1995 Gonda Lecture by Gananath Obeyesekere

Amerindian Rebirth and Buddhist Karma

By G.W. Muller

Indological scholars have spent considerable time and effort to show how the doctrines of karma and rebirth entered into the Indian religious tradition, to fully flower in the late sixth century BC during the great religious reform that one associates with Buddhism and Jainism and other religious movements of the time. Influential scholars tried to show that there is one single line of development from incipient notions of karma in the early and late Vedic traditions to the more conspicuous references in the Upanishads, and from these to Buddhism. Obeyesekere argues this way of thinking is methodologically flawed, because it assumes that the extant texts reflect the multiplicity of the religious traditions in early India. This is palpably not the case.
Obeyesekere offers an alternative method to study the development of the Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth: he compares the Buddhist rebirth eschatologies with those in other parts of the world. His conclusion is that rebirth eschatologies which are closest to the Buddhist, are found in the vast circumpolar belt, particularly among Northwest Coast Indians and the Inuit or Eskimo. These eschatologies imply the idea of animal reincarnation, i.e. they start from the principle that both animals and humans are permeated by a bond of common sentience. Obeyesekere considers it not improbable that the rebirth eschatologies that extend from the Amerindian Northwest Coast into the Inuit and further into Eastern Siberia extended even further and formed the basis of the more complex eschatologies of the Greek Pythagoreans and the Indians. This is, however, not the thrust of his argument. Whether diffused or independently invented, similar eschatologies existed prior to the ethical and soteriological reforms of thinkers like Pythagoras and the Buddha.

Ethicization
Obeyesekere shows the process by which a simple rebirth eschatology is transformed into the Greek rebirth eschatology, and then to the Buddhist karmic eschatology. In the simple rebirth eschatology the rebirth cycle goes on and on and there is no question of punishment of the soul. The logical rationale for this lack of punishment in the other world is that those who do wrong in their lifetimes are punished by the secular authorities in this world: hence there is no need for double punishment. It is 'ethicization' -- as aforesaid a process whereby a morally right or wrong action becomes a religiously right or wrong action that in turn affects a person's destiny after death -- which made it possible for the Buddhist doctrines of karma and rebirth to come into being. Obeyesekere discerns two steps in the process of ethicization. Step one implies that the other world is converted into a good world and a bad world as realms of punishment and reward. This step was made, for instance, in Platonic eschatology. In the Indic religions the process is carried on to step two: the human world into which the individual is eventually reborn is also one of punishment and reward, dependent on what one did in one's previous existence. Once reborn into a world where an ethicized morality already exists, the individual must perforce continue in his life trajectory doing good or bad, acquiring sin and merit. Thus a logical feature of these systems is that salvation must be sought outside the rebirth cycle, which is what occurs in Buddhism and other Indic religions and in Pythagorean and Platonic eschatologies. Ethicization has a dark side. In religions like Buddhism animals get demoted in such a way that human beings who do wrong or commit sin might be punished by being reborn as an animal or some other lowly creature. Thus, in religions like Buddhism, animals lose the elevated status they once had and are relegated to an inferior status. Moreover, the distinction between heaven and hell introduced not only the idea of highly hedonistic heavens as an indulgence for those who lead ascetic lives, but more importantly, it creates gruesome hells wherein the sinners are confined and where they have to suffer horrible tortures.

G.W. Muller is the executive secretary of the J. Gonda Foundation