Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

“[…] If the amount of water at the moment of death
exceeds the amount of fire, presumably the soul as a
whole suffers the “death” of turning into water: but if the
soul is predominantly “dry”, then it escapes the “death”
of becoming water and joins the world-mass of fire”
(Kirk 1949:390, op. cit. Wheelwright 1959:79).
“One may wonder, however, how much cosmology and
theology the inhabitants of a city are likely to absorb
from sources surging at their gates”, M. L. West says,
“What we have found in Heraclitus seems to presuppose
a deeper intercourse with a more learned class of
person” (West 1971:202). Thus, the question is to what
extent the cultural exchange had a general impact
beyond the esoteric philosophers. There have been
considerable non-Greek and in particular Iranian
influences upon the theological and cosmological
systems of the later sixth and early fifth centuries, or
more precisely from 550-480 BCE (ibid:203). The
Persian wars, and in particular the attack launched by
Xerxes in 480 BCE, marked a new phase in the Greeks’
conception both of themselves and of the outside world
(Hall 1991:3). There is little evidence for a category of
“barbarians” encompassing the entire population of non-
Greeks until Asechylus’ Persae of 472 BCE (ibid:10).
Asechylus (Kraggerud 1975) expresses an Orientalism
which dichotomises the Greeks and the Others. The
process of assimilation between Greeks and Iranians was
largely completed by the sixth century BCE, “but
however much the earlier Greek philosophers in Asia
Minor may have been influenced by Zoroastrian
concepts, the mainland Greeks, at least, understood little
about them” (Hall 1991:86). The Greek writings about
the barbarians are usually an exercise in self-definition
and ethnic ascription (ibid:1).
Ethnic differences are not identical with religious and
cultural differences. There was a continuum in the
exchange of ideas particularly in religious matters
including both Hindu and Zoroastrian impulses. The
consequences of Indian-Greek relations through Persia
have to been taken seriously. Obeyesekere hesitated to
posit Indian influences on both eschatological and
soteriological levels regarding the Pyhagorean but not
the Empedoclean case, although the interconnections
were both possible and likely in other cases (but the
235
evidences are too scarce). Regarding Plotinus there are
greater indications of Indian thoughts with respect to
salvation, which broke with the Platonian apotheosis of
Reason and contemplation on the beauty of Ideal Forms.
Moreover, Indian ideas were abundant in the first
centuries of the Christian area particularly in Gnostic
thoughts, and according to his biographer Porphyry,
Plotinus “became eager to investigate the Persian
methods and the system adopted among the Indians”
(Obeyesekere 2002:302).
In India, despite the Greek influence particularly after
Alexander’s conquest, “the conclusion then must be that
from about the beginning of the first century BC,
speaking very roughly, the Greeks, or many Greeks, in
India became Indianised” (Tarn 1938:390). Whether
they became Hindus, Buddhists, or Jains are uncertain,
but “the Greeks in India may have ultimately vanished,
not because they became Eurasians, but because they
became Indians” (ibid:391). It seems therefore that the
cultural impact of the Indians on the Greeks was
stronger, more pervasive and enduring than vice-versa.
Hence it seems that there was not only a cultural and
religious exchange of ideas, but some kind of a shared
horizon of worldviews and perceptions regarding
mundane matters, but more importantly, ontological
questions. If there existed such a shared horizon, then it
could equal a kind of episteme in Foucault’s
terminology; it would certainly not erase cultural
differences, but it can explain why there is such a degree
of similarity between Indian and Greek thoughts
irrespective of who “invented” them first. It would also
give an epistemological answer to the question why the
same type of explanations originated and were accepted
as truths at the same time regarding these matters.
Although the rebirth eschatologies were working and
operating in separate and distinctive traditions, which
also explains why a karmic eschatology developed in the
Indian tradition and not the Greek, it may also explain
the flux and bricolage in the traditions which will be
more evident in the discussion of the archaeological
material in the ancient city of Taxila, now located in
Punjab. The complexity of religious traditions at Taxila
necessitates a brief introduction to Zoroastrianism in
both the past and the present