Karman (Karma)

KARMAN (KARMA). - In the Rgveda (v. VEDA) the word k., "the work" par excellence, designates the sacrificial rite and the fruit derived from it in this and the other life. Once the faith in the omnipotence of the rite had waned, in the age of the Upanisad (v.), human work and its effect acquired importance, and they too took the name of k. Every work, good or bad, besides its natural effect, has a supersensible one in the k., the merit or demerit inherent in human actions, which adheres to the soul in a manner variously imagined by the authors of the different philosophical systems, but always with the same effect: joy or sorrow as reward or punishment of good or bad conduct. The so-called destiny of man does not depend on blind fortune, but on the k.; one is born rich and another poor, one healthy and another sick, one well-formed and another deformed through the effect of the k. of a previous existence.

The retribution of merit and demerit is not in fact exhausted in the brief period of a single life; there is always a residue of k. when death comes, and this determines rebirth in that form of existence which falls to each one in conformity with his merits: in heaven, on earth or in hell. The transmigration of souls or samsāra, in dependence on the k., exists ab aeterno, but man can escape the tormenting sequence of deaths and rebirths through liberation (mohya, nirvāṇa), which is the end toward which the religions of India tend by different paths. The first clear testimony of a faith in the k. is found in that passage of the Byhadāra-nyaka-upanīṣad (III, 2, 13), which says, referring to the conversation between Artabhaga and Yājñavalkya: "And if they spoke of anything, they spoke of action (k.); and if they exalted anything, they exalted action, because one becomes good through good actions, bad through evil ones." And further on (IV, 4, 5): "Man is all desire, and as is his decision, such is his action; as is his action, such is his fate." The term samsāra is not yet used, which appears for the first time in the later Katha-upanīṣad (I, 3, 7). In Buddhism, which denies the substantial and permanent soul, the k. cannot be an affection of the soul, and therefore one must not speak of transmigration, but of "rebirth." The k. is conceived as a transcendent force, which provides for perpetuating, beyond death, the psycho-physical existence of the deceased so that every remnant of merit or demerit may have its reward. "But the k. is inanimate," object the followers of Nyaya, "and therefore it needs to be regulated by the supreme Soul, that is, God."

Ferdinando Belloni Filippi