Short answer
Not in its hymns. Its funeral hymns send the dead to Yama (ruler of the dead) and the Fathers (the spirits of the ancestors), "in highest heaven". There they meet the merit of their deeds. None sends anyone back to be born again. Rebirth on earth is taught in the Upanishads, the Veda's last part. There a king tells a Brahmin (of the priest class) that this knowledge "did not go to any Brâhmana before you". It had belonged to the Kshatriyas, the warrior class, not to the priests who kept the hymns. The Upanishads and the Gita made the Fathers' heaven a stop on the way back to birth. The hymns' picture is nearer the Qur'an's: one life, then the dead meet their deeds, with no return. The verses cited for rebirth are answered below. Islam teaches that one life, and calls you to live it for God (﷾).
Full explanation
Where the Rig Veda's funeral hymns send the dead
The Rig Veda, the first of the four Vedas, is a collection of hymns. Its tenth book has funeral hymns, which say where the dead go. The dead man is told to go "upon the ancient pathways" of his forefathers. He is to meet Yama (the ruler of the dead) and the Fathers (the spirits of the ancestors). He is also to meet "the merit of free or ordered acts, in highest heaven". Ralph Griffith, a nineteenth-century British translator of the Rig Veda, explains those acts. They are good works and sacrifices whose merit is stored up in heaven. There the dead man is to "wear another body". Agni, the fire god, is asked not to burn him up, but to "send him on his way unto the Fathers". Agni is to "bear this man to the region of the pious". Then Agni is to send him to the Fathers again, and let him rejoin a body. Another hymn prays, "Make me immortal in that realm where dwells the King". Griffith's note names the King as Yama, the ruler of the spirits of the dead. In these hymns the dead go on to the Fathers. None of them sends a man back to a mother's womb.
“Go forth, go forth upon the ancient pathways whereon our sires of old have gone before us. There shalt thou look on both the Kings enjoying their sacred food, God Varuṇa and Yama. Meet Yama, meet the Fathers, meet the merit of free or ordered acts, in highest heaven. Leave sin and evil, seek anew thy dwelling, and bright with glory wear another body.”
“Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered. O Jâtavedas, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers. When thou hast made him ready, Jâtavedas, then do thou give him over to the Fathers. When he attains unto the life that waits him, he shall become the Deities' controller.”
“Thy portion is the goat: with heat consume him; let thy fierce flame, thy glowing splendour, burn him. With thine auspicious forms, O Jâtavedas, bear this man to the region of the pious.”
“Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jâtavedas.”
“O Pavamâna, place me in that deathless, undecaying world Wherein the light of heaven is set, and everlasting lustre shines. Flow, Indu, flow for Indra's sake. Make me immortal in that realm where dwells the King, Vivasvân's Son, Where is the secret shrine of heaven, where are those waters young and fresh. Flow, Indu, flow for Indra's sake.”
The body goes back to the elements and the earth
The same hymns say what becomes of the body. They speak of the Fathers in heaven, some "consumed by fire" and some "not cremated" (not burned). They ask that these Fathers be granted "their own body". At the funeral fire, the sun is to receive the dead man's eye and the wind his spirit (atma, breath). Griffith's note on the eye and the spirit says that like returns to like. The dead man is told to go, "as thy merit is, to earth or heaven". He may go to the waters, "if it be thy lot", and make his home in plants "with all thy members". The remains are laid in "the lap of Earth the Mother", and Yama is asked to make the dead man "an abiding-place". So the eye and the breath go back to their like in the world. And the same hymns send the man himself on to Yama and the Fathers.
“They who, consumed by fire or not cremated, joy in their offering in the midst of heaven,— Grant them, O Sovran Lord, the world of spirits and their own body, as thy pleasure wills it.”
“The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy spirit; go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven. Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members.”
“Betake thee to the lap of Earth the Mother, of Earth far-spreading, very kind and gracious. Young Dame, wool-soft unto the guerdon-giver, may she preserve thee from Destruction's bosom. Heave thyself, Earth, nor press thee downward heavily: afford him easy access, gently tending him. Cover him, as a mother wraps her skirt about her child, O Earth. Now let the heaving earth be free from motion: yea, let a thousand clods remain above him. Be they to him a home distilling fatness, here let them ever be his place of refuge. I stay the earth from thee, while over thee I place this piece of earth. May I be free from injury. Here let the Fathers keep this pillar firm for thee, and there let Yama make thee an abiding-place.”
The Upanishad's own words: knowledge no Brahmin had
The Upanishads are the last part of the Veda. When they teach the return to birth, they also tell how the teaching reached the Brahmins, the priest class. In the Chandogya Upanishad, a king, Pravahana Jaivali, asks a young Brahmin, Svetaketu, five questions. Where do men go from here, and how do they return? Where do the paths of the gods and of the fathers part? Why does that world never fill, and why is water in the fifth offering called man? Some read the king's knowledge as only a meditation on five fires. But his questions include how the dead return. So the knowledge he means includes the return itself. The boy, whose father has instructed him, cannot answer one. His father, the Brahmin Gautama, does not know any of them either. When Gautama comes to learn, the king tells him that "this knowledge did not go to any Brâhmana before you". The teaching, he says, belonged to the Kshatriyas, the warrior class, alone. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad tells the same story: this knowledge "has before now never dwelt with any Brâhmana". The Brahmins were the priests who learned, kept and recited the Veda. R. E. Hume, an American translator of the Upanishads, notes that Svetaketu had studied the Vedas for twelve years, by the same Upanishad's account. By the Upanishad's own words, the teaching of the return had not been in their keeping.
