The Doctrine of Karma.

• Author: POTTER, KARL H.
• Position: Review

The Doctrine of Karma. By YUVRAJ KRISHAN. Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 1997. Pp. x + 650. Rs 595.

This remarkable volume collects under one cover the articles comprising Professor Krishan's life work on karma, which constitutes surely the single most thorough exploration of that doctrine in English that has appeared in print to date. It brings together the material he has been writing about for over twenty years (a list of publications is provided). However, the book is neither merely a collection of those publications nor is it the dry review of a topic that one finds in many dissertations. For example, Krishan argues in favor of several important general theses. Furthermore, he provides copious quotations in translation from relevant Vedic and Sanskrit literature to buttress his frequently controversial claims. The result is a book which, while probably not usable by itself as a text, should certainly be recommended as relevant collateral reading for courses on classical Indian thought dealing with a variety of topics, not just philosophy and religion, but also astrology, law, medicine, drama, literatu re, the caste system, sociology, and politics, in all of which fields the karma theory played, and arguably still plays, a determinative role.

There has been a good deal of speculation as to the origins of the karma theory. Some have suggested that it arose elsewhere than in the vedic/upanisadic tradition--for example, in Jainism. Krishan insists that karma is a direct outcome of the Vedic ritual of istap[bar{u}]rta, the "merit accumulated through sacrifice," which accrues to one after death when he goes to heaven. Krishan locates the earliest expression of that notion in the br[bar{a}]hmanas.

As for the notions of transmigration and rebirth, he locates their origin in the Rgveda itself, providing key references. But in the Vedic samhit[bar{a}]s those theses are not yet coupled with notions of morally good and evil results in subsequent lives. The amalgamation of the two notions--of istap[bar{u}]rta and of...