Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

this system, and the transformation of flesh into lifegiving
waters or energies is the most important part in
death rituals. Providing society with the life-giving water
is the primordial task for the gods. It is the best
soteriology possible on earth; the perfect and eternal
salvation is in heaven.
Water in its original form is procreative and everything
has its origin in and from water. Metaphors of creation
and cosmogony get their strengths and rationale in
aquatic symbols because water is the very essence of
life. Every aspect of human life and divine interference
on earth is possible to express through water symbolism.
This vast ocean of metaphoric potential by aquatic
symbolism enables water to be the medium which
expresses everything, and anything can be understood
and explained in terms of water symbols. The religious
and cultural uses of water express essential truths of
humanity and the relation between humans and gods,
peoples’ worldviews and conceptualisations of their
gods, are products of this relation between nature,
society, and water. Therefore, “the waters symbolize the
universal sum of virtualities; they are “spring and
origin”, the reservoir of all possibilities and existences,
they precede every form and support every
creation…immersion in water signifies regression to the
preformal, reincorporation into the undifferentiated
mode of pre-existence. Emersion repeats the cosmogonic
act of formal manifestation; immersion is equivalent to a
dissolution of forms. This is why the symbolism of the
(…) I appear in the world
like a great cloud
that showers moisture upon
all the dry and withered living beings,
so that all are able to escape suffering,
gain the joy of peace and security,
the joys of this world
and the joy of nirvana.
waters implies both death and rebirth” (Eliade
1987:130). The divine character or the immanent powers
of the Water Cosmology may therefore be summed up as
follows: “From the primeval Waters arose the Plants,
from Plants all other beings, in particular the gods, men,
and cattle. Rasa, as an essence of the Waters, or as sap in
trees, is variously identified with soma, amrta [Sanskrit,
“not death”, the nectar of immortality], semen, milk,
rain, honey, mead and liquor; there is a cycle in which
the vital energy passes from heaven through the waters,
plants, cattle and other typically virile or productive
animals, and man, thence ultimately returning to the
waters” (Coomaraswamy 1931:25).
Water truly unites micro- and macro-cosm and contains
individual and cosmic soteriology. Shantideva, a revered
monk, scholar and poet who lived in India in the eight
century, explained the Bodhisattva path this way; “May
a rain of food and drink descend, To clear away the pain
of thirst and hunger, And during the eon of famine, May
I myself change into food and drink” (op. cit Kaza &
Kraft 2000:33). The divine character of rain is expressed
in the Hua-Yen Sutra; “Raining all over the earth, The
raindrops make no distinctions: So is the truths of all
Buddhas” (ibid:50). And finally, dharma – the true
nature of reality as taught by Shakyamuni Buddha – is
also compared to the beneficent rain that nourishes all
beings. In the Lotus Sutra, a Mahayana scripture
probably composed in the early third century CE, the
Dharma Rain is elaborated (ibid:45, 48):
(…) I rain down the Dharma rain,
filling the whole world,
and this single-flavoured Dharma
is practiced by each according to the individual’s power.
(…) The Law of the Buddhas
is constantly of a single flavour,
causing the many worlds
to attain a full satisfaction everywhere;
by practicing gradually and stage by stage,
all beings can gain the fruits of the way.
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