notbeing evil, in fact, as guiltless (Witzel 1987a,b), and the beginning of the
Bhagavadgı ̄ta ̄ still defends the dharmaof a Ks.atriya as the norm – that is the duty
to fight and kill.
However, the cycle of automatic rebirths has now been broken for the first
time. The Upanis.adic ascetics (such as Ya ̄jñavalkya, when he “went forth into
homelessness,” BA ̄U 4.5.15) and the contemporaries of the Buddha strive for
emancipation that frees them from the sam.sa ̄raof rebirth. Formerly, this was
only the undesired lot destined for felons who had committed severe offenses.
Now, one leaves home forever to strive for the knowledge ofbrahman. Traditional
society quite consequently regarded such persons, once they had left, as socially
“dead,” and it did not allow for their return. Some middle level Upanis.ad texts
(Kat.ha-S ́ruti Up., Ma ̄nava S ́rautasu ̄tra 8.25, Sprockhoff 1987) have preserved a
ritual of taking leave from home and all one’s possessions while declaring non-
violence (ahim.sa ̄) to all beings.
Several factors thus come together and lead to a qualitative breakthrough,
which results in the new karmic rebirth idea and, based on increasing use of
higher levels of correlations, in the assertion of the identity of the human soul
(a ̄tman) with that ofbrahman(neuter) in such famous sentences as tat tvam asi
(ChU 6.10.3, Brereton 1986).
Many facets of the newly introduced concepts still are in need of detailed
study, e.g. that of a scale on which one’s deeds are weighed and other
Iranian/Zoroastrian/(S ́aka?) concepts. However, the often repeated conviction
that it was the Ks.atriyas who introduced the karmaconcept is far-fetched
(Horsch 1966, Olivelle 1996: xxxiv). The mentioning of the topic by a king, a
god (Varun.a), or Ya ̄jñavalkya’s secretive conference rather are literarydevices
(Witzel 1997a) which merely underline the importanceof the theme. Using a
woman, Ga ̄rgı ̄, in BA ̄U 3 has similar effect as women usually do not appear in
public assemblies of learned disputation and when they do so, they stand out.
The other prominent woman in BA ̄U, Maitreyı ̄, quite untypically hadlearnt
Brahmanical lore. It is only to her that Ya ̄jñavalkya speaks about eschatology
(BA ̄U 4.5.15). Similarly, the idea that it was the Jainas, the local aboriginal
people, etc. who “invented” these ideas is, of course nothing more than an
admission of ignorance (O’Flaherty 1981), as there simply are no early records
of the Jainas and even less of the aboriginal inhabitants. Rather, later Vedic
thought quite naturally led to this stage, and to a whole range of more or less
contemporary and quite diverse points of view, as discussed in the Pali canon
(Dı ̄ghanika ̄ya 2).
Why did these developments take place precisely at this moment, and in this
area of Northern India (Kosala, E. Uttar Pradesh, and Videha, N. Bihar)? The
breakthrough is similar to the more or less contemporary ones elsewhere – even
if Jaspers’ idea of an “axial age” suffers from some severe incongruencies in the
actual time frame. Indeed, external influence is not likely in Bihar, unless one
posits some Iranian influence (see above): after all, Zoroastrianism first stressed
individual decision making: one had to chose between “good” and “evil” and had
to face a last judgment after death.
vedas and upanis.ads 85