Abstract
Hindus today often affirm a belief in evolution and avow that the Hindu tradition is entirely compatible with evolutionary theory and modern science in general. Some Hindus go so far as to claim that their ancient sages actually discovered evolution long before Darwin. Others assert that Hindu teachings go beyond modern science and can complete it, accounting not just for the evolution of the physical body but also of consciousness. In the process of making such claims, these apologists at times declare that Hinduism is the most scientific religion in the world, certainly more scientific than Christianity. Closer examination of these pronouncements reveals that evolution has many meanings. For Hindus, it often refers to the spiritual evolution of the soul via the processes of rebirth and karmic development. It is this meaning that permeates the broad claims about the compatibility of Hinduism and evolution, rather than Darwin’s notion of organic evolution, thereby obscuring deep differences. This conflation of meanings thus generates considerable tension in attempts to reconcile the two explanatory evolutionary processes, karmic and organic, despite many superficial similarities. The tensions revolve around the three major challenges that confronted Christian theologians regarding purpose, morality, and human uniqueness, although in rather different terms. To investigate these tensions, I will first look at traditional teachings about karma and rebirth, both in popular literature and more philosophical treatises, including Hindu accounts of the origin and nature of species. I will then examine colonial and postcolonial Hindu responses to modern evolutionary theory.
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Notes
- 1.
As we shall see, some Hindus view God as the overseer of karmic fruits.
- 2.
A much-expanded version of the story is found in Bhāgavata Purāṇa 5.8–14.
- 3.
See Prabhupada (n.d.-b) for a modern commentary on the power of God’s name in helping Ajāmila become Kṛṣṇa conscious and return to Godhead.
- 4.
The phrase, “dependent on karma” (karma-adhiina) is the commentator Sridhara’s gloss of “suffering” (duhhstha).
- 5.
Regarding final-thought karma, contemporary Hindu teachers emphasize the psychological element, without really explaining how it actually effects karmic outcomes. Swami Adiswarananda of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, for instance, notes: “A dying man’s next life is determined by his last thought in the present life.” Then after quoting Bhagavad Gītā 8.6, Adiswarananda explains: “And the last thought of the dying person inevitably reflects his inmost desire” (Adiswarananda n.d.). In like manner, Swami Prabhupada, in commenting on the same verse of the Gītā, makes specific reference to King Bharata: “Maharaja Bharata, although a great personality, thought of a deer at the end of his life, and so in his next life he was transferred into the body of a deer. Although as a deer he remembered his past activities, he had to accept that animal body. Of course, one’s thoughts during the course of one’s life accumulate to influence one’s thoughts at the moment of death, so this life creates one’s next life.” As a devotee of Krishna, Prabhupada finds no inconsistency between Bharata’s fate and that of Ajāmila, whose uttering of his son’s name, which happened to be a name of the Lord, was sufficient to break the karmic chain. If only Bharata had named his deer Krishna. In any case, whether any accounting of final-thought karma can accommodate individuals suffering severe dementia, or who are engaged in various sorts of daily activities with thoughts focused on their work when instantly killed (as the vaporized victims at Hiroshima were), I will leave for the reader to speculate on.
- 6.
I have followed the summary of the story in Goldman (1985: 418).
- 7.
See Roger Jackson’s essay in this volume, p. 215, regarding an alternative Buddhist view to the Rig Veda account.
- 8.
For Śaṅkara’s explanation of this process, see below, pp. 116–17.
- 9.
Halbfass refers specifically to Śaṅkara’s karmic theodicy. See also Brown 2012: 32.
- 10.
- 11.
I have discussed Sircar’s essay more fully in Brown 2012: 63–65.
- 12.
In an earlier article, I further broke down Vedic Evolutionism into the “Modern Vedic Evolutionism” of Swami Vivekananda, the “Anthropic Vedic Evolutionism” of Rabindranath Tagore, and the “Reactionary Vedic Evolutionism” of Aurobindo Ghose (Brown 2010).
- 13.
I discussed these claims, with quotations from the Satyarth Prakash, in Brown 2012: 123–24.
- 14.
I commented upon this quotation in Brown 2002: 100–101.
- 15.
The idea for this double movement of involution/evolution apparently came from the Theosophical co-founder, Madame Blavatsky (Brown 2012: 133).
- 16.
The following discussion of Vivekananda’s evolutionary ideas is based in large part on my more detailed treatment in Brown 2012: 131–54.
- 17.
Cf. Williams 1986: 47–48, 58.
- 18.
Austin B. Creel also quotes this passage in his discussion of modern Hindu philosophers who question the traditional karma ideas (1986:9).
- 19.
Aurobindo also rejected any causal link between human morality and natural disasters: “Why should earthquakes occur by some wrong movement of man? When man was not there, did not earthquakes occur?...Earthquakes are a perturbation in Nature due to some pressure of forces;… the upheavals of earth and human life are both results of a general clash or pressure of forces, one is not the cause of the other” (Aurobindo n.d.: 492–93).
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Brown, C.M. (2020). Karmic Versus Organic Evolution: The Hindu Encounter with Modern Evolutionary Science. In: Brown, C.M. (eds) Asian Religious Responses to Darwinism. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 33. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37340-5_5
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