Vedic concept of human personality(Purusha)
The Vedic understanding of human personality has not yet been fully brought
out. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, there is the nature of the Vedic
texts: they are hymns and not explanatory writings. Therefore such infor-
mation as can be gathered from them gives only a fragmentary picture of
views which must have had a more distinct and comprehensive form in the
minds of those who held and understood them in Vedic times. Naturally, the
Vedic views contained in hymns were not expressed in straightforward con-
ceptual language such as could be readily understood by our rational minds,
but in symbols and mythological images which require special effort from us
to establish their meaning. In other words, Vedic texts need careful, but at the
same time bold and imaginative, interpretation. Mere quotations or paraphrases
of relevant verses are not sufficient. When presenting the global meaning of the
Vedas in our contemporary rational style, however, we have to avoid the bias
of positivistic evolutionism which regards the Vedic views as 'primitive' and
'pre-rational'. The Vedas are a product of highly cultured, sophisticated and
diversified minds and do not represent an inferior stage on an ascending
evolutionary line of human thinking.
The second reason why the Vedic notion of human personality has not
been fully described lies in the nature of the Western conception of human
personality, which is still too traditional and based on the Christian doctrine
of a soul. In the face of the Vedic belief in man's survival of his physical death,
scholars have been trying to establish the equivalents of what they viewed as
the material part of the personality which perished and the immaterial part
which survived, that is to say the mortal body and the immortal soul or spirit.
In this respect, however, difficulties arise immediately. Says Renou: "There is
no reference in the hymns to a 'soul' in the true sense. ''1 But what, after all,
is "'soul' in the true sense"? From the standpoint of this kind of thinking one
can understand that scholars have felt happier with the Upani.sads, where
,4tman appeared to them, rightly or wrongly, to be the equivalent of the
Western notion of a soul. For the same reason they have not felt happy about
the Buddhist doctrine of personality which does not lend itself to the theory of a soul, and there is still an uneasiness about it owing to the ever-recurring question: what is it that transmigrates from life to life?
An analysis of the Vedic notion of personality, which abstains from seeking
a soul or some other individual and indestructible substance of any description
underlying personality reveals, in fact, a very coherent theory of human per-
sonality which, expressed in our contemporary idiom, sounds very modern.
Man, in the Vedic understanding, is a complex being. His personality is a
structural unity of dynamic forces or elements which are themselves imper-
sonal and universal by nature. But they are no blind mechanical or physical
forces, rather they possess an inherent intelligence of different grades which
leads them to the formation of functional units with inner hierarchical
structures, on both cosmic and individual levels. Thus cosmos emerges out of
chaos and individual beings out of the interplay of cosmic forces.
The picture of personality thus described emerges from consideration of
the hymns dealing with man's death. We gather from them that the dynamic
forces or constituents of his personality called deities (devatas - AV 11,8, 32)
return to their cosmic abodes. They are not, of course, enumerated systematically, but we learn of a number of these constituents and their cosmic counter-
parts from different hymns. Thus when a man dies, his seeing (caks.u, literally
'eye') goes to the sun, which represents the element (the deity) of light, and
his life essence manifested as breathing (atman) goes to the wind (rata) which
represents the cosmic life force (RV 10, 16, 3; AV 8, 2, 3). That is what we
find in a funeral hymn. Another hymn, the famous purusa sukta, which ex-
presses the idea that the created cosmos has the same structural unity as the
individual personality, furnishes us with further constituents: first with the
mind (manas) corresponding to the moon, which stands for the cosmic
element of mentality. (We find it later on in a conceptually developed form in
Mahayaaa Buddhism as the cosmic 'storehouse consciousness', alaya vijana,
which is paralleled in Plato by his 'kosmos noetos' with its eternal ideas and in
Jung by his 'collective unconscious' with its archetypes.)
The next constituent we learn about is the mouth, i.e. speech or the
capacity to communicate and understand meaning. It is related to the cosmic
element of fire represented by Agni, the divine flame, and lndra, the ruler of
the lightning, both symbolising the cosmic fire-light element which stands for
the light of consciousness and for knowledge. A further capacity mentioned
there is that of hearing, which corresponds to the expanse of space (as
quarters - dis~ (RV 10, 90, 13-14).
A passage in Aitareya Brahma.na (2, 1,6, 13) describing a sacrifice shows
that the same dispersal of faculties happens at the death of a sacrificial animal
and it mentions another faculty, animating vitality (asu), and names its
universal counterpart: antariksan, usually understood as the middle region
between heaven and earth and therefore translated as air or atmosphere
(Macdonell, Keith). Asu as the animating principle of life appears in various
Vedic hymns (e.g. RV 1, 113, 16; 1, 140, 8; 10, 15, 1; AV 6, 104, 1 ; 18, 1, 44;
18, 3, 62; 8, 2, 1; 8, 1, 3) and it is an important part of personality both during
its earthly life and after death.) It is, in fact, not accurate to say that it corre-
sponds to air or atmosphere, for the Sanskrit original often, if not exclusively,
designates 'inner region' or 'inner space', that is to say the dimension of
spiritual life, somewhere between the earthly material plane and the higher
heavenly abodes. This dimension is entered by most people only when they
die, but accomplished yogis or munis can move in it freely (RV 10, 136, 4).
Because asu corresponds to antariksan, it is, quite naturally, a vital constituent
of beings during their earthly life as well as after their bodily death, in the
hereafter.
The whole teaching of the dispersal of the constituents of the phenomenal
personality appears summarised by Artabhaga, obviously a representative of
the traditional Brahamanic learning, in a conversation with Yajnavalkya in the
Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (3, 2, 13). Speech enters into fire (agni), the breath
(prana) into air (rata), the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, hearing
into space, the life essence (atman) into the ether (akas'a), the hairs of the
body into plants, the hairs of the head into the trees, the blood and semen
into water. The terminology is, of course, never entirely consistent in the
Vedic texts, but the overall pattern of thinking is clear. We can therefore now
list the constituents of the phenomenal personality approximately as follows:
Manas, the mind, representing man's 'brain' as well as 'heart'. It
comprises his thoughts, volitions and emotions, in other words,
his character. (It is misleading and wrong to translate it as 'soul'
as Macdonell does.)
Asu, animating vitality, perhaps 'life itself'.
Atman, life-essence.
Pra.na, life force.
Vac, speech or the capacity to communicate meaning.
Caks.u, the eye or seeing.
Srotra, hearing.
Various physiological constituents, such as hairs, bones, blood and semen.
As mentioned above, all these components are cosmic powers (devatas) and
some hymns (particularly AV 11, 8) elaborate on them, listing among them
all possible physiological processes as well as psychological experiences. It is
said that they are all dwelling in man as 'cattle in their pen' (AV 11,8, 32).
Being thus composed of cosmic or divine powers, man himself has to be re-
garded as divine by nature. And indeed, he is regarded even as Brahman, as
already expressed in the Atharva Veda (11, 8, 32). What seems to be indicated
here is that man owes his existence as a person to the highest god or principle
in the universe and is linked to him. And this highest principle is the agency
responsible for keeping the constituents together (for herding the 'cows in the
pen'), in other words: for the very existence of the structure of personality as
such. This agency, however, is not external to man, it works from within him.
It is regarded in some hymns as his inmost part or centre and called aja, the
unborn (RV 10, 16, 4). This unborn in man is not directly evident in ordinary
personalities, being overshadowed by manas which together with asu appears
to be the directing part of the phenomenal personality: although on a deeper
level linked to aja. 3
Aja figures in many Vedic hymns and represents in them the primeval
creative force supporting the whole universe (RV 1,67, 5 = RV 1,67, 3 in
Griffith's translation; RV i, 164, 6; 8, 41, 10) on which all things depend
(RV 10, 82, 6). One could say that the Vedic aja is the equivalent of the
Upanisadic Atman which is identical with Brahman. But because of its clear
meaning, which requires translating it as 'unborn', aja does not lend itself to
being viewed as 'soul', be it the 'world soul' or the individual soul, so that no
theories have ever been developed about it.
