Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions/edited
by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Dehra Dun, Bishen Singh Mahendra Pal Singh,
2007, xxvi, 342 p., tables, ISBN 81-211-0502-1.
Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions/edited
by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Dehra Dun, Bishen Singh Mahendra Pal Singh,
2007, xxvi, 342 p., tables, ISBN 81-211-0502-1.
Contents: List of contributors. Introduction. I. Hinduism and its roots: 1. Karma and rebirth in the Vedas and Puranas/Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. 2. The concepts of human action and rebirth in the Mahabharata/J. Bruce Long. 3. Karma and rebirth in the Dharmasastras/Ludo Rocher. 4. Caraka Samhita on the doctrine of Karma/Mitchell G. Weiss. 5. The theory of reincarnation among the Tamils/George L. Hart, III. II. Buddhism and Jainism: 6. The rebirth eschatology and its transformations: a contribution to the sociology of early Buddhism/Gananath Obeyesekere. 7. Karma and rebirth in early Buddhism/James P. McDermott. 8. The Medical Soteriology of Karma in the Buddhist Tantric Tradition/William Stablein. 9. Karma and the problem of rebirth in Jainism/Padmanabh S. Jaini. III. Philosophical Traditions: 10. The Karma Theory and its interpretation in some Indian Philosophical Systems/Karl H. Potter. 11. Karma, Apurva, and "Natural" causes: observations on the growth and limits of the Theory of Samsara/Wilhelm Halbfass. 12. Karma as a "Sociology of Knowledge" or "Social Psychology" of process/Praxis/Gerald James Larson. Bibliography. Index and glossary.
From the Introduction: "The present collection of essays presents a variety of ideas about rebirth, often in competition and disagreement, but always in dialogue; for what makes Indian thought so fascinating is the constant rapprochement between opposed world views, hardly a true synthesis, but a cross fertilization that seems to have no end, one mediation giving rise to another, each result becoming a new cause, endlessly, like Karma itself. This volume might serve as model of diversity to explain how any group of South Asians will fight (as Marriott has put it)--and, indeed, to explain how any group of Indologists will fight. For we too are actors and how can we tell the dancers from the dance?
The Indians themselves have developed highly sophisticated ways of dealing with such differences of strata, for they do not hold assumptions in the same way on different levels; they treat Karma sometimes as a concept, sometimes as a theory, some times as a model; sometimes they accept it, and sometimes they challenge it."