Saṃsāra (Devanagari: संसार) is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" as well as "world," wherein the term connotes "cyclic change" or, less formally, "running around in circles." In the context of Indian religions and philosophies, saṃsāra is the concept of all beings experiencing an ongoing cycle of death, life, and rebirth. As a result, it can also be equated broadly with transmigration/reincarnation, the karmic cycle, the lesser-used term Punarjanman, or a "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence".
The "cyclicity of all life, matter, and existence" is a fundamental belief of most Indian religions.Flood, Gavin D. (1996), An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press The concept of saṃsāra has roots in the post-Vedic literature; the theory is not discussed in the Vedas themselves.A.M. Boyer: Étude sur l'origine de la doctrine du samsara. Journal Asiatique, (1901), Volume 9, Issue 18, S. 451–53, 459–68Yuvraj Krishan: . Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1997, It appears in developed form, but without mechanistic details, in the early Upanishads. The full exposition of the saṃsāra doctrine is found in early Buddhism and Jainism, as well as in various schools of Hindu philosophy. The saṃsāra doctrine is tied to the karma theory of Hinduism, and the liberation from saṃsāra has been at the core of the spiritual quest of Indian traditions, as well as their internal disagreements. The liberation from saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvāṇa, Mukti, or Kaivalya.
Etymology and definition Saṃsāra (Devanagari: संसार) means "wandering", as well as "world" wherein the term connotes "cyclic change". Saṃsāra, a fundamental concept in all Indian religions, is linked to the karma theory and refers to the belief that all living beings cyclically go through births and rebirths. The term is related to phrases such as "the cycle of successive existence", "transmigration", "karmic cycle", "the wheel of life", and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence". Many scholarly texts spell saṃsāra as samsara.
According to Monier-Williams, saṃsāra is derived from the verbal root sṛ with the prefix saṃ, Saṃsṛ (संसृ), meaning "to go round, revolve, pass through a succession of states, to go towards or obtain, moving in a circuit". The prefix sam means samyak, or well, and sar means to move."Samsara" Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Mandala Publishing, 2013, pp. 147. A nominal derivative formed from this root appears in ancient texts as saṃsaraṇa, which means "going around through a succession of states, birth, rebirth of living beings and the world", without obstruction. Another nominal derivative from the same root is saṃsāra, referring to the same concept: a "passage through successive states of mundane existence", transmigration, metempsychosis, a circuit of living where one repeats previous states, from one body to another, a worldly life of constant change, that is rebirth, growth, decay and redeath. Saṃsāra is understood as opposite of moksha, also known as mukti, nirvāṇa, nibbāna or kaivalya, which refers to liberation from the cycle of birth and death.
The word saṃsāra is related to Saṃsṛti, the latter referring to the "course of mundane existence, transmigration, flow, circuit or stream".
The word literally means "wandering through, flowing on", states Stephen J. Laumakis, in the sense of "aimless and directionless wandering". The concept of saṃsāra is closely associated with the belief that the person continues to be born and reborn in various realms and forms.
The earliest layers of Vedic text incorporate the concept of life, followed by an afterlife in heaven and hell based on cumulative virtues (merit) or vices (demerit). However, the ancient Vedic Rishis challenged this idea of afterlife as simplistic, because people do not live an equally moral or immoral life. Between generally virtuous lives, some are more virtuous; while evil too has degrees, and the texts assert that it would be unfair for god Yama to judge and reward people with varying degrees of virtue or vices, in an "either or,” and disproportionate manner. They introduced the idea of an afterlife in heaven or hell in proportion to one's merit, and when this runs out, one returns and is reborn. This idea appears in ancient and medieval texts, as the cycle of life, death, rebirth and redeath, such as section 6:31 of the Mahabharata and section 6.10 of the Devi Bhagavata Purana.Yuvraj Krishan (1988), Is Karma Evolutionary?, Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research, Volume 6, pp. 24–26
History The concept of saṃsāra developed in the post-Vedic times, and is traceable in the Samhita layers such as in sections 1.164, 4.55, 6.70 and 10.14 of the Rigveda. While the idea is mentioned in the Samhita layers of the Vedas, there is lack of clear exposition there, and the idea fully develops in the early Upanishads. Damien Keown states that the notion of "cyclic birth and death" appears around 800 BC. The word saṃsāra appears, along with Moksha, in several Principal Upanishads such as in verse 1.3.7 of the Katha Upanishad,Katha Upanishad प्रथमोध्यायः/तृतीयवल्ली Wikisource verse 6.16 of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad,Shvetashvatara Upanishad षष्ठः अध्यायः Wikisource verses 1.4 and 6.34 of the Maitri Upanishad.Maitri Upanishad Wikisource, Quote: ३ चित्तमेव हि संसारम् तत्प्रयत्नेन शोधयेत्GA Jacob (1963), A concordance to the Principal Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, Motilal Banarsidass, pp. 947–48
