articulated as a form of transmigration in the lower Gangetic basin around
the sixth century BCEbyYa ̄jñavalkyain the Br.hada ̄ran.yaka Upanis.ad.^12 While
there are intimations of cause and effect in the earlier Vedic ritual sequences,
agricultural perceptions may have given further impetus to the idea.
4) Burial is still practiced by certain communities indigenous to India.
It probably had its roots in agricultural imagery insofar as the body, like
a seed, was placed in a grave, or eventually, in an urn, possibly to await
rebirth.
5) Plants became analogous to human beings. In later Hindu ritual, fruits
such as the banana or coconut, and grains such as rice, often came to be
surrogates for human beings. The coconut, for example, in some later
Hindu speculation, became a surrogate for the human or for the divine:
the coconut became analogous to the human head – it had a hard shell that
must be “broken” to get at the tender interior; there were two “false” eyes
and a third eye for entry into the coconut just as with the human head; the
three lines on the shell became symbols of the bonds that keep humans from
being open to the divine, etc.
6) Duality may have intimations in agricultural settings. Unlike hunters
whose world tended to be unitary and oriented by their hunting/living
grounds, agricultural imagery tended to evoke a sense of sky that watered/
fertilized the earth. Agricultural myths of cosmogony tended to be dualistic
with a male sky impregnating female earth. The Vedic Pr.thvı ̄ (earth) and
her consort Dyaus (sky) apparently reflected this agricultural imagery. This
sort of setting may be one of the sources for later dualistic cosmological
speculation.Sa ̄m·khya, a product of the Gangetic basin, for example, posited
a dualistic cosmogony: purus.awas male, sky, spirit, the knower of the field;
prakr.tiwas matter, female, earth, the field. Cosmological speculation in India
often asked the question: is the world one (monistic) or two (dualistic)?
Dualistic imageries may have an agricultural basis.
7) Sedentary pastoral images refer to domestication and the relationship
between humans and herd. Themes of domestication abound in Hindu
mythology: there are deities such as Kr.s.n.a as cowherd who is also known
as Govinda (lord of cattle). In the south the term for temple (ko ̄yil) is etymo-
logically related to that of cattle-pen (ko ̄is cattle); most Hindu deities have
their vehicles (vahanas), many of them animals that have been domesticated.
This pastoral imagery provides the metaphor for the role of deity over nature
and the human spirit over passion.
In sum, what is sometimes called “folk” religion has some of its roots
in the agricultural settings of India. The conclusion is difficult to resist:
that these imageries of agriculture have influenced the way in which some
forms of religion have developed on the subcontinent, not only in the
later millennia BCE, but also throughout history even to the present. The
Sources of Indian Religion 19