“Svetaketu Âruneya went to an assembly of the Pañkâlas. Pravâhana Gaivali said to him: 'Boy, has your father instructed you?' 'Yes, Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know to what place men go from here?' 'No, Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know how they return again?' 'No, Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know where the path of Devas and the path of the fathers diverge?' 'No, Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know why that world never becomes full?' 'No, Sir,' he replied. 'Do you know why in the fifth libation water is called Man?' 'No, Sir,' he replied. 'Then why did you say (you had been) instructed? How could anybody who did not know these things say that he had been instructed?' Then the boy went back sorrowful to the place of his father, and said: 'Though you had not instructed me, Sir, you said you had instructed me. 'That fellow of a Râganya asked me five questions, and I could not answer one of them.' The father said: 'As you have told me these questions of his, I do not know any one of them. If I knew these questions, how should I not have told you?'”
“The king was perplexed, and commanded him, saying: 'Stay with me some time.' Then he said: 'As (to what) you have said to me, Gautama, this knowledge did not go to any Brâhmana before you, and therefore this teaching belonged in all the worlds to the Kshatra class alone.”
“The king said: 'Do not be offended with us, neither you nor your forefathers, because this knowledge has before now never dwelt with any Brâhmana. But I shall tell it to you, for who could refuse you when you speak thus?”
Writes that in the Rig Veda there is no trace of metempsychosis, and that the Chandogya's story (5.3) confirms it: Svetaketu, who by the same Upanishad's account (6.1.2) had spent twelve years studying the Vedas, and his father and teacher Gautama had never heard of the doctrine, and the text states that it had always belonged to the Kshatriyas. In the Rig Veda, he says, the belief about the end was a personal immortality in the paradise of the gods. After what he calls, quoting Hopkins, 'a preliminary sign of the doctrine of metempsychosis in the Atharva-Veda', the notion 'first makes its definite appearance in the Satapatha Brahmana'. In a note he adds that a native commentator of later times thought he discovered rebirth in Rig Veda 1.164.32, reading bahu-prajah as 'subject to many births', and he refers to Monier Williams for a refutation.
The Fathers' heaven becomes a stop on the way back
The Upanishad's teaching also changes what the hymns say of the dead. In the hymns, those who offer sacrifices and gifts go to the Fathers and meet their merit in highest heaven. In the Chandogya, those who live by "sacrifices, works of public utility, and alms" go to the world of the fathers and the moon. They stay "till their (good) works are consumed". Then they come back through rain and plants to a womb. The Bhagavad Gita, in which the god Krishna teaches, says the same of those who follow the three Vedas. They drink the Soma, a sacred drink offered in the sacrifices. They reach "the holy world of the lord of gods", and "enter the mortal world when (their) merit is exhausted". They obtain "going and coming". The Rig Veda prayed to be made immortal in Yama's realm. The later books send the same sacrificers back from heaven. A. A. Macdonell, an Oxford professor of Sanskrit, calls the Chandogya's scheme a double retribution. Its stay in the next world, he says, is a survival of the old Vedic belief. This shows what changed. It does not by itself prove the later teaching false. The Qur'an settles that, below.
“Those who know the three (branches of) knowledge, who drink the Soma juice, whose sins are washed away, offer sacrifices and pray to me for a passage into heaven; and reaching the holy world of the lord of gods, they enjoy in the celestial regions the celestial pleasures of the gods. And having enjoyed that great heavenly world, they enter the mortal world when (their) merit is exhausted. Thus those who wish for objects of desire, and resort to the ordinances of the three (Vedas), obtain (as the fruit) going and coming. To those men who worship me, meditating on me and on no one else, and who are constantly devoted, I give new gifts and preserve what is acquired by them.”
Writes that in the Vedic view the spirit of the dead went on the path trodden by the fathers to the realm of eternal light, and found them in the highest heaven with Yama, king of the dead; heaven was gained above all by those who gave liberal sacrificial gifts to priests. The theory of transmigration, he says, is developed in the oldest Upanishads. Its earliest form is in the Shatapatha Brahmana, where being born again and dying repeatedly does not go beyond the next world; the Upanishads turn it into transmigration by supposing rebirth to take place in this world. In the Chandogya the householder who has performed sacrifice and good works goes by the path of the Fathers to the moon, stays until the consequences of his actions are exhausted, and returns to earth to be born again. Macdonell calls this a double retribution, first in the next world and then by transmigration in this, and says the first is a survival of the old Vedic belief about the future life. He notes that the last book of the Shatapatha Brahmana forms an Aranyaka, whose six concluding chapters are the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, and that the Brihadaranyaka's account of the return (6.2.15-16) is similar to the Chandogya's.
