hich is perpetrated by human beings, and natural evil, which is independent of humanity and takes in earthquakes, diseases, drought, and other facts of nature. Indian religions, however, while making a logical distinction between these two forms of evil, regard them "as aspects of a single phenomenon, for which a single explanation must be sought" (O'Flaherty 6). Though evil in the moral sense is considered in the Rg Veda (e.g., adultery is evil, incest is evil), the notion of sin is unlike Christian concepts. In Hinduism the individual usually prays not out of personal repentance but out of the desire to be relieved of the effects of evil. Thus one may pray "for deliverance from sins committed by others in the same way as for those committed by oneself" (O'Flaherty 7). Though personal repentance is an occasional feature of Hinduism, evil is almost always viewed as the fault of nature or the gods rather than the individual. Thus "evil is not primarily what we do; it is what we do not wish to have done to us" (O'Flaherty 7).
...