We now have two distinct layers of personality in the Vedas, namely the
unborn force which acts as its hidden inmost centre and links it to the
universal, and the personality as such with its various constituents held
together as a structural unity by the unborn force. But the personality struc-
ture has further subdivisions. The Vedas know two structural entities within
the phenomenal personality, one being gross and the other subtle. The gross
one is what is known as the physical body and is called sarira (RV 6, 25, 4). It
comprises the gross-material or physiological constituents which are burnt on
the funeral pyre when a man dies (RV 10, 16, 1; AV 18, 3, 71; cf. RV 1, 16, 10;
1,163, 11 ; 19, 99, 8). It is not the real personality of man, but merely his
lowest visible part which only ordinary people mistakenly and out of ignorance
take for the person (cf. RV 10, 136, 3). This body returns to the earth and
thus to the primeval matter from which new things grow into appearance in
this world (AV 11, 8, 4).
The subtle structural unit which carries the mental faculties of the person-
ality may be viewed as the person himself and it is called tana. In the sense of
a person, tanu is used not only of man (as e.g. in RV 7, 86, 5), but also of
gods (RV 8, 100, 1 ; 1,165, 11). Since when speaking of or referring to him-
self man often means his appearance, the word tanu may be sometimes taken
to designate the body, but not in the sense of the physiological organism as in
the case of sarira. Rather tanu means the form, shape, likeness or looks. And
that is what is restored to man when he has died and his physical body has
been burnt and his personality dissolved. He then acquires a perfect, trans-
figured and complete personality, sarvatanu, which includes all the constitu-
ents of which his appearance is one (AV 11, 3, 32 and 49; 5, 6, 11 ; 18, 4, 64).
Thus the term tanu designates the real person as an individual whether he has
or has not a material body. When in this world, tana as likeness is imprinted
on man's physical body. In the other world it is visible as a shining form
(RV 10, 14, 8; AV 6, 120, 3; 3, 28,5).
The reconstruction of the Vedic notion of human personality as far as it
can be traced then appears in three layers as follows:
Aja, the unborn, is the transcendent as well as immanent force without which
any phenomenal thing would collapse and on which therefore the phenom-
enal personality depends. It remains ever withdrawn as does that part of the
primeval cosmic purus.a which dwells untouched in the dimension of im-
mortality, while the smaller part became all other creatures (cf. RV 10,90,
3). Aja is the inner and hidden reason for the existence of phenomenal
structures, such as the human personality, just as a watchmaker is the
external and obvious reason for the existence of a watch. This illustrates
the difference between a mechanism and a functioning structure which
became an important notion in later Vedantic philosophy. The Vedic
aja thus appears to be the inner controlling force as the Upanisadic Atman
was, without assuming personality features. As a designation of the
Ultimate aja is also found in the Upanisads (e.g. BU 4, 4, 22) and provides
a link to early Buddhist thought: in the notorious passage in Udana (8, 2)
the unborn (ajata) is equalled to Nirvana (nibbana).
Tanu, the phenomenal self, is the perceptible form of personality, both out-
wardly as its likeness and inwardly as its character. It is a personality
combining in itself universal powers or potencies, such as mentality (manas),
vitality (asu) and the rest, and making a seemingly independent individual
being.
,~Sarira , the visible and tangible physiological organism which is composed of
the same elements as the earth and the whole visible universe.
As is apparent, in each of these three layers of his personality man is linked to
the universal. Although he is ostensibly a person in his own fight, he is depen-
dent on universal elements and forces both on the physical and mental level
and in the last instance he is mysteriously linked to the transcendent, called
the unborn, within his personality structure.
This complex notion in Vedic times of the human personality, with all its
constituents and particularly its three distinct layers which correspond to three
cosmic levels of existence, shows that there was a definite and elaborate teach-
ing in existence. The fact that it was expressed and preserved for us only in a
non-systematic way in the hymns must not prevent us from seeing that the
actual knowledge was there and that this knowledge was far from primitive.
Later doctrines on various bodies, sheaths and layers (sariras, kosas and kayas)
on the human as well as cosmic level, in both the Hindu and the Buddhist
systems are doctrinal elaborations of what were apparently current notions
among the rsis of Vedic times.
As for man's destiny after death, it was apparently different for different
individuals and depended on a multiplicity of factors. Like the notion of
human personality, it has not yet been fully brought out by research and
really appreciated in all its aspects. It may well be that, as Keith wrote, the
views of a large proportion or even of a majority of the people in Vedic times
were as confused as the views of modern people about life after death un-
doubtedly are, but if we accept that the Vedas are the products of rsis, i.e. of
a spiritual life, we must assume that their views or knowledge of man's post-
mortem and final destiny must have been much more coherent and articulate
than early Western research has pictured it, especially if the Vedic views were
looked upon as primitive or in any way as lower than or inferior to later
developments.
A fresh look at and a close scrutiny of the Vedic texts show that the hymns
contain sufficient evidence of an elaborate eschatological teaching, known at
least to the e1ite, which had all the elements of the later more widely known
eschatologies of the Upanis.ads and of early Buddhism.
First we have the process of dying, which involves the dissolution of the
personality and the dispersal of its constituents into their cosmic abodes, and
which is followed by the reconstitution of the personality, including its
bodily appearance, in a finer or transfigured form. This process is not a mere
transition from one place to another of a spirit or soul which remains basically
the same in the next life as it was in this one, but suggests rather a new birth,
a rebirth of the person into the next world just as he was once born into this
one. It is even suggested that one creates for oneself mentally a new vehicle
of life after death ("a new wheelless chariot, one-poled, but facing all
directions" - RV 10, 135, 3). This is reminiscent of the Upanisadic formu-
lations of the process of rebirth (e.g. BU 4, 4, 2-5).
A new life in the hereafter raises, of course, the question of the individual
destiny of each departed one. And there is no doubt about the fact that this
destiny depends on his character and on the quality of his preceding life. There
are various heavenly and intermediary abodes, there are dark places or hells
and there is also a chance of gaining 'immortality' which is asked and prayed
for in some hymns as a special gift or achievement, so that it is impossible to
rest content with the still current view that it meant eternal life in heaven
granted to everybody who managed to get there. The intermediary abodes seem
to have been imagined vaguely as being in the earth, on earth near the dwell-
ings of men and also in the middle region between the material and the
heavenly worlds (RV 10, 15, 1-2). There is, further, a movement of beings
indicated which is imagined as, hopefully, being an ascent from the lower
regions to higher ones (RV 10, 15, 1). s The Atharva Veda shows that departed
fathers inhabit three regions - the earthly, the middle and the heavenly
(AV 18, 2, 49). Besides, there are fathers' dwellings in the highest heaven
which is a special abode (AV 18, 2, 48).
Heaven in the broad sense was, of course, the most desired place to come
to for every .Aryan who had enjoyed a full span of life on earth, but it was
promised only to those who had lived with religious or spiritual fervour (tapas),
who had lost their lives in battles or who had brought many sacrificial offerings
(RV 10, 154, 2-5). It was also said to be for the good-hearted and well-doing
(AV 6, 130, 3), for those who had merit from good works and religious
activities (RV 10, 14, 8), who were devoted to the gods (RV 1,154, 5) and
who knew the law (rtajna- RV 10, 15, 1).
