"The Origins of European Thought"

In Richard Broxton Onians book, The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate he discusses the complexity of Renaissance thinking and how some of their thoughts or concepts were connected or correlated with both Greek and Indian concepts.

The majority of the book focuses on Greek thought and he brings in many different Greek terms. He discusses passages of Homer to look at the Greek thought process and how their tales of the gods and the myths and legends played a major role in the structure of their society.

Chapter 12, titled, "Hindoo Conceptions of the Soul" discusses the process of sacrifice for the Hindu culture. It goes into detail about how the Hindu's held high regard for the soul and that the head was the most important part of any being. He discusses important details that were used in the Hindu culture in order to ensure that the head and the spirit were in the right commune for either a sacrifice, a child birth, or a death.

He also discusses the particulars of how a dead body was to