>>14733439
Kiron Krishnan (भगवतीश्वर शर्मन्), A Vedic Brahmin; A Vedic scholar, translator and interpreter.
Answered Jul 3 2017 · Author has 1.4k answers and 3m answer views
CAUTION : Highly disturbing facts and sentences ahead.
No, not Vedas. Brahmanas do try to hint such a possibility some places. (among hinting thousands of their unconnected rants) Though interestingly, Brahmanas postulate that rebirth in (a different) world would be for the ones who do good deeds, others die and perish into hell of Yama, unable to live again. (God, they just loved life as Vedic people did) Upanishads are the first to really touch the subject as we know today. Even then, one of the oldest accounts tells the doctrine to be a thing believed by Kshatriyas. It is obvious that Kshatriyas who should be willing to donate their life for the nation, shall be believing in such a theory. But, from the Vedic era beliefs, esp. the Rigvedic, there has been no such hint of a belief in a “ghostly” rebirth among the poetic seers. But, considering the Kshatriya-created Shramanic religions and later Hinduism that was heavily influenced by these philosophies, it must have been that such a philosophy should have existed as a school of thought among some Aryans at the Vedic age, though their religion has had no voice in Vedas.
The Vedic recycling is beautifully explained in Rigveda - once dead, one’s “life” is indeed transferred to new system, in earth, sky or waters. (RV 10.16.3) But is that “reincarnation”? No, it is a mere recycling of the constituents of the body, that become the life-promoting cells in another part in this earth. In the cremated place of the dead person, the plants kiyāmbu, pākadūrvā and the vyalkaśa are asked to grow, and in the chill environment, the lady frog is asked to enjoy again. (10.16.14) There is no reason for us to believe that this birth has anything got to do with karma, or karmic recycling of “soul”.
The life once lost, is lost forever to “Time”. (Yama) There, these “souls” continue to inspire and instigate the humans of later generation. There is no “physical ghost”; thus we hear absolutely no scary nonsense about unfulfilled souls attacking people physically as ghosts, in Vedas. No, Vedas never mention ghosts at all. Ghosts are not physical, they are spiritual. Inside your mind. In order to give the satisfaction to the human minds, the funeral practices were did, so that the soul would be sent satisfactorily to Yamaloka, and that later, human minds won’t be haunted by “ghosts”. The philosophy of Vedas is between the hard-core punishment-reward theory of Abrahamic religions, and the highly pessimistic Shramanic karmic rebirth, which goes on to depict human life in the world as one of the bad states from which liberation is required. (cont.)