tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 54

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Atman and Mokpa
by Varuņa to the dark regions of the hell. There is an inseparable relation between the two. A man's future birth is determined by the kind of actions in his previous birth. Deussen thinks that the dark regions to which the ignorant and the vicious are sent is this one in which we live.
The Vedic hymns and sacrifices were supposed to be invested with certain inherent power from which the goodness or badness of the deeds was determined, and from that the nature of the subsequent births came to be determined. The utterance of hymns and the performance of sacrifices themselves possessed some potency of their own which ultimately was responsible for deciding the nature of the subsequent births. These actions seem to have been related particularly to the heaven and hell in the period after death. The Vedas seem to be silent over the exact mechanism of carrying the impressions of the deeds of the previous life to the subsequent. The Vedic hymns seem to have greater concern with the attainment of heaven rather than with the theory of transmigration of the soul. Bloomfield says —"This deathanew' or 're-death' (punarmộtyu) as the Hindus call it, is an exceedingly characteristic idea, but it is not yet transmigration of souls. As long as it is located entirely in the other world, and as long as it is thought possible to avoid or cure it by the ordinary expedients of sacrifice, so long as the essential character of that belief is not yet present."! It seems from the above remarks of Bloomfield that
1 Bloomfield Maurice : The Religion of the Veda, pp. 253-54.
For Private And Personal