Exploring the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, this work compares their ideas with those of the ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar and Plato.
One of his country's leading anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere, provides a detailed, comprehensive study of karma, assessing how a wide range of cultures over the course of centuries have come to understand the notion of rebirth, the relationship between the living and the dead, and how different eschatologies impact ethics and mortality.
