Karma and Rebirth

by Gananath Obeyesekere

With Karma and Rebirth: A Cross Cultural Study on the very first comparison of rebirth concepts across a wide range of cultures. Exploring in rich detail the beliefs of small scale indigenous societies of West Africa, Melanesia, and North America, Obeyesekere compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar and Plato. His groundbreaking and authoritiative discussion decenters the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. Gananath Obeyeskere is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is the author of among other works, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific 1997 The Work of culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (1990), The Cult of the Goddes Pattini 1984 and Medusa`s Hair: An Essay on personal symbols and Religious Experience 1984.