Naturally, those who were wicked and unrighteous (papasah., anrtah) went
to a deep place or hell (RV 4, 5, 5), figuratively called also 'destruction'
(RV 7,104, 10). It is also called an endless prison (RV 7, 104, 17) and des-
cribed as situated below 'three earths' (RV 7, 104, 11). The Atharva Veda is
more explicit about hell and has a specific word for it: naraka loka (AV 12,
4, 36) which became current in later literature. The existence of the notion of
hell in Vedic times has been firmly established and it is not necessary to em-
bark on the old controversy, started by Roth, who claimed that the wicked
ones suffered destruction in the sense of total annihilation after their physical
death.
To summarise what is so far clear about Vedic views of life after death, we
may say that the destiny of different men was dependent on their personal
merit, however defined, and took them accordingly to a variety of places or
spheres of life, some of which were obviously transitory stations. But were
heaven and hell places of permanent happiness or damnation? If this were so,
it would mean that those who had arrived there had reached personal immor-
tality within the confines of their new dwelling-place. But such a conclusion
cannot be justifiably drawn from any Vedic text. There is no indication in the
Vedas that those who go to hell go there forever, while there is strong support
for the view that reaching heaven did not necessarily mean gaining immortality.
Immortality was a special achievement much desired and asked for in the
hymns. If it were the automatic lot of those who went to heaven, the prayers
for immortality would be meaningless. "Lead us to immortality" (RV 5, 55, 4).
"May I be released from death, not reft of immortality!" (RV 7, 59, 12). Thus
we read in the hymns. One hymn has four successive verses starting with the
words "Make me immortal..." followed by designations of places in which
the worshipper desired immortality: in the realm of the King (= Yama), in the
third heaven, in the realm of the Moon, in the realm of happiness (RV 9, 113,
8-11). This clearly indicates that simply arriving in those places did not mean
securing eternal life. Immortality was an extra bonus.
Not even the gods were originally in possession of immortality, although
their abode was heaven and other spiritual dimensions. They had won immor-
tality through Agni (RV 5, 3, 4) who in his highest aspect symbolises the
divine mystical flame, the highest light or enlightenment. Before they were
thus set free, they had been bound by the curse of aging (RV 7, 13, 2; cf. also
RV 4, 19, 2). This idea of the gods being originally mortal has survived in
Indian religious thinking. According to Pura.nic mythology, immortality was
gained by the gods when they had churned the world ocean and produced the
drink of immortality
The assumption of scholars, still so widely held, that in the Vedic view man
quite automatically became immortal after his physical death (or had an
immortal soul which lived forever when the body died), rests, in fact, on a
very uncertain conjecture which can be illustrated by a quotation from
Griswold. ~ He reproduced several stanzas from a hymn to ancestors (RV 10, 15)
and wrote: "We are here introduced to Rigvedic ancestor worship. The fathers
thus adored have passed through death and attained to life, the implication
being that it is life immortal, since the Fathers are associated with the Devas
in their activities and in the worship they receive." To support his implication
Griswold refers to a verse in the Atharva Veda (6, 41, 3) where the Fathers
are called immortal.
Macdonell had the same view and gave the following definition of the
Fathers: "By this term are generally meant the early or first ancestors (10, 15,
8.10): who followed the ancient paths, seers who made the paths by which
the recent dead go to join them (10, 14, 2.7.15)." And further he says: "The
Fathers are immortal (AV 6, 41, 3) and are even spoken of as gods (10, 56, 4). "
However, the verse referred to by both Macdonell and Griswold (AV 6, 41,3)
does not, in fact, address the fathers (pitrs), but seers (rsis). It is natural that
those ancestors or fathers who had acquired the high spiritual status of seer-
hood and contributed to the compilation of the Vedas were believed to have
become immortal. But it does not follow that every other departed one
achieved the same status.
We have already seen that there were several classes of fathers and that they
inhabited various regions of the spiritual universe. Those fathers who had been
rsis and, perhaps, authors of the Vedic hymns or their originators, were looked
upon by subsequent generations as spiritual heroes. The names of some of them
were handed down and certain books of the .Rg Veda were named after some
of them. They alone were believed to have reached immortality and the status
and power equal to that of the gods (cf. RV 10, 56, 4). They accomplished it
by finding and opening the path to the vast heaven, by finding the rays of
dawn, the day and light (RV 1, 71, 2). These images designate and point to an
achievement beyond the grasp of the ordinary worshipper, although the path
is open to everybody (to us, asme, says the hymn). It is, however, to be
acquired only through the special effort of a visionary and meditative
character, dhiti. Thus we see that both gods and some men, originally mortal, sought and
found in the past the way to immortality. Therefore they were called 'path-finders' (cf. RV 1,105, 15). The spiritual heroes of the past were to be followed by others - mortals who again discovered the ancient path, such as the Buddha who is reported to have said soon after his enlightenment: "The
doors to immortality (amata) are open" (MN 26 and 85). Ordinary people
could then as before win immortality by following the path shown to them.
Not the path of the dead from the funeral pyre to heaven as it was interpreted by scholars and possibly also understood on the popular level by many Vedic worshippers themselves, but the path of spiritual vision to be accomplished in this life, somewhat in the manner of munis (RV 10,136), using
methods later known as yoga. While in early Vedic times only a few may have had the knowledge and opportunity to take up this approach, it was popularised later on and made accessible to everybody by Buddhism and Yoga methods as incorporated in the epics, particularly in the Bhagavad Gita~.
One can also see from the general Vedic outlook that this achievement was
possible and, indeed, logical, because of the essential affinity of man with the
eternal. His inmost part was aja, the unborn and therefore immortal ground
of existence. Mythologically this affinity was expressed many times in the
Vedas. As Griswold says: "Beyond the first man the roots of humanity run
back into the world of gods, to Vivasvant (the Sun), the father of Manu and
the father of Yama and Yami, the last two being identical, probably, with
Heaven and Earth, the parents of all that is." ~o
The exact nature of immortality cannot be established from the Vedic
texts and it must not be confused with descriptions of heavenly pleasures.
But this has been the case with all other teachings ever since. The last goal
does not lend itself to description and one can find only figurative explana-
tions and parables. But what happened to those who had not reached
immortality by the special method of inner vision?
Most scholars seem to agree that the idea of successive lives for those who
have not reached final salvation is of later origin. They admit only the possi-
bility of finding some seeds of the teaching of reincarnation in the more
'primitive' ideas of the .Rg Veda. Oldenberg sees traces of the belief in the
"transmigration of souls of the departed ones into animals, plants, and stars",
Macdonell refers to two passages (RV 10, 16, 3 and 10, 58, 7) where the
deceased one is asked to go to the waters or plants and sees in this "a concep-
tion which perhaps contains the germ of the theory of metempsychosis", n
Keith also thinks in terms of the "origin of the doctrine of transmigration"
at some stage of the evolution of Indian religious thought and sees it as "one of the most difficult problems of Indian philosophy". 13 He refuses all supposed
references to transmigration in the .Rg Veda, but accepts the traces of metem-
psychosis mentioned by Oldenberg as probable popular belief. But because
the later fully formulated doctrine of transmigration is an ethical system,
Keith thinks that it must have originated later independently - tacitly over-
looking the fact that there are sufficient ethical elements in the eschatological
passages of the .Rg Veda.
