Author affiliations Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy , Bucharest, Calea 13 Septembrie nr. 13, 050711 , Bucharest , Romania
Author biographies Eugen Ciurtin (b. 1975, PhD 2003), Indologist and historian of religions, is currently secretary of the Scientific Council of the Institute for the History of Religions (Romanian Academy), Bucharest. He serves as editor of its international periodicals Archaeus. Studies in the History of Religions (f. 1997) and StudiaAsiatica. International Journal of Asian Studies (f. 2000) as well as Publications Officer of the European Association for the Study of Religions.
摘要
This article supplements Jens Schlieter's discussion of the cognitive metaphor of a karmic bank-account, adding selected points on karma monetary/fiscal metaphors as preserved chiefly in Pāli and Sanskrit sources. It explores various strands of the history of South Asian religions where distinct economic metaphors for karma come closer to the late ‘bank-account of karma’: i.e., the Vedic ‘three debts,’ a Hindu concept of God as accountant, the varieties of weighing the (mis)deeds, the Buddhist monastic status of debt and fiscal transactions, the equivalence of karma and debt as discussed by Madhyamaka thinkers, and others. While endorsing Schlieter's point, it also takes into account such modern Western sources as early theosophical discourse and ‘Protestant Buddhism.’
