SV: SV: Origins of the "double-truth"

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Vidyasankar Sundaresan [SMTP:vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM] skrev 26. desember
2000 23:56:
> Lars Martin Fosse <lmfosse at ONLINE.NO> wrote:
>
> When
> >transmigration is introduced by Yajnavalkya in the ChandogyaUp. (I
> >believe!), it is introduced as a "Geheimlehre". It may not have been a
> >universal belief in any of the Indo-European peoples.
>
> 1. bRhadAraNyaka up. In the chAndogya, the teacher is uddAlaka
>    AruNi. yAjnavalkya does not figure in the chAndogya at all.

Thanks for the correction! I am away from my library and relied on my
memory, which did not serve me right.

> 4. An earlier generation of Indologists believed that Indian
>    belief in transmigration cannot be traced back to any text
>    older than the upanishads. It is not important in the Rgveda
>    samhitA, for example. They also saw a contradiction between
>    rebirth and "ancestor worship". While I disagree with many
>    assumptions that went behind these stances, I would think
>    that an idea of rebirth arises naturally in religions where
>    ancestor veneration (if not worship) is important. Any
>    discussion of a direction of influence, from India to Greece
>    or vice versa, has to take a stance on WHEN transmigration
>    first became important in India itself.

This is of course the problem. Deciding exactly when transmigration became
important in India itself is indeed difficult. Early kshatriya religion
seems to have operated with a warriors' heaven not unlike the Norse
Valhalla (again, I rely on memory and solicit rebuttals). But even if we
are able to show that the belief is early, we cannot say for certain that
it migrated from India. What we need is insight into historical sources or
data that actually document the process, and such sources don't exist.
(Compare e.g. the influence of Persian religion on Judaism, where the
Babylonian exile easily explains how such an influence was possible).
Failing that, we have to look at details in transmigration beliefs in India
and Greece, and here we do not have a lot of data either. Consequently, all
we can say is that belief in transmigration occurs among several
Indo-European peoples, but only becomes predominant in India. Theories of
migration have to be treated cautiously.

Lars Martin Fosse


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