The emergence of the doctrine is usually seen as foreshadowed in the
Brahma.nas and accomplished only in the early Upanisads. The Brahma.nas, of
course, refer very clearly to repeated death (punarmrtyu) to be feared in the
world to come and even to the fact of men becoming repeatedly 'the food of
death' (SB 10, 4, 3, 10; further: SB 2, 3, 3, 9; 10, 1,4, 14; 10, 6, 5, 8; 11, 5,
6, 9; 12, 9, 3, 12; TB 3, 11, 8, 6; KB 15, 1). Repeated death is overcome only
by those who attain identity of nature (satmata~) with the Brahman (SB 11, 5,
6, 9). 14 Also certain rites, practices and special knowledge are mentioned, ts
The first Upanisadic elaboration of the teaching is found in the Yajnavalkya section of the Brhadaranyaka Upani.sad (chapters 3-4), further in the
Chandogya, Katha and other Upani.sads. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (6, 2) des-
cribes in this context two separate ways by which the departed ones travel to
their future destinations. The divine way (devayana) leads to the Brahman and
is only for superior men, while the 'ancestral way' or way of the fathers
(pitryana) leads to celestial abodes in which those who were pious and per-
formed good deeds find their reward before being reborn on earth again.
However, there is not the slightest proof available that the teaching on
successive births was a product of evolution of thought, rather than a teaching
at first known mainly to the elite which later on percolated down to wider
public circles, becoming eventually universally known and accepted. To insist
on the theory of the evolutionary emergence of the teaching in the later Vedic
period means introducing an unjustifiable gap between the two periods. This
insistence also led to the unwarranted theory of the pre-Aryan or non-Aryan
origin of the teaching of rebirth. We must again remind ourselves of the differ-
ence in nature and form between the Vedic collections of hymns and the
subsequent texts in prose, while the difference in spirit is minimal. It is, of
course, blurred to some extent by the difference in purpose in the three types
of writings which together form the Vedic literature (hymns, Brahmanas and
Upani.sads). An open-minded and close inspection of several relevant Vedic
stanzas reveals that the underlying ideas concerning man's destiny after death
are basically identical with those which are fully spelled out in the later prose
texts. Views to the contrary lack positive supporting evidence and make an
impression of subjective judgments which are too dependent on the theory of
evolution of religious ideas from primitive beliefs to elaborate systems. We
can only say that evolution in the forms of expressing religious ideas and ex-
periences is obvious, but the contents of the higher religious or spiritual
message of the Vedic hymns, although expressed differently and, for us, in a
more cryptic way, is the same as in later texts.
The ideas of rebirth, of return and of successive lives are expressed several
times in different contexts in the .Rg Veda. Sometimes this has been pointed
out. Thus S. Radhakrishnan, although agreeing that there is no direct reference
in the .Rg Veda to rebirth, lists a few passages which contain elements of it.
He says:
The passage of the soul from the body, its dwelling in other forms of existence, its
return to human form, the determination of future existence by the principle of Karma
are all mentioned. Mitra is born again. The dawn (Usas) is born again and again. 'I seek
neither release nor return' (ha asy~h vagmi vimucarh na ?lvr. tarh punah. 5,46, 1). 'The
immortal self will be reborn in a new body due to its meritorius deeds' (~fro m.rtasya
carati svadh~bhir/amartyo martyenh sa yonih.. 1,164, 30; see also 1,164, 38). Some-
times the departed spirit is asked to go to the plants and 'stay there with bodies'. There
is retribution for good and evil deeds in a life after death. Good men go to heaven and
others to the world presided over by Yama. Their work (dharma) decided their future. Although Radhakrishnan's translation of the main quotation (RV 1,164, 30)
is rather free, his general conclusion is basically right. In fact, it does not go
far enough. There are two other important passages which have direct relevance
to the teaching of rebirth. The first mentions the two different paths along
which all creatures have to travel: "I have heard of two ways for fathers, gods
and mortals. Everything that moves between heaven and earth goes on one of
them" (RV 10, 88, 15). Griffith explains the two ways fully in the spirit of
Indian tradition thus: "The way to the other world and the way back to
earth. ''17 And this is undoubtedly the right way to explain the verse in the
light of the Brahmani and Upani.sadic teaching on devayana and pit.ryana
referred to above. There is no reason whatsoever why this interpretation
should not be valid even for the time of the compilation of the .Rg Veda.
The second passage (RV 4, 54, 2) is very important, because it speaks
directly about the successive lives given to men. The hymn in which the
stanza occurs is addressed to Savitar, the 'stimulator' or 'vivifyer', the golden
solar deity who bestows 'riches' on creatures. He can be interpreted as standing
for the divine creative power. Griffith translates the verse as follows: "For
thou at first producest for the holy Gods the noblest of all portions, immor-
tality: Thereafter as a gift to men, o Savitar, thou openest existence, life
succeeding life." Despite otherwise frequent inaccuracies in Griffith's rhyth-
mical translation of the .Rg Veda - considered by some to be 'notoriously
bad' - this is basically a correct translation of the verse and it is almost
astonishing that it has never been fully discussed by the pioneers of Vedic
scholarship in the West. Instead it was several times inaccurately translated or
paraphrased as if to fit the preconceived opinion that there was no evidence
for transmigration in the Vedas.
Translated literally the verse goes like this: "For at first you bestowed on
gods, worthy of offerings, immortality, the supreme lot. Then, as a gift,
Savitr, you opened successive lives for men. ''~Strangely, Macdonell paraphrases the verse thus: "He bestows immortality on the gods as well as length of life on man. '' Geldner translates freely:
"Dann tust du, Savitr, deine Gabe auf (und weisest) dem Menschen ihre
Lebenszeiten in der richtigen Folge (zu). ''2° Both interpretations are wrong
and unjustified. The crucial words are an~anucina~jivita~ (Acc. P1.) and they mean
clearly 'successive lives'. In no event can they stand for 'length of life' as
Macdonell would have it. Jivita 'lives' might perhaps be translated as
'Lebenszeiten' as Geldner does, but the adjective anucina~, agreeing in form
fully with its noun, can by no means be interpreted adverbially in Geldner's
way. Besides, it is not at all clear what Geldner means by his phrase
"Lebenszeiten in der richtigen Folge".
Grassmann's dictionary gives the right equivalent for anucina: 'aufein-
anderfolgend'. Grassmann himself translates the verse thus: "Und dann
erschliessest dem Geschlecht der Menschen duals ihren Anteil Leben, das auf
Leben folgt. ''21 The extended phrase "Leben, das auf Leben folgt" gives
reasonably well the meaning of the original, although not quite precisely, so
that it leaves a slight amount of ambiguity still in it. Recently J. Miller trans-
lates the verse in its proper sense, but an inaccuracy crept into her translation,
too: "First thou hast bestowed upon the worthy gods the loftiest share,
immortality; then for men as their share thou openest out successive
existence. ''z2 She argues the case of 'successive existences' in her text and so
the singular in her translation may be just an error.