The historical origins of the concept of reincarnation, or punarjanman, are obscure, but the idea appears in texts of both India and ancient Greece during the first millennium BCE. The idea of saṃsāra is hinted in the late Vedic texts such as the Rigveda, but the theory is absent.A.M. Boyer (1901), Étude sur l'origine de la doctrine du samsara, Journal Asiatique, Volume 9, Issue 18, pp. 451–53, 459–68 According to Sayers, the earliest layers of the Vedic literature show ancestor worship and rites such as sraddha (offering food to the ancestors). The later Vedic texts such as the Aranyakas and the Upanishads show a different soteriology based on reincarnation, they show little concern with ancestor rites, and they begin to philosophically interpret the earlier rituals, although the idea is not fully developed yet. It is in the early Upanishads where these ideas are more fully developed, but there too the discussion does not provide specific mechanistic details. The detailed doctrines flower with unique characteristics, starting around the mid 1st millennium BCE, in diverse traditions such as in Buddhism, Jainism and various schools of Hindu philosophy.Gavin D. Flood (1996), An Introduction to Hinduism, Cambridge University Press, , p. 86, Quote: "The origin and doctrine of Karma and Samsara are obscure. These concepts were certainly circulating amongst sramanas, and Jainism and Buddhism developed specific and sophisticated ideas about the process of transmigration. It is very possible that the karmas and reincarnation entered the mainstream brahmanical thought from the sramana or the renouncer traditions. Yet, on the other hand, although there is no clear doctrine of transmigration in the vedic hymns, there is the idea of redeath, that a person having died in this world, might die yet again in the next."Padmanabh S. Jaini 2001 "Collected Paper on Buddhist Studies" Motilal Banarsidass, , p. 51, Quote: "Yajnavalkya’s reluctance to discuss the doctrine of karma in public (...) can perhaps be explained by the assumption that it was, like that of the transmigration of Atman, of non-brahmanical origin. In view of the fact that this doctrine is emblazoned on almost every page of sramana scriptures, it is highly probable that it was derived from them."Govind Chandra Pande, (1994) Life and Thought of Sankaracarya, Motilal Banarsidass , p. 135, Quote: (...) They Sramanas could have been connected with the Harappan Civilization which is itself enigmatic. It seems that some Upanishad thinkers like Yajnavalkya were acquainted with this kind [sramanic] thinking (...) and tried to incorporate these ideas of Karma, Samsara and Moksa into the traditional Vedic thought. The evidence for who influenced whom in the ancient times, is slim and speculative, and the odds are the historic development of the Saṃsāra theories likely happened in parallel with mutual influences.; Quote: "There was such constant interaction between Vedism and Buddhism in the early period that it is fruitless to attempt to sort out the earlier source of many doctrines, they lived in one another's pockets, like Picasso and Braque (who were, in later years, unable to say which of them had painted certain paintings from their earlier, shared period)."
Punarmrityu: redeath While saṃsāra is usually described as rebirth and reincarnation (punarjanman) of living beings (jiva), the chronological development of the idea over its history began with the questions on what is the true nature of human existence and whether people die only once. This led first to the concepts of Punarmṛtyu ("redeath") and Punaravṛtti ("return"). These early theories asserted that the nature of human existence involves two realities, one unchanging absolute Atman (Self) which is somehow connected to the ultimate unchanging immortal reality and bliss called Brahman, and that the rest is the always-changing subject (body) in a phenomenal world (maya). Redeath, in the Vedic theosophical speculations, reflected the end of "blissful years spent in svarga or heaven", and it was followed by rebirth back in the phenomenal world. Saṃsāra developed into a foundational theory of the nature of existence, shared by all Indian religions.
Rebirth as a human being, states John Bowker, was then presented as a "rare opportunity to break the sequence of rebirth, thus attaining Moksha, release". Each Indian spiritual tradition developed its own assumptions and paths (marga or yoga) for this spiritual release, with some developing the ideas of jivanmukti (liberation and freedom in this life),Klaus Klostermaier, Mokṣa and Critical Theory, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 61–71Norman E. Thomas (April 1988), Liberation for Life: A Hindu Liberation Philosophy, Missiology, Volume 16, Number 2, pp. 149–60Gerhard Oberhammer (1994), La Délivrance dès cette vie: Jivanmukti, Collège de France, Publications de l'Institut de Civilisation Indienne. Série in-8°, Fasc. 61, Édition–Diffusion de Boccard (Paris), , pp. 1–9 while the others content with videhamukti (liberation and freedom in after-life).M. von Brück (1986), Imitation or Identification?, Indian Theological Studies, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. 95–105Paul Deussen, , pp. 356–57
The Sramanas traditions (Buddhism and Jainism) added novel ideas, starting about the 6th century BC. They emphasized human suffering in the larger context, placing rebirth, redeath and truth of pain at the center and the start of religious life. Sramanas view saṃsāra as a beginningless cyclical process with each birth and death as punctuations in that process, and spiritual liberation as freedom from rebirth and redeath. The saṃsāric rebirth and redeath ideas are discussed in these religions with various terms, such as Āgatigati in many early Pali Suttas of Buddhism.
Evolution of ideas Across different religions, different soteriology were emphasized as the saṃsāra theories evolved in respective Indian traditions. These traditions posited the way out of samsara through stopping action (Jainism, Ajivikas) or through realizing the true nature of existence (the Upanishads, Buddhism).