The origin and early history of the Indian doctrine of karma and rebirth has persistently challenged students of the Vedic tradition. However, the inability to discern this doctrine's pre-history may partly be attributed to the biases of the nineteenth century scholars who initiated, and thus greatly influenced, the modern study of the Veda. In particular, these scholars imposed a broad notion of ethics on the earliest formulations, in the Upanisads, of the karma doctrine. The imposition of this notion of ethics at once served to denigrate the thought of the Brahmana texts, which preceded the Upanisads, and which were overwhelmingly concerned with the meaning and procedures of the Vedic sacrificial rituals, while it severed the Upanisadic karma doctrine from the context of the Brahmanas.
In this study the karma doctrine, as it is first formulated in the Upanisads, is examined within the context of the thought of the Brahmanas. Particular attention is paid to the nature of the ritual world, and the theories through which the ritualist was able to identify his own self with the larger cosmos. These theories are centered in the notion of the cosmic man (Purusa, Prajapati), whose cosmogonic self-sacrifice established a paradigm for the correlation between man and cosmos. The fullest practical expression of these theories appears in the ritual of constructing the fire altar (Agnicayana), an event which, at least on a symbolic level, led the sacrificer to the realization of his identity with the cosmos.
The symbolic attainments of the ritual world give way, on the event of the sacrificer's death, to the actual attainment of an otherworldly existence. This actual attainment forms the subject of the earliest expressions of the karma doctrine. The Upanisadic karma doctrine is thus seen to represent the extension of the sacrificer's experience in the ritual world into a real and final experience in the larger cosmos.