When we take again into consideration the nature of the Vedic hymns and
look at the references in them to the future of man after death, we have to conclude that the case for Vedic belief in successive lives is much stronger
than the previously advocated view that there are no traces of the rebirth
teaching in the Vedas. We may accept Keith's view that the beliefs of the
Vedic people at large may have been incomplete, confused and in some
measure even primitive, but we have to admit that the evidence is strong
enough to justify acceptance of the view that the .r.sis, the spiritual leaders of
the Vedic age and the authors of the Vedic hymns, had a comparatively clear
and elaborate notion of human personality and its destiny and that the
belief in successive lives shaped by the quality of preceding lives was an
integral part of their outlook whose culmination was the aspiration to win
immortality. Thus the later Hindu and Buddhist doctrines on man's personality
as a complex structure and on his future destiny, expressed by the teachings
on samsara and moksa, did not just have their roots in the Vedas as it may
seem on the surface, but were apparently living knowledge among the e1ite to
be gradually disseminated to the people at large.
out. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, there is the nature of the Vedic
texts: they are hymns and not explanatory writings. Therefore such infor-
mation as can be gathered from them gives only a fragmentary picture of
views which must have had a more distinct and comprehensive form in the
minds of those who held and understood them in Vedic times. Naturally, the
Vedic views contained in hymns were not expressed in straightforward con-
ceptual language such as could be readily understood by our rational minds,
but in symbols and mythological images which require special effort from us
to establish their meaning. In other words, Vedic texts need careful, but at the
same time bold and imaginative, interpretation. Mere quotations or paraphrases
of relevant verses are not sufficient. When presenting the global meaning of the
Vedas in our contemporary rational style, however, we have to avoid the bias
of positivistic evolutionism which regards the Vedic views as 'primitive' and
'pre-rational'. The Vedas are a product of highly cultured, sophisticated and
diversified minds and do not represent an inferior stage on an ascending
evolutionary line of human thinking.
The second reason why the Vedic notion of human personality has not
been fully described lies in the nature of the Western conception of human
personality, which is still too traditional and based on the Christian doctrine
of a soul. In the face of the Vedic belief in man's survival of his physical death,
scholars have been trying to establish the equivalents of what they viewed as
the material part of the personality which perished and the immaterial part
which survived, that is to say the mortal body and the immortal soul or spirit.
In this respect, however, difficulties arise immediately. Says Renou: "There is
no reference in the hymns to a 'soul' in the true sense. ''1 But what, after all,
is "'soul' in the true sense"? From the standpoint of this kind of thinking one
can understand that scholars have felt happier with the Upani.sads, where
,4tman appeared to them, rightly or wrongly, to be the equivalent of the
Western notion of a soul. For the same reason they have not felt happy about
the Buddhist doctrine of personality which does not lend itself to the theory of a soul, and there is still an uneasiness about it owing to the ever-recurring question: what is it that transmigrates from life to life?
An analysis of the Vedic notion of personality, which abstains from seeking
a soul or some other individual and indestructible substance of any description
underlying personality reveals, in fact, a very coherent theory of human per-
sonality which, expressed in our contemporary idiom, sounds very modern.
Man, in the Vedic understanding, is a complex being. His personality is a
structural unity of dynamic forces or elements which are themselves imper-
sonal and universal by nature. But they are no blind mechanical or physical
forces, rather they possess an inherent intelligence of different grades which
leads them to the formation of functional units with inner hierarchical
structures, on both cosmic and individual levels. Thus cosmos emerges out of
chaos and individual beings out of the interplay of cosmic forces.
The picture of personality thus described emerges from consideration of
the hymns dealing with man's death. We gather from them that the dynamic
forces or constituents of his personality called deities (devatas - AV 11,8, 32)
return to their cosmic abodes. They are not, of course, enumerated systematically, but we learn of a number of these constituents and their cosmic counter-
parts from different hymns. Thus when a man dies, his seeing (caks.u, literally
'eye') goes to the sun, which represents the element (the deity) of light, and
his life essence manifested as breathing (atman) goes to the wind (rata) which
represents the cosmic life force (RV 10, 16, 3; AV 8, 2, 3). That is what we
find in a funeral hymn. Another hymn, the famous purusa sukta, which ex-
presses the idea that the created cosmos has the same structural unity as the
individual personality, furnishes us with further constituents: first with the
mind (manas) corresponding to the moon, which stands for the cosmic
element of mentality. (We find it later on in a conceptually developed form in
Mahayaaa Buddhism as the cosmic 'storehouse consciousness', alaya vijana,
which is paralleled in Plato by his 'kosmos noetos' with its eternal ideas and in
Jung by his 'collective unconscious' with its archetypes.)
The next constituent we learn about is the mouth, i.e. speech or the
capacity to communicate and understand meaning. It is related to the cosmic
element of fire represented by Agni, the divine flame, and lndra, the ruler of
the lightning, both symbolising the cosmic fire-light element which stands for
the light of consciousness and for knowledge. A further capacity mentioned
there is that of hearing, which corresponds to the expanse of space (as
quarters - dis~ (RV 10, 90, 13-14).
A passage in Aitareya Brahma.na (2, 1,6, 13) describing a sacrifice shows
that the same dispersal of faculties happens at the death of a sacrificial animal
and it mentions another faculty, animating vitality (asu), and names its
universal counterpart: antariksan, usually understood as the middle region
between heaven and earth and therefore translated as air or atmosphere
(Macdonell, Keith). Asu as the animating principle of life appears in various
Vedic hymns (e.g. RV 1, 113, 16; 1, 140, 8; 10, 15, 1; AV 6, 104, 1 ; 18, 1, 44;
18, 3, 62; 8, 2, 1; 8, 1, 3) and it is an important part of personality both during
its earthly life and after death.) It is, in fact, not accurate to say that it corre-
sponds to air or atmosphere, for the Sanskrit original often, if not exclusively,
designates 'inner region' or 'inner space', that is to say the dimension of
spiritual life, somewhere between the earthly material plane and the higher
heavenly abodes. This dimension is entered by most people only when they
die, but accomplished yogis or munis can move in it freely (RV 10, 136, 4).
Because asu corresponds to antariksan, it is, quite naturally, a vital constituent
of beings during their earthly life as well as after their bodily death, in the
hereafter.
The whole teaching of the dispersal of the constituents of the phenomenal
personality appears summarised by Artabhaga, obviously a representative of
the traditional Brahamanic learning, in a conversation with Yajnavalkya in the
Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (3, 2, 13). Speech enters into fire (agni), the breath
(prana) into air (rata), the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, hearing
into space, the life essence (atman) into the ether (akas'a), the hairs of the
body into plants, the hairs of the head into the trees, the blood and semen
into water. The terminology is, of course, never entirely consistent in the
Vedic texts, but the overall pattern of thinking is clear. We can therefore now
list the constituents of the phenomenal personality approximately as follows:
Manas, the mind, representing man's 'brain' as well as 'heart'. It
comprises his thoughts, volitions and emotions, in other words,
his character. (It is misleading and wrong to translate it as 'soul'
as Macdonell does.)
Asu, animating vitality, perhaps 'life itself'.
Atman, life-essence.
Pra.na, life force.
Vac, speech or the capacity to communicate meaning.
Caks.u, the eye or seeing.
Srotra, hearing.
Various physiological constituents, such as hairs, bones, blood and semen.
As mentioned above, all these components are cosmic powers (devatas) and
some hymns (particularly AV 11, 8) elaborate on them, listing among them
all possible physiological processes as well as psychological experiences. It is
said that they are all dwelling in man as 'cattle in their pen' (AV 11,8, 32).
Being thus composed of cosmic or divine powers, man himself has to be re-
garded as divine by nature. And indeed, he is regarded even as Brahman, as
already expressed in the Atharva Veda (11, 8, 32). What seems to be indicated
here is that man owes his existence as a person to the highest god or principle
in the universe and is linked to him. And this highest principle is the agency
responsible for keeping the constituents together (for herding the 'cows in the
pen'), in other words: for the very existence of the structure of personality as
such. This agency, however, is not external to man, it works from within him.
It is regarded in some hymns as his inmost part or centre and called aja, the
unborn (RV 10, 16, 4). This unborn in man is not directly evident in ordinary
personalities, being overshadowed by manas which together with asu appears
to be the directing part of the phenomenal personality: although on a deeper
level linked to aja. 3
Aja figures in many Vedic hymns and represents in them the primeval
creative force supporting the whole universe (RV 1,67, 5 = RV 1,67, 3 in
Griffith's translation; RV i, 164, 6; 8, 41, 10) on which all things depend
(RV 10, 82, 6). One could say that the Vedic aja is the equivalent of the
Upanisadic Atman which is identical with Brahman. But because of its clear
meaning, which requires translating it as 'unborn', aja does not lend itself to
being viewed as 'soul', be it the 'world soul' or the individual soul, so that no
theories have ever been developed about it.