“'But they who living in a village practise (a life of) sacrifices, works of public utility, and alms, they go to the smoke, from smoke to night, from night to the dark half of the moon, from the dark half of the moon to the six months when the sun goes to the south. But they do not reach the year. 'From the months they go to the world of the fathers, from the world of the fathers to the ether, from the ether to the moon. That is Soma, the king. Here they are loved (eaten) by the Devas, yes, the Devas love (eat) them. 'Having dwelt there, till their (good) works are consumed, they return again that way as they came, to the ether, from the ether to the air. Then the sacrificer, having become air, becomes smoke, having become smoke, he becomes mist, 'Having become mist, he becomes a cloud, having become a cloud, he rains down. Then he is born as rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum and beans. From thence the escape is beset with most difficulties. For whoever the persons may be that eat the food, and beget offspring, he henceforth becomes like unto them.”
| Text | What it says |
|---|---|
| Rig Veda funeral hymns | To Yama and the Fathers, in highest heaven; none sends the dead back to birth |
| Chandogya Upanishad | To the world of the fathers until their works are spent, then back to a womb |
| Bhagavad Gita | To heaven, then back to the mortal world when merit runs out |
| The Qur'an | One life, a barrier, then the meeting with one's deeds; no return |
The Hindu case: rebirth is taught in the Veda
Hindu teachers hold that rebirth (punarjanam) is the teaching of the Veda itself. The Upanishads belong to the shruti, the revealed layer, and are called Vedanta, which means the end of the Veda. The Chandogya Upanishad teaches that those who live by sacrifice and alms go by the path of the fathers to the moon. From there they come back through rain and plants to be born again. The Bhagavad Gita says the self casts off old bodies and takes others, as a man changes his clothes. In 1893 Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk, spoke at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He said the Vedas declare that man is a spirit who had a past. Death, he said, is only a change from one body to another. Many Hindus also count the Brahmanas, the prose books of ritual, as Veda. The Shatapatha Brahmana already speaks of coming "to life again" after death. Some teachers find the seed in the Rig Veda's hymns too. Swami Dayananda founded the Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement. He opened his chapter on rebirth with a prayer of the Rig Veda: "Give us our sight again". Others cite lines of the funeral hymns, and a verse of the riddle hymn 1.164. In the reading of Sayana, a fourteenth-century commentator, it speaks of one "subject to many births". The rows at the end of this page answer each of these.
“'But they who living in a village practise (a life of) sacrifices, works of public utility, and alms, they go to the smoke, from smoke to night, from night to the dark half of the moon, from the dark half of the moon to the six months when the sun goes to the south. But they do not reach the year. 'From the months they go to the world of the fathers, from the world of the fathers to the ether, from the ether to the moon. That is Soma, the king. Here they are loved (eaten) by the Devas, yes, the Devas love (eat) them. 'Having dwelt there, till their (good) works are consumed, they return again that way as they came, to the ether, from the ether to the air. Then the sacrificer, having become air, becomes smoke, having become smoke, he becomes mist, 'Having become mist, he becomes a cloud, having become a cloud, he rains down. Then he is born as rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum and beans. From thence the escape is beset with most difficulties. For whoever the persons may be that eat the food, and beget offspring, he henceforth becomes like unto them.”
“As a man, casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones, so the embodied (self) casting off old bodies, goes to others and new ones.”
“Am I, then, nothing but a combination of matter and material substances? The Vedas declare "No," I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I will not die. Here am I in this body, and when it will fail, still I will go on living, and also I had a past.”
“Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of center from one body to another. The present is determined by our past actions, and the future will be by the present; that it will go on evolving up or reverting back from birth to birth and death to death.”
“And they who so know this, or they who do this holy work, come to life again when they have died, and, coming to life, they come to immortal life. But they who do not know this, or do not do this holy work, come to life again when they die, and they become the food of him (Death) time after time.”
Swami Dayananda, founder of the Arya Samaj, opens the chapter of his Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika on rebirth (atha punarjanmavishayah) with Rig Veda 10.59.6-7, the prayer "Give us our sight again, O Asunîti". His Sanskrit comment says that in these and the following mantras former births and rebirths are made known, and he reads the prayer as asking God for the senses, breath and body in the next birth.
“Give us not up as prey to death, O Soma: still let us look upon the Sun arising. Let our old age with passing days be kindly. Let Nirṛiti depart to distant places. O Asunîti, keep the soul within us, and make the days we have to live yet longer. Grant that we still may look upon the sunlight: strengthen thy body with the oil we bring thee. Give us our sight again, O Asunîti, give us again our breath and our enjoyment. Long may we look upon the Sun uprising: O Anumati, favour thou and bless us. May Earth restore to us our vital spirit, may Heaven the Goddess and mid-air restore it. May Soma give us once again our body, and Pûshan show the Path of peace and comfort.”
“He who has made (this state of things) does not comprehend it: he who has beheld it, has it also verily hidden (from him): he, whilst yet enveloped in his mother's womb, is subject to many births, and has entered upon evil.”
