Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

soteriologcial welfare of the group, then one cannot
expect Empedoclean rebirth to be concerned with
ethicization” (ibid:231) since this thought, together with
the earlier Pythagorean and later Platonian (which I will
return to), were partly esoteric and highly elitistic. These
thinkers were individualists interested in personal
salvation rather than converting the Greek population
into their beliefs. Thus, to sum up: Pythagorianism
postulated a cyclical theory of rebirth where the soul is
reborn on earth without an intermediate sojourn in a
heaven or hell, which means that it did not incorporate
much of mainland religious ideas of Hades etc, “lending
plausibility to the view that their rebirth theories came
from the “outside” and were given special eschatological
development and meaning by Pythagoras” (ibid:233).
From Plato to Plotinus
If we have lived former lives, why can we not remember
anything from these lives? The River Lethe was the
solution to this problem, and was introduced in the fifth
century BCE. However, this does not mean that the
River Lethe first appeared in Greek religion as an
answer to objections to ideas of reincarnation (Whittaker
1954:55). In Whittaker’s discussion of whether or not
Empedocles in his system of reincarnation depended
upon earlier writers, he uses Plato’s concept of the River
Lethe in the Myth Er in Book X of the Republic arguing
that the ideas of this river are incompatible with the form
of the doctrine of reincarnation held by Empedocles.
Therefore, Whittaker argues that it is unlikely that the
idea of Lethe – the river which washes away men’s
remembrance on their stay in Hades – appeared until late
in the fifth century. Thus, Empedocles developed his
ideas in a period before the concept of the cleansing
River Lethe was invented (ibid:54). Even though the
notion of Lethe might be very old, the appearance of the
actual river in the Underworld cannot be dated much
before the beginning of the fourth century (ibid:56).
There are no concepts of an Underworld in the
Empedocles’s system of reincarnation (ibid:84). “Plato,
one would imagine, took over the doctrine of Lethe as
the river which washed away men’s recollection of their
previous existence and of their abode in Hades. Plato
introduces the idea that the effect of the water varies
according to the amount of it that one drinks. The force
of the Republic passage is much lessened if one suppose
that the whole idea of Lethe washing away remembrance
was Plato’s own invention” (ibid:58).
Hence, Plato’s rebirth theory has to be seen as a result of
Plato himself “being trapped in the prison of the preexisting
tradition” (Obeyesekere 2002:274). Plato
inherited an ethicised Hell and Heaven from Pindar and
probably Orphic thought (ibid). In Republic X Plato
writes regarding the deceased’s soul that:
“…Next it went, without turning around, beneath the
throne of Necessity, and after passing through it, when
229
the others too came through, all went on their way
towards the plane of Forgetting, through a hot and
fiercely suffocating atmosphere (for the place was bare
of trees and all plant life). They camped, when evening
was coming on, by the river Heedless, whose water no
vessel can contain. Now, it was obligatory for all to
drink a certain quantity of water, but those lacking in
sense drank more than this measure. And after
drinking from it, a person began to forget everything.
When they were asleep and midnight came, there
occurred thunder and an earthquake, and after that
they were immediately carried up in different
directions to their moment of birth, shooting like stars.
Er himself was prevented from drinking the water;
even so, he did not know where or how he reentered
his body, but he suddenly opened his eyes and saw
himself lying on the pyre at dawn” (op.cit . Halliwell
1988:103).
Following Obeyesekere, Plato’s rebirth theory stops at
step 1 of ethicisation with one exception. In Timaeus
there is a reference that those who were immortal, folly,
and cowardice in the original community of men were
reborn as women, birds, insects, animals, reptiles, and
fish. These rebirths seem to bear close resemblances to
ethicisation step 2, but this is not so, because Timaeus is
the charter-myth, which describes how women and other
creatures originated. Being human was being a man, not
a woman.
Thus, there is a chronology in Plato’s rebirths. The first
incarnation or the original creation consisted only of
men created by the gods. The second incarnation or first
reincarnation involved the process similar to ethicisation
step 2 in which all other beings and creatures, including
women, are born as a consequence of humans’, meaning
men’s, misconduct. The second reincarnation involves
only ethicisation step 1 in which men, women, animals,
fish, and plants are judged and sent to either Heaven or
Hades. After the otherworldly rewards or punishments a
human (or creature) is reborn. According to Plato, this
happens in accordance with “free will”: each persona
can choose what one would like to become in the next
incarnation. Each “stage” which includes a worldly life
and a stay in Heaven or Hades lasts for a thousand year,
and each persona will be incarnated ten times, which
means that the cycle of rebirth lasts for ten thousand
years (Obeyesekere 2002:271-273). The reason why
each person can choose its next incarnation is a result of
ethicisation step 1. “If people are punished and rewarded
in the other world for what they have done on earth, then
each person’s slate has been wiped clean so there is no
need for rewards and punishments in the next human
rebirth” (ibid:246), which is a dilemma ignored for
instance in Buddhism’s ethicisation step 2. Therefore, a
karma theory cannot evolve within Plato because “those
who are seeking rebirth have fully expended their load
of sin and merit, they are now given the freedom to
choose what they want to be in their next incarnation”
(ibid:246-247). Philosophers who wisely pick their lot
and choose to be reborn three times as philosophers will
be released from the cycle of rebirths (ibid:271), but in