We now have two distinct layers of personality in the Vedas, namely the
unborn force which acts as its hidden inmost centre and links it to the
universal, and the personality as such with its various constituents held
together as a structural unity by the unborn force. But the personality struc-
ture has further subdivisions. The Vedas know two structural entities within
the phenomenal personality, one being gross and the other subtle. The gross
one is what is known as the physical body and is called sarira (RV 6, 25, 4). It
comprises the gross-material or physiological constituents which are burnt on
the funeral pyre when a man dies (RV 10, 16, 1; AV 18, 3, 71; cf. RV 1, 16, 10;
1,163, 11 ; 19, 99, 8). It is not the real personality of man, but merely his
lowest visible part which only ordinary people mistakenly and out of ignorance
take for the person (cf. RV 10, 136, 3). This body returns to the earth and
thus to the primeval matter from which new things grow into appearance in
this world (AV 11, 8, 4).
The subtle structural unit which carries the mental faculties of the person-
ality may be viewed as the person himself and it is called tana. In the sense of
a person, tanu is used not only of man (as e.g. in RV 7, 86, 5), but also of
gods (RV 8, 100, 1 ; 1,165, 11). Since when speaking of or referring to him-
self man often means his appearance, the word tanu may be sometimes taken
to designate the body, but not in the sense of the physiological organism as in
the case of sarira. Rather tanu means the form, shape, likeness or looks. And
that is what is restored to man when he has died and his physical body has
been burnt and his personality dissolved. He then acquires a perfect, trans-
figured and complete personality, sarvatanu, which includes all the constitu-
ents of which his appearance is one (AV 11, 3, 32 and 49; 5, 6, 11 ; 18, 4, 64).
Thus the term tanu designates the real person as an individual whether he has
or has not a material body. When in this world, tana as likeness is imprinted
on man's physical body. In the other world it is visible as a shining form
(RV 10, 14, 8; AV 6, 120, 3; 3, 28,5).
The reconstruction of the Vedic notion of human personality as far as it
can be traced then appears in three layers as follows:
Aja, the unborn, is the transcendent as well as immanent force without which
any phenomenal thing would collapse and on which therefore the phenom-
enal personality depends. It remains ever withdrawn as does that part of the
primeval cosmic purus.a which dwells untouched in the dimension of im-
mortality, while the smaller part became all other creatures (cf. RV 10,90,
3). Aja is the inner and hidden reason for the existence of phenomenal
structures, such as the human personality, just as a watchmaker is the
external and obvious reason for the existence of a watch. This illustrates
the difference between a mechanism and a functioning structure which
became an important notion in later Vedantic philosophy. The Vedic
aja thus appears to be the inner controlling force as the Upanisadic Atman
was, without assuming personality features. As a designation of the
Ultimate aja is also found in the Upanisads (e.g. BU 4, 4, 22) and provides
a link to early Buddhist thought: in the notorious passage in Udana (8, 2)
the unborn (ajata) is equalled to Nirvana (nibbana).
Tanu, the phenomenal self, is the perceptible form of personality, both out-
wardly as its likeness and inwardly as its character. It is a personality
combining in itself universal powers or potencies, such as mentality (manas),
vitality (asu) and the rest, and making a seemingly independent individual
being.
,~Sarira , the visible and tangible physiological organism which is composed of
the same elements as the earth and the whole visible universe.
As is apparent, in each of these three layers of his personality man is linked to
the universal. Although he is ostensibly a person in his own fight, he is depen-
dent on universal elements and forces both on the physical and mental level
and in the last instance he is mysteriously linked to the transcendent, called
the unborn, within his personality structure.
This complex notion in Vedic times of the human personality, with all its
constituents and particularly its three distinct layers which correspond to three
cosmic levels of existence, shows that there was a definite and elaborate teach-
ing in existence. The fact that it was expressed and preserved for us only in a
non-systematic way in the hymns must not prevent us from seeing that the
actual knowledge was there and that this knowledge was far from primitive.
Later doctrines on various bodies, sheaths and layers (sariras, kosas and kayas)
on the human as well as cosmic level, in both the Hindu and the Buddhist
systems are doctrinal elaborations of what were apparently current notions
among the rsis of Vedic times.
As for man's destiny after death, it was apparently different for different
individuals and depended on a multiplicity of factors. Like the notion of
human personality, it has not yet been fully brought out by research and
really appreciated in all its aspects. It may well be that, as Keith wrote, the
views of a large proportion or even of a majority of the people in Vedic times
were as confused as the views of modern people about life after death un-
doubtedly are, but if we accept that the Vedas are the products of rsis, i.e. of
a spiritual life, we must assume that their views or knowledge of man's post-
mortem and final destiny must have been much more coherent and articulate
than early Western research has pictured it, especially if the Vedic views were
looked upon as primitive or in any way as lower than or inferior to later
developments.
A fresh look at and a close scrutiny of the Vedic texts show that the hymns
contain sufficient evidence of an elaborate eschatological teaching, known at
least to the e1ite, which had all the elements of the later more widely known
eschatologies of the Upanis.ads and of early Buddhism.
First we have the process of dying, which involves the dissolution of the
personality and the dispersal of its constituents into their cosmic abodes, and
which is followed by the reconstitution of the personality, including its
bodily appearance, in a finer or transfigured form. This process is not a mere
transition from one place to another of a spirit or soul which remains basically
the same in the next life as it was in this one, but suggests rather a new birth,
a rebirth of the person into the next world just as he was once born into this
one. It is even suggested that one creates for oneself mentally a new vehicle
of life after death ("a new wheelless chariot, one-poled, but facing all
directions" - RV 10, 135, 3). This is reminiscent of the Upanisadic formu-
lations of the process of rebirth (e.g. BU 4, 4, 2-5).
A new life in the hereafter raises, of course, the question of the individual
destiny of each departed one. And there is no doubt about the fact that this
destiny depends on his character and on the quality of his preceding life. There
are various heavenly and intermediary abodes, there are dark places or hells
and there is also a chance of gaining 'immortality' which is asked and prayed
for in some hymns as a special gift or achievement, so that it is impossible to
rest content with the still current view that it meant eternal life in heaven
granted to everybody who managed to get there. The intermediary abodes seem
to have been imagined vaguely as being in the earth, on earth near the dwell-
ings of men and also in the middle region between the material and the
heavenly worlds (RV 10, 15, 1-2). There is, further, a movement of beings
indicated which is imagined as, hopefully, being an ascent from the lower
regions to higher ones (RV 10, 15, 1). s The Atharva Veda shows that departed
fathers inhabit three regions - the earthly, the middle and the heavenly
(AV 18, 2, 49). Besides, there are fathers' dwellings in the highest heaven
which is a special abode (AV 18, 2, 48).
Heaven in the broad sense was, of course, the most desired place to come
to for every .Aryan who had enjoyed a full span of life on earth, but it was
promised only to those who had lived with religious or spiritual fervour (tapas),
who had lost their lives in battles or who had brought many sacrificial offerings
(RV 10, 154, 2-5). It was also said to be for the good-hearted and well-doing
(AV 6, 130, 3), for those who had merit from good works and religious
activities (RV 10, 14, 8), who were devoted to the gods (RV 1,154, 5) and
who knew the law (rtajna- RV 10, 15, 1).