One life, then the meeting with one's deeds
The Qur'an teaches one life in this world, then death, a barrier, and the resurrection. When death comes to a man who neglected doing good, he begs to be sent back. He is told "By no means!" Before the dead stands a barrier (barzakh) until the Day they are raised. Of the generations destroyed before, the Qur'an says, "Not to them will they return". Every one of them will be brought before God (﷾) to be judged. Man is made from the earth, returned to it, and brought out of it "once again". Then every soul sees its deeds, down to the weight of an atom. The hymns know no Day of Judgement, and their heaven is not the Qur'an's Paradise. But they share its shape: one life, and no coming back to be born again. In this, the Rig Veda's funeral hymns are closer to the Qur'an than the later teaching of rebirth. And the Qur'an tells every reader what to do with that one life: turn to God (﷾) now, before you meet your deeds.
“(In Falsehood will they be) Until, when death comes to one of them, he says: "O my Lord! send me back (to life),- "In order that I may work righteousness in the things I neglected." - "By no means! It is but a word he says."- Before them is a Partition till the Day they are raised up.”
“See they not how many generations before them we destroyed? Not to them will they return: But each one of them all - will be brought before Us (for judgment).”
“From the (earth) did We create you, and into it shall We return you, and from it shall We bring you out once again.”
“Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it! And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it.”
The replies, answered
Rig Veda 10.16.3 — Mandala 10, Hymn 16, verse 3
“The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy spirit; go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven. Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members.”
Cited for
The funeral hymn tells the dead man to go, "as thy merit is, to earth or heaven". So his merit decides where he goes next: that is karma. It sends him to the waters and tells him, "make thine home in plants". That is the very path the Upanishad describes, through rain and plants to another birth. The seed of karma and rebirth is already in the Rig Veda.
The response
The stanza first sends each part to its like. The sun is to receive the dead man's eye, and the wind his spirit (atma, breath). Griffith's note reads, "let like return to like". As Macdonell suggests, the hymn of the cosmic Man may give the pattern. There the sun was born from his eye, and the wind from his breath. Griffith renders the next words "go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven". John Muir was a nineteenth-century Scottish scholar of Sanskrit, and Griffith's note cites him. He translates the words: "Go to the sky, and to the earth, according to (the) nature (of thy several parts)". Read either way, the words name earth and sky, not a womb. The stanza says nothing of being born again as another person. The very next stanza asks Agni to "bear this man to the region of the pious". The same hymn sends him to the Fathers three times. Where the hymns speak of merit again, the dead man meets it with Yama and the Fathers, "in highest heaven". Macdonell calls the eye and breath going to the sun and wind an incidental fancy. The soul's going to the waters or the plants, he grants, "may contain the germs of the theory". A germ is not the teaching. In another hymn, a spirit that went "to the waters and the plants" is called back. It returns to the same man, "that thou mayst live and sojourn here". The teaching itself, a return through rain and plants to a womb, is what the Upanishad says had not gone to any Brahmin before.
Where it lands — The stanza returns eye and breath to their like, and at most holds a germ of the later idea. It sends the man to earth or heaven, and the same hymn sends him to the Fathers. It does not teach rebirth.
Rig Veda 10.16.5 — Mandala 10, Hymn 16, verse 5
“Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him who, offered in thee, goes with our oblations. Wearing new life let him increase his offspring: let him rejoin a body, Jâtavedas.”
Cited for
"Let him rejoin a body": after death the dead man takes a body again. That is rebirth, stated in the Rig Veda's own funeral hymn.
The response
The same verse says where he goes: "Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him". The Sanskrit word for "to the Fathers" can also mean "from the Fathers". But the same hymn uses the same word when it asks Agni to "give him over to the Fathers", where only "to" makes sense. The body he rejoins is worn among the Fathers. The hymn to Yama says the same: meet the Fathers "in highest heaven", "seek anew thy dwelling" (punar astam ehi), and "wear another body" there. And the hymns ask that the Fathers in heaven, burnt or not burnt, be granted "their own body". Griffith's note explains the verse's words about offspring as "when he becomes one of the Fathers". He also allows another rendering of its last words: "let life rejoin his body". Macdonell cites this very verse to show that the Vedic life after death is bodily: the body shares in the other world. He reads the "home" (astam) of the hymn to Yama as the return home to the Fathers and Yama in the highest heaven. A body in heaven among the Fathers is not a birth from a mother on earth.
Where it lands — The body is rejoined among the Fathers in heaven, as the other funeral hymns also say. It is not a birth on earth.
Rig Veda 1.164.32 — Mandala 1, Hymn 164, verse 32 (H. H. Wilson's translation)
“He who has made (this state of things) does not comprehend it: he who has beheld it, has it also verily hidden (from him): he, whilst yet enveloped in his mother's womb, is subject to many births, and has entered upon evil.”
Cited for
The Rig Veda itself speaks of the soul "subject to many births". Still in his mother's womb, he is born many times and falls into misery. The commentator Sayana read the verse so, and Wilson translated it so. The Veda knew rebirth.
