itself we know that the ancient Indo-Aryans who migrated to South Asia around 1400 BCE were originally distinguished in various tribal groups with different dialects and probably also slightly diverging religious ideas and practices. Further, especially in the context of the notions of "soul" and the closely related ideas about the fate of (wo)man after death there is sufficient contextual evidence, also from a comparative point of view, that next to the "elitist" ideas of the Brahmins more popular beliefs grounded in the respective ideas of other strata of society were transmitted in a Brahminical garb, again maybe peculiar to a specific tribal background. Even elements of beliefs of Others, i.e., of social groups beyond the pale of IndoAryan society in Vedic times which must have been only in theory ethnically allexclusive, may have come down to us in this form in the Vedic tradition.
The ancient period of Indian thought, which forms the immediate and mediate background not only of the religio-philosophical works mentioned above (cf. I.), but also of the later religious traditions and the classical philosophical traditions, presents itself as especially rich in concepts to be subsumed under and relating to "soul" in the broad sense adopted here. This richness has more than one cause.
(1) First, there is the historical depth and sheer volume of predominantly religious literature in ancient India which may reach back to approximately 1200 BCE, starting with the religious poetry of the hymns collected in the Rgueda and other subsequent literary collections (sambita) called the Vedas. These collections are followed, in some cases paralleled, by the Brahmanas, extensive treatises which document a highly developed speculative-proto-philosophical ritual science. The Brāhmaṇas are succeeded, from the point of view of literary history,
(3) Third, the large geographical expansion of settlement and ensuing internal diversification of the people who created, transmitted and cherished this ancient literary heritage - priests, elitist thinkers and commoners in the Indo-Aryan Vedic society - provide a further cause for a diversity of notions of "soul. During the period of the roughly thousand years which has already been identified as cause for diversity of beliefs, Vedic people gradually moved from the far NorthWest of the subcontinent to the Punjab, then onward to the Doab, that is, the
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On the psychology of multiple souls with a focus on multiple "psyche-souls' (cf. below p. 125) d. Arbman 1926: 126-147, 150–151, in critical response to Levy-Bruhl's law of participation", on the multiplicity of "psyche-soul(s)" and "body-souls' cf. Arbman 1926: 166ff. Cf. Flew 1967: 141.
1
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Cf. the survey in Olivelle 1998: 1-13.
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