Naturally, those who were wicked and unrighteous (papasah., anrtah) went
to a deep place or hell (RV 4, 5, 5), figuratively called also 'destruction'
(RV 7,104, 10). It is also called an endless prison (RV 7, 104, 17) and des-
cribed as situated below 'three earths' (RV 7, 104, 11). The Atharva Veda is
more explicit about hell and has a specific word for it: naraka loka (AV 12,
4, 36) which became current in later literature. The existence of the notion of
hell in Vedic times has been firmly established and it is not necessary to em-
bark on the old controversy, started by Roth, who claimed that the wicked
ones suffered destruction in the sense of total annihilation after their physical
death.
To summarise what is so far clear about Vedic views of life after death, we
may say that the destiny of different men was dependent on their personal
merit, however defined, and took them accordingly to a variety of places or
spheres of life, some of which were obviously transitory stations. But were
heaven and hell places of permanent happiness or damnation? If this were so,
it would mean that those who had arrived there had reached personal immor-
tality within the confines of their new dwelling-place. But such a conclusion
cannot be justifiably drawn from any Vedic text. There is no indication in the
Vedas that those who go to hell go there forever, while there is strong support
for the view that reaching heaven did not necessarily mean gaining immortality.
Immortality was a special achievement much desired and asked for in the
hymns. If it were the automatic lot of those who went to heaven, the prayers
for immortality would be meaningless. "Lead us to immortality" (RV 5, 55, 4).
"May I be released from death, not reft of immortality!" (RV 7, 59, 12). Thus
we read in the hymns. One hymn has four successive verses starting with the
words "Make me immortal..." followed by designations of places in which
the worshipper desired immortality: in the realm of the King (= Yama), in the
third heaven, in the realm of the Moon, in the realm of happiness (RV 9, 113,
8-11). This clearly indicates that simply arriving in those places did not mean
securing eternal life. Immortality was an extra bonus.
Not even the gods were originally in possession of immortality, although
their abode was heaven and other spiritual dimensions. They had won immor-
tality through Agni (RV 5, 3, 4) who in his highest aspect symbolises the
divine mystical flame, the highest light or enlightenment. Before they were
thus set free, they had been bound by the curse of aging (RV 7, 13, 2; cf. also
RV 4, 19, 2). This idea of the gods being originally mortal has survived in
Indian religious thinking. According to Pura.nic mythology, immortality was
gained by the gods when they had churned the world ocean and produced the
drink of immortality
The assumption of scholars, still so widely held, that in the Vedic view man
quite automatically became immortal after his physical death (or had an
immortal soul which lived forever when the body died), rests, in fact, on a
very uncertain conjecture which can be illustrated by a quotation from
Griswold. ~ He reproduced several stanzas from a hymn to ancestors (RV 10, 15)
and wrote: "We are here introduced to Rigvedic ancestor worship. The fathers
thus adored have passed through death and attained to life, the implication
being that it is life immortal, since the Fathers are associated with the Devas
in their activities and in the worship they receive." To support his implication
Griswold refers to a verse in the Atharva Veda (6, 41, 3) where the Fathers
are called immortal.
Macdonell had the same view and gave the following definition of the
Fathers: "By this term are generally meant the early or first ancestors (10, 15,
8.10): who followed the ancient paths, seers who made the paths by which
the recent dead go to join them (10, 14, 2.7.15)." And further he says: "The
Fathers are immortal (AV 6, 41, 3) and are even spoken of as gods (10, 56, 4). "
However, the verse referred to by both Macdonell and Griswold (AV 6, 41,3)
does not, in fact, address the fathers (pitrs), but seers (rsis). It is natural that
those ancestors or fathers who had acquired the high spiritual status of seer-
hood and contributed to the compilation of the Vedas were believed to have
become immortal. But it does not follow that every other departed one
achieved the same status.
We have already seen that there were several classes of fathers and that they
inhabited various regions of the spiritual universe. Those fathers who had been
rsis and, perhaps, authors of the Vedic hymns or their originators, were looked
upon by subsequent generations as spiritual heroes. The names of some of them
were handed down and certain books of the .Rg Veda were named after some
of them. They alone were believed to have reached immortality and the status
and power equal to that of the gods (cf. RV 10, 56, 4). They accomplished it
by finding and opening the path to the vast heaven, by finding the rays of
dawn, the day and light (RV 1, 71, 2). These images designate and point to an
achievement beyond the grasp of the ordinary worshipper, although the path
is open to everybody (to us, asme, says the hymn). It is, however, to be
acquired only through the special effort of a visionary and meditative
character, dhiti. Thus we see that both gods and some men, originally mortal, sought and
found in the past the way to immortality. Therefore they were called 'path-finders' (cf. RV 1,105, 15). The spiritual heroes of the past were to be followed by others - mortals who again discovered the ancient path, such as the Buddha who is reported to have said soon after his enlightenment: "The
doors to immortality (amata) are open" (MN 26 and 85). Ordinary people
could then as before win immortality by following the path shown to them.
Not the path of the dead from the funeral pyre to heaven as it was interpreted by scholars and possibly also understood on the popular level by many Vedic worshippers themselves, but the path of spiritual vision to be accomplished in this life, somewhat in the manner of munis (RV 10,136), using
methods later known as yoga. While in early Vedic times only a few may have had the knowledge and opportunity to take up this approach, it was popularised later on and made accessible to everybody by Buddhism and Yoga methods as incorporated in the epics, particularly in the Bhagavad Gita~.
One can also see from the general Vedic outlook that this achievement was
possible and, indeed, logical, because of the essential affinity of man with the
eternal. His inmost part was aja, the unborn and therefore immortal ground
of existence. Mythologically this affinity was expressed many times in the
Vedas. As Griswold says: "Beyond the first man the roots of humanity run
back into the world of gods, to Vivasvant (the Sun), the father of Manu and
the father of Yama and Yami, the last two being identical, probably, with
Heaven and Earth, the parents of all that is." ~o
The exact nature of immortality cannot be established from the Vedic
texts and it must not be confused with descriptions of heavenly pleasures.
But this has been the case with all other teachings ever since. The last goal
does not lend itself to description and one can find only figurative explana-
tions and parables. But what happened to those who had not reached
immortality by the special method of inner vision?
Most scholars seem to agree that the idea of successive lives for those who
have not reached final salvation is of later origin. They admit only the possi-
bility of finding some seeds of the teaching of reincarnation in the more
'primitive' ideas of the .Rg Veda. Oldenberg sees traces of the belief in the
"transmigration of souls of the departed ones into animals, plants, and stars",
Macdonell refers to two passages (RV 10, 16, 3 and 10, 58, 7) where the
deceased one is asked to go to the waters or plants and sees in this "a concep-
tion which perhaps contains the germ of the theory of metempsychosis", n
Keith also thinks in terms of the "origin of the doctrine of transmigration"
at some stage of the evolution of Indian religious thought and sees it as "one of the most difficult problems of Indian philosophy". 13 He refuses all supposed
references to transmigration in the .Rg Veda, but accepts the traces of metem-
psychosis mentioned by Oldenberg as probable popular belief. But because
the later fully formulated doctrine of transmigration is an ethical system,
Keith thinks that it must have originated later independently - tacitly over-
looking the fact that there are sufficient ethical elements in the eschatological
passages of the .Rg Veda.