The response
That rendering rests on one reading of one word, bahuprajah. Griffith translates it "source of much life". His note takes the verse as a riddle about lightning, the cause of rain, "with his countless offspring the fertilising rain-drops". Wilson, a nineteenth-century translator of the Rig Veda, himself noted that it is Sayana's philosophical interpretation that makes the subject man. The etymologists' reading, which Sayana also cites, "is probably more consistent with the intention of the original". Long before Sayana, Yaska's Nirukta gave two readings. The Nirukta is an early Indian book on the meaning of words. Its translator calls it "the oldest Indian treatise on etymology, philology, and semantics". The ascetics (men who had given up worldly life) read, "People having many children fall into calamity". The etymologists (scholars of word origins) read, "It refers to the phenomenon of rain". Sarup's notes report one more reading from the ascetics' school: the father himself is "involved in transmigration". Sarup calls that reading "an admonition to lead a celibate life". It is one school's gloss. The etymologists' reading, which Wilson thought nearer the original, has no rebirth in it. R. E. Hume, who finds "no trace of metempsychosis" in the Rig Veda, says the later commentator "thought he discovered" it here. A riddle whose sense was already disputed in Yaska's day cannot outweigh what the funeral hymns say plainly.
Where it lands — The rebirth reading is one disputed reading of a riddle verse. The oldest interpreters also read it of rain, and the funeral hymns speak plainly.
Rig Veda 10.59.4-7 — Mandala 10, Hymn 59, verses 4-7
“Give us not up as prey to death, O Soma: still let us look upon the Sun arising. Let our old age with passing days be kindly. Let Nirṛiti depart to distant places. O Asunîti, keep the soul within us, and make the days we have to live yet longer. Grant that we still may look upon the sunlight: strengthen thy body with the oil we bring thee. Give us our sight again, O Asunîti, give us again our breath and our enjoyment. Long may we look upon the Sun uprising: O Anumati, favour thou and bless us. May Earth restore to us our vital spirit, may Heaven the Goddess and mid-air restore it. May Soma give us once again our body, and Pûshan show the Path of peace and comfort.”
Cited for
The Rig Veda prays, "Give us our sight again, O Asunîti, give us again our breath". It asks that Soma "give us once again our body". Swami Dayananda opened his chapter on rebirth with these verses. The riddle hymn also speaks of "the Immortal born the brother of the mortal", going "Back, forward".
The response
Read the whole hymn: it prays that a living man's life go on. It asks, "Give us not up as prey to death", and "make the days we have to live yet longer". It prays, "Let our old age with passing days be kindly", and "Long may we look upon the Sun uprising". Griffith's note, quoting Sayana through Wilson, reads its first line as a prayer that "the life of Subandhu be augmented". So sight and breath "again" means this life going on, not a new one. The hymn before it calls back the spirit of a man at the point of death, "that thou mayst live and sojourn here". His spirit, it says, had gone "to the waters and the plants", and Griffith's note compares the funeral hymn. So in the Rig Veda a spirit may go to the waters and plants and come back to the same man, alive. Neither hymn speaks of a womb or a new birth. Of the Immortal going "Back, forward", Griffith notes that the stanza "appears to refer to the Sun in his daily course". A prayer for a man's life and a riddle about the sun do not teach rebirth.
Where it lands — These verses pray for a man's life to go on, or speak of the sun's course. None speaks of being born again.
Rig Veda 10.14.7-8 — Mandala 10, Hymn 14, verses 7-8
“Go forth, go forth upon the ancient pathways whereon our sires of old have gone before us. There shalt thou look on both the Kings enjoying their sacred food, God Varuṇa and Yama. Meet Yama, meet the Fathers, meet the merit of free or ordered acts, in highest heaven. Leave sin and evil, seek anew thy dwelling, and bright with glory wear another body.”
Cited for
The hymn sends the dead to the Fathers, but it never says they will not be born again. The hymns are prayers and praises, not a full statement of doctrine, and silence is not denial. They describe the first stage, the stay with the Fathers, and leave the return unsaid. The later books made plain what the hymns left unsaid.
The response
The funeral hymns are not silent about death: they are where the Rig Veda says what becomes of the dead. The dead go the ancient way of the forefathers to Yama and the Fathers. They meet the merit of their acts "in highest heaven", and wear a body there. Yama is asked to make the dead man "an abiding-place". That is a teaching, not a silence. The hymns call that world "deathless, undecaying" and pray to be made immortal there. The Upanishad's stay lasts only "till their (good) works are consumed". The later teaching does not fill a gap in the hymns; it changes what they say. The Upanishad confirms it from its own side: the knowledge of how the dead return "has before now never dwelt with any Brâhmana". Scholars of the Veda agree. Macdonell finds "no indication" of transmigration in the hymns, or even in the later Vedas. Hume finds "no trace of metempsychosis" in the Rig Veda.
Where it lands — The hymns speak plainly about the dead and send them to a deathless world, not back to birth. The argument does not rest on silence.
