Karma and rebirth in Classical Indian Traditionans edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Karma and rebirth in Classical Indian Traditionans edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Karma is perhaps the most famous concept in Indian philosophy, but there is no comprehensive study of its various meanings or philosophical implications.

Under the sponsorship of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, leading American Indologists met on several occasions to discuss their ideas about karma. The result is this volume.

Exchanges of draft essays led to a harmony of approach and an underlying set of methodological assumptions: a corpus of definitions of karma, a dialectic between abstract theory and historical explanation, an awareness of logical oppositions in theories of karma. No "solution" to the paradox of karma is offered, but the volume as a whole presents a consistent and encompassing approach to the many different, often conflicting, Indian statements of the problem.

The particular value of the book lies in both its scope and its rich detail. Following an introductory essay, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty presents the Vedic and Purănic background to the theory of karma. There follow studies of karma in the Mahabharata (J. Bruce Long), the Dharmasastras (Ludo Rocher), the medical textbooks (Mitchell G. Weiss), and the Tamil tradition (George L. Hart, III). Buddhist and Jaina concepts, perhaps the most pervasive formulations of karma, are treated for early Buddhism with a hypothesis of the derivation of karma from tribal ideas ethicized by Buddhism (Gananath Obeysekere), Pali Buddhism (James McDermott), and Tantric Buddhism (William Stablein). Padmanabh S. Jaini contributes a new hypothesis of the interaction of linear and cyclical ideas of transmigration in Jainism, to which he attributes the origin of the karma theory. Karl H. Potter sets forth the philosophical implications of karma, challenging McKim Marriott; Gerald Larson attempts to resolve the two approaches, while Wilhelm Halbfass demonstrates the ways in which later Indian philosophy produced resolutions of its own.

The various chapters respond to one another in a stimulating process of dialectic, opposition, and the reformulation of questions that the volume presents but does not pretend to settle.

This book will have a considerable impact upon the teaching of Indian philosophy. At the very least, it demonstrates the impossibility of speaking of "the theory of karma," as is so often done. It also supplies the basis for a full study of this important theory. Finally, it raises basic methodological problems about the study of a non-Western system of soteriology and rebirth, questions regarding the interaction of medical and philosophical models of the human body, the incorporation of philosophical theories into practical religions with which they are logically incompatible, and the problem of historical reconstruction of a complex theory of human life.

WENDY DONIGER O'FLAHERTY, Professor of the History of Religions and Indian Studies at the University of Chicago, is the author of numerous studies of Indian religion and related subjects.

Details

• Hardcover with dust jacket
• ISBN: 0520039238
• Condition: Good, dust jacket has a plastic protection, green cloth with gold gilded letters, no notes/stamps 
  
• 1st Edition, 2nd print 1980
• Publisher: University of California Press