This paper will be concerned with the ways in which the Hindus have faced death, from ancient to contemporary times. One of the basic beliefs of Hinduism is that each person possesses a soul, or atman. The atman, unlike the physical body, is immortal. Because of this, the atman is passed on from one lifetime to the next in the process which is known as reincarnation, or rebirth. The Hindu term for this phenomenon is samsara, which may be defined as "the round of birth, death and rebirth, understood as a cycle of transmigration from one living form into another" (Bishop and Darton 189). The concept of samsara is related to that of karma, which refers to "a person's actions and the consequences thereof" (McDowell and Stewart 289). According to the law of karma, if a person performs good deeds, good consequences will result; however, if a person performs immoral acts, suffering and pain will be the result. In the Hindu conception of death, it is believed that a person's karma, like the atman, is carried forth during the process of reincarnation. Thus, the quality of a person's previous life determines that of the current life, and the actions performed during the present life in turn determine the quality of that person's future lives. In the Hindu belief system, a person with good karma may be rewarded by moving up to a higher social class in the next life; whereas a person with bad karma may be punished by being reborn in a lower caste or as an animal (Ibid.). However, an important aspect of the Hindu religion is that it is possible to accumulate enough good karma in the course of several lifetimes to be liberated from the otherwise endless cycle of death and rebirth. This liberation, which is known as moksha, is the ultimate goal of Hindu practice. It is believed that proper worship and performance of rituals will eventually result in a form of higher consciousness whereby the practitioner becomes identified with brahma...