Chandogya Upanishad 5.10.3-6 — chapter 5, section 10, verses 3-6
“'But they who living in a village practise (a life of) sacrifices, works of public utility, and alms, they go to the smoke, from smoke to night, from night to the dark half of the moon, from the dark half of the moon to the six months when the sun goes to the south. But they do not reach the year. 'From the months they go to the world of the fathers, from the world of the fathers to the ether, from the ether to the moon. That is Soma, the king. Here they are loved (eaten) by the Devas, yes, the Devas love (eat) them. 'Having dwelt there, till their (good) works are consumed, they return again that way as they came, to the ether, from the ether to the air. Then the sacrificer, having become air, becomes smoke, having become smoke, he becomes mist, 'Having become mist, he becomes a cloud, having become a cloud, he rains down. Then he is born as rice and corn, herbs and trees, sesamum and beans. From thence the escape is beset with most difficulties. For whoever the persons may be that eat the food, and beget offspring, he henceforth becomes like unto them.”
Cited for
The Upanishads are shruti, as fully revealed as the hymns, and they are the Veda's own end and crown (Vedanta). If the Upanishads teach rebirth, the Veda teaches rebirth. The king's teaching was secret, kept for the worthy, not missing from the Veda.
The response
The Upanishads do teach it, and this page quotes them. The question is whether the Veda taught it before them, and the Upanishad answers that itself. This knowledge "did not go to any Brâhmana before you", and belonged to the Kshatriyas alone. And the knowledge in question includes "how they return again". If it was a secret, it was kept from the Brahmins, whose calling was to learn and teach the Veda. The Brahmin boy who had been instructed knew none of it, and neither did his father. By the same Upanishad's account the boy had studied the Vedas for twelve years. A teaching the Veda's own teachers had never received was not in the Veda they received. And the Upanishad's teaching changes the hymns'. The sacrificers whom the hymns send to the Fathers now come back from the moon when their works are used up. Calling both layers shruti does not make them say the same thing. The Qur'an gives one account throughout: one life, a barrier, one resurrection and one judgement.
Where it lands — The Upanishads teach rebirth, but by their own words no Brahmin had received it before. And it changes what the hymns say of the dead.
Shatapatha Brahmana 10.4.3.10 — kanda 10, adhyaya 4, brahmana 3, kandika 10
“And they who so know this, or they who do this holy work, come to life again when they have died, and, coming to life, they come to immortal life. But they who do not know this, or do not do this holy work, come to life again when they die, and they become the food of him (Death) time after time.”
Cited for
The Veda is not only the hymns. Many Hindus count the Brahmanas as Veda too, and the Shatapatha Brahmana already teaches rebirth. Those who lack the knowledge, it says, "come to life again when they die". They become the food of Death "time after time".
The response
This passage of the Shatapatha does speak of coming to life again after death. But it does not say where. Those who know "come to immortal life"; those who do not die again and again. Macdonell calls this the earliest form of the theory. But he adds that the notion "does not go beyond repeated births and deaths in the next world". It was transformed in the Upanishads, he writes, "by supposing rebirth to take place in this world". Hume agrees that the notion first appears definitely in this Brahmana, not in the hymns. This passage names no return through rain and plants, no womb and no birth among men. That return is taught in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which forms the last chapters of the same Brahmana. And there the king says this knowledge "has before now never dwelt with any Brâhmana". So this passage does not show that the Veda taught rebirth on earth. It shows the idea still taking shape, in a book later than the hymns.
Where it lands — This Brahmana passage speaks of dying again in the next world, not of birth again on earth. The return to earth comes in the Upanishad at the Brahmana's end, which says no Brahmin had it before.
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.2.13 — chapter 3, section 2, verse 13
“'Yâgñavalkya,' he said, 'when the speech of this dead person enters into the fire, breath into the air, the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, the hearing into space, into the earth the body, into the ether the self, into the shrubs the hairs of the body, into the trees the hairs of the head, when the blood and the seed are deposited in the water, where is then that person?' Yâgñavalkya said: 'Take my hand, my friend. We two alone shall know of this; let this question of ours not be (discussed) in public.' Then these two went out and argued, and what they said was karman (work), what they praised was karman, viz. that a man becomes good by good work, and bad by bad work.”
Cited for
The Kshatriya story is not the whole Upanishad. In the Brihadaranyaka, the Brahmin Yajnavalkya teaches that a man becomes good by good work and bad by bad work. So the Brahmins knew karma, and the king was praising his own class.
The response
Look at how Yajnavalkya answers. He is asked where the person is when his eye has gone into the sun and his body into the earth. He replies: "Take my hand, my friend. We two alone shall know of this; let this question of ours not be (discussed) in public." Only in private do the two speak of karma. So even in this Upanishad, karma is a teaching kept from the public, not the known doctrine of the hymns. Macdonell finds "the beginnings of the doctrine of karma" here, in the Brihadaranyaka, not in the hymns. The Upanishad also does not say that no Brahmin ever spoke of deeds. It says the knowledge of where the dead go and how they return had not gone to any Brahmin before. Nor is that the king's boast alone. The Upanishad tells the story as true, and shows the Brahmin father and son knowing none of the answers.
Where it lands — Yajnavalkya speaks of karma only in private, and in an Upanishad, not in the hymns. That does not show the hymns taught rebirth.
Bhagavad Gita 2:22 — chapter 2, verse 22
“As a man, casting off old clothes, puts on others and new ones, so the embodied (self) casting off old bodies, goes to others and new ones.”