The emergence of the doctrine is usually seen as foreshadowed in the
Brahma.nas and accomplished only in the early Upanisads. The Brahma.nas, of
course, refer very clearly to repeated death (punarmrtyu) to be feared in the
world to come and even to the fact of men becoming repeatedly 'the food of
death' (SB 10, 4, 3, 10; further: SB 2, 3, 3, 9; 10, 1,4, 14; 10, 6, 5, 8; 11, 5,
6, 9; 12, 9, 3, 12; TB 3, 11, 8, 6; KB 15, 1). Repeated death is overcome only
by those who attain identity of nature (satmata~) with the Brahman (SB 11, 5,
6, 9). 14 Also certain rites, practices and special knowledge are mentioned, ts
The first Upanisadic elaboration of the teaching is found in the Yajnavalkya section of the Brhadaranyaka Upani.sad (chapters 3-4), further in the
Chandogya, Katha and other Upani.sads. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (6, 2) des-
cribes in this context two separate ways by which the departed ones travel to
their future destinations. The divine way (devayana) leads to the Brahman and
is only for superior men, while the 'ancestral way' or way of the fathers
(pitryana) leads to celestial abodes in which those who were pious and per-
formed good deeds find their reward before being reborn on earth again.
However, there is not the slightest proof available that the teaching on
successive births was a product of evolution of thought, rather than a teaching
at first known mainly to the elite which later on percolated down to wider
public circles, becoming eventually universally known and accepted. To insist
on the theory of the evolutionary emergence of the teaching in the later Vedic
period means introducing an unjustifiable gap between the two periods. This
insistence also led to the unwarranted theory of the pre-Aryan or non-Aryan
origin of the teaching of rebirth. We must again remind ourselves of the differ-
ence in nature and form between the Vedic collections of hymns and the
subsequent texts in prose, while the difference in spirit is minimal. It is, of
course, blurred to some extent by the difference in purpose in the three types
of writings which together form the Vedic literature (hymns, Brahmanas and
Upani.sads). An open-minded and close inspection of several relevant Vedic
stanzas reveals that the underlying ideas concerning man's destiny after death
are basically identical with those which are fully spelled out in the later prose
texts. Views to the contrary lack positive supporting evidence and make an
impression of subjective judgments which are too dependent on the theory of
evolution of religious ideas from primitive beliefs to elaborate systems. We
can only say that evolution in the forms of expressing religious ideas and ex-
periences is obvious, but the contents of the higher religious or spiritual
message of the Vedic hymns, although expressed differently and, for us, in a
more cryptic way, is the same as in later texts.
The ideas of rebirth, of return and of successive lives are expressed several
times in different contexts in the .Rg Veda. Sometimes this has been pointed
out. Thus S. Radhakrishnan, although agreeing that there is no direct reference
in the .Rg Veda to rebirth, lists a few passages which contain elements of it.
He says:
The passage of the soul from the body, its dwelling in other forms of existence, its
return to human form, the determination of future existence by the principle of Karma
are all mentioned. Mitra is born again. The dawn (Usas) is born again and again. 'I seek
neither release nor return' (ha asy~h vagmi vimucarh na ?lvr. tarh punah. 5,46, 1). 'The
immortal self will be reborn in a new body due to its meritorius deeds' (~fro m.rtasya
carati svadh~bhir/amartyo martyenh sa yonih.. 1,164, 30; see also 1,164, 38). Some-
times the departed spirit is asked to go to the plants and 'stay there with bodies'. There
is retribution for good and evil deeds in a life after death. Good men go to heaven and
others to the world presided over by Yama. Their work (dharma) decided their future. Although Radhakrishnan's translation of the main quotation (RV 1,164, 30)
is rather free, his general conclusion is basically right. In fact, it does not go
far enough. There are two other important passages which have direct relevance
to the teaching of rebirth. The first mentions the two different paths along
which all creatures have to travel: "I have heard of two ways for fathers, gods
and mortals. Everything that moves between heaven and earth goes on one of
them" (RV 10, 88, 15). Griffith explains the two ways fully in the spirit of
Indian tradition thus: "The way to the other world and the way back to
earth. ''17 And this is undoubtedly the right way to explain the verse in the
light of the Brahmani and Upani.sadic teaching on devayana and pit.ryana
referred to above. There is no reason whatsoever why this interpretation
should not be valid even for the time of the compilation of the .Rg Veda.
The second passage (RV 4, 54, 2) is very important, because it speaks
directly about the successive lives given to men. The hymn in which the
stanza occurs is addressed to Savitar, the 'stimulator' or 'vivifyer', the golden
solar deity who bestows 'riches' on creatures. He can be interpreted as standing
for the divine creative power. Griffith translates the verse as follows: "For
thou at first producest for the holy Gods the noblest of all portions, immor-
tality: Thereafter as a gift to men, o Savitar, thou openest existence, life
succeeding life." Despite otherwise frequent inaccuracies in Griffith's rhyth-
mical translation of the .Rg Veda - considered by some to be 'notoriously
bad' - this is basically a correct translation of the verse and it is almost
astonishing that it has never been fully discussed by the pioneers of Vedic
scholarship in the West. Instead it was several times inaccurately translated or
paraphrased as if to fit the preconceived opinion that there was no evidence
for transmigration in the Vedas.
Translated literally the verse goes like this: "For at first you bestowed on
gods, worthy of offerings, immortality, the supreme lot. Then, as a gift,
Savitr, you opened successive lives for men. ''~Strangely, Macdonell paraphrases the verse thus: "He bestows immortality on the gods as well as length of life on man. '' Geldner translates freely:
"Dann tust du, Savitr, deine Gabe auf (und weisest) dem Menschen ihre
Lebenszeiten in der richtigen Folge (zu). ''2° Both interpretations are wrong
and unjustified. The crucial words are an~anucina~jivita~ (Acc. P1.) and they mean
clearly 'successive lives'. In no event can they stand for 'length of life' as
Macdonell would have it. Jivita 'lives' might perhaps be translated as
'Lebenszeiten' as Geldner does, but the adjective anucina~, agreeing in form
fully with its noun, can by no means be interpreted adverbially in Geldner's
way. Besides, it is not at all clear what Geldner means by his phrase
"Lebenszeiten in der richtigen Folge".
Grassmann's dictionary gives the right equivalent for anucina: 'aufein-
anderfolgend'. Grassmann himself translates the verse thus: "Und dann
erschliessest dem Geschlecht der Menschen duals ihren Anteil Leben, das auf
Leben folgt. ''21 The extended phrase "Leben, das auf Leben folgt" gives
reasonably well the meaning of the original, although not quite precisely, so
that it leaves a slight amount of ambiguity still in it. Recently J. Miller trans-
lates the verse in its proper sense, but an inaccuracy crept into her translation,
too: "First thou hast bestowed upon the worthy gods the loftiest share,
immortality; then for men as their share thou openest out successive
existence. ''z2 She argues the case of 'successive existences' in her text and so
the singular in her translation may be just an error.
When we take again into consideration the nature of the Vedic hymns and
look at the references in them to the future of man after death, we have to conclude that the case for Vedic belief in successive lives is much stronger
than the previously advocated view that there are no traces of the rebirth
teaching in the Vedas. We may accept Keith's view that the beliefs of the
Vedic people at large may have been incomplete, confused and in some
measure even primitive, but we have to admit that the evidence is strong
enough to justify acceptance of the view that the .r.sis, the spiritual leaders of
the Vedic age and the authors of the Vedic hymns, had a comparatively clear
and elaborate notion of human personality and its destiny and that the
belief in successive lives shaped by the quality of preceding lives was an
integral part of their outlook whose culmination was the aspiration to win
immortality. Thus the later Hindu and Buddhist doctrines on man's personality
as a complex structure and on his future destiny, expressed by the teachings
on samsara and moksa, did not just have their roots in the Vedas as it may
seem on the surface, but were apparently living knowledge among the e1ite to
be gradually disseminated to the people at large.
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