Cited for
The Gita teaches rebirth plainly: the self casts off old bodies and takes new ones, as a man changes his clothes. Rebirth is the teaching of Hindu scripture.
The response
The Gita does teach rebirth, and this page does not deny it. But the Gita, a smriti text, does not show that the hymns taught it. It shows the change instead. Of those who know "the three (branches of) knowledge" and drink the Soma, it says they reach "the holy world of the lord of gods". They "enter the mortal world when (their) merit is exhausted". Those who follow the three Vedas obtain "going and coming". The Rig Veda prayed to be placed in a "deathless, undecaying world" and made immortal in Yama's realm. The Gita turns the sacrificers' heaven into a stay that ends in a return. That is not the Veda teaching rebirth; it is a later book changing the Veda's hope.
Where it lands — The Gita teaches rebirth, but it turns the Vedic heaven into a stay that ends.
Bhagavad Gita 9:20-22 — chapter 9, verses 20-22
“Those who know the three (branches of) knowledge, who drink the Soma juice, whose sins are washed away, offer sacrifices and pray to me for a passage into heaven; and reaching the holy world of the lord of gods, they enjoy in the celestial regions the celestial pleasures of the gods. And having enjoyed that great heavenly world, they enter the mortal world when (their) merit is exhausted. Thus those who wish for objects of desire, and resort to the ordinances of the three (Vedas), obtain (as the fruit) going and coming. To those men who worship me, meditating on me and on no one else, and who are constantly devoted, I give new gifts and preserve what is acquired by them.”
Cited for
The hymns belong to the ritual part of the Veda (karma-kanda). Their heaven is the reward of sacrifice, and the wise always knew it was not the final goal. The Gita says so: those who follow the three Vedas come back when their merit is used up. The Upanishads give the higher knowledge to those ready for it. Two teachings for two kinds of seeker are no contradiction.
The response
The hymns do not call their heaven a lower step. They pray, "place me in that deathless, undecaying world", and "Make me immortal in that realm". They send the dead man to meet his merit "in highest heaven", and ask Yama to make him "an abiding-place". Nothing in them says the stay will end. The ranking of that heaven as a lower goal comes from the Upanishads and the Gita. Those are the very books whose teaching is in question. So the reply reads the hymns through the later books; it does not find rebirth in the hymns. A world the hymns call deathless cannot also be a stay that ends. The later books do not add a step to the hymns' promise; they change it. The Qur'an gives one account of the dead from first to last: one life, a barrier, then one resurrection (23:99-100).
Where it lands — The hymns promise a deathless world. Calling it the lower goal changes their teaching; it does not complete it.
Qur'an 2:28 — Surat al-Baqara (The Cow), verse 28
“How can ye reject the faith in Allah?- seeing that ye were without life, and He gave you life; then will He cause you to die, and will again bring you to life; and again to Him will ye return.”
Cited for
Islam has a return too. The Qur'an says God gave you life, will make you die, and "will again bring you to life". In the hereafter people say, "twice hast Thou given us Life". Islam also has a stay after death, the barzakh, just as the Upanishad has the world of the fathers. And the Qur'an itself tells of the dead raised to life in this world. Coming back to life after death is a kind of rebirth.
The response
The Qur'an counts the lives, and the count ends. You were without life and He gave you life; He will make you die and bring you to life again. That is two lives in all: this one and the resurrection. The disbelievers give the same count in 40:11. Ibn Kathir reports Ibn Mas'ud's explanation that the verse is like 2:28. He calls this the correct view beyond doubt, and rejects readings that would count three lives. The dying man who asks to return is told "By no means!" Of the destroyed generations the Qur'an says, "Not to them will they return". In 40:11 the plea "Is there any way out?" is a plea to be returned to the world, as Ibn Kathir explains. It is refused. The barzakh is a barrier against return, not a road back. Before the dead "is a Partition till the Day they are raised up". It ends in the resurrection and the judgement, never in a womb. The Qur'an does tell of a few raised in this world by a miracle. God (﷾) caused one man to die for a hundred years, "then raised him up (again)". To a people who fled from death, God (﷾) said "Die", then "restored them to life". Of Moses' people He says, "We raised you up after your death". Jesus quickened the dead "by Allah's leave". Each came back in his own body, to the same life, as a sign of God's (﷾) power. None was born again as another person, to be repaid for a past life. Rebirth is a return to this world, again and again, in body after body, to reap past deeds. The resurrection is one raising, once, for judgement.
Where it lands — The Qur'an teaches one resurrection to judgement, not a cycle of births. No one is born again into this world to be repaid for a past life.
Perspectives
Rebirth is the Veda's teaching (Vedanta)
The Upanishads are shruti, revealed scripture, and the end of the Veda. They teach where the soul goes at death and how it returns to a body by its deeds, until knowledge sets it free (moksha). The Gita teaches the same. As Vivekananda told the World's Parliament of Religions, the Vedas declare that man is a spirit who had a past. Death is only a change from one body to another.
The Vedanta tradition, and modern teachers such as Swami Vivekananda
The Chandogya Upanishad teaches that those who live by sacrifice and charity go to the moon. When their good works are used up, they return to be born.
Rebuttal
Grant that the Chandogya, which Hindus count as shruti, teaches a return. The same Upanishad says this knowledge "did not go to any Brâhmana before you". And it turns the hymns' deathless heaven into a stay that ends. When two layers of one scripture disagree, the Qur'an settles it: the dead are not sent back (23:99-100).
The Gita says the self in the body throws off old bodies and goes into new ones. It is like a man putting on new clothes.
Rebuttal
Grant that the Gita teaches it. But it turns the hymns' "deathless, undecaying world" into a stay that ends "when (their) merit is exhausted". That changes the hymns' hope; it does not show they taught rebirth. The Qur'an answers whether rebirth is true: the dead are not sent back (23:99-100).
Vivekananda spoke to the 1893 Parliament of Religions. He said the Vedas teach that man is a spirit who had a past, and that death is a change of body.
Rebuttal
Vivekananda meant the Veda as Vedanta reads it, with the Upanishads. The hymns themselves send the dead to the Fathers "in highest heaven", never into a womb. And the Upanishad says its teaching of the return had not gone to any Brahmin before.
The Shatapatha Brahmana says that those without the knowledge "come to life again when they die". Time after time they become the food of Death.
Rebuttal
Grant that the Shatapatha speaks of coming to life again. Macdonell says the notion "does not go beyond repeated births and deaths in the next world". Birth on earth comes first in the Upanishads, he says.
The seed of rebirth in the Rig Veda
The Upanishads unfold what the hymns already hold. The funeral hymn sends the dead man to the waters and the plants, where the later path of return passes. It also prays that he rejoin a body. A verse of the riddle hymn, in Sayana's reading, speaks of one who, still in his mother's womb, is subject to many births. Swami Dayananda found former births and rebirths in a prayer of the tenth book.
Hindu readers of the hymns: Swami Dayananda; on 1.164.32, the medieval commentator Sayana
The funeral hymn sends the dead man "as thy merit is, to earth or heaven". It also sends him to the waters, and to a home in plants.
Rebuttal
Grant that the stanza names the waters and the plants. It first returns the eye to the sun and the breath to the wind. Muir reads "as thy merit is" as "according to (the) nature (of thy several parts)". Either way it names earth and sky, not a womb. The next stanza asks Agni to "bear this man to the region of the pious". At most, Macdonell says, one passage "may contain the germs of the theory".
The same hymn prays that the dead man, wearing new life, rejoin a body.
Rebuttal
Grant that he rejoins a body. The verse begins "Again, O Agni, to the Fathers send him". The same hymn says "give him over to the Fathers" in the same way. So the body is worn among the Fathers, not taken from a mother on earth.
Wilson translated Sayana's reading of Rig Veda 1.164.32. In it, the verse speaks of someone wrapped in his mother's womb who goes through many births.
Rebuttal
Grant that Sayana read it so. It is a riddle, and the Nirukta, an early Indian book on word meanings, records another reading: "It refers to the phenomenon of rain". The plain funeral hymns decide the matter.
Swami Dayananda began his chapter on rebirth with Rig Veda 10.59.6-7. He said these verses tell of earlier births and rebirths.
Rebuttal
Grant that Dayananda read it so. The hymn itself asks to "look upon the Sun arising" and to "make the days we have to live yet longer". It prays for this life to go on, not for another.
Where the academy stands
Status: Consensus
Scholars of the Veda agree that the Rig Veda does not teach rebirth. Its funeral hymns hold that fire or the grave destroys only the body, while the dead live on with Yama and the Fathers. Macdonell found no indication of the transmigration of souls even in the later Vedas. He granted only that one passage, where the soul goes to the waters or the plants, may contain its germs. Hume found no trace of metempsychosis in the Rig Veda. Both place its first definite form in the Shatapatha Brahmana, a prose book of ritual. Hume also notes, after Hopkins, an American scholar of Sanskrit, a preliminary sign of it in the Atharva Veda, the fourth Veda. Macdonell says the Brahmana's form does not go beyond repeated births and deaths in the next world. The Upanishads, he says, made it rebirth in this world. He calls the Chandogya's stay in the next world a survival of the old Vedic belief about the future life.
The Islamic perspective
Every person lives one life in this world, dies, and waits behind a barrier until the resurrection. Then all are raised once and see their own deeds. No one is born again into this world in another body. The Rig Veda's funeral hymns, which send the dead on to meet their deeds, stand nearer to this than the later teaching of rebirth. And the Upanishad itself says its teaching of the return had not gone to any Brahmin before.
The Qur'an refuses the dying man's plea to be sent back. It puts a barrier before the dead until the Day they are raised.
The Qur'an counts two lives for mankind: this one, and the resurrection. Ibn Kathir says that reading 40:11 in the light of 2:28 is the correct view.
The few people God (﷾) raised from death in this world came back in their own bodies, as signs. None was born again as someone else.
Every soul will see its deeds, down to the weight of an atom. And all will be brought before God (﷾) to be judged.
The Rig Veda's funeral hymns send the dead to Yama and the Fathers in the highest heaven. They never send them back to be born.
The Chandogya Upanishad says no Brahmin had known, before then, how the dead come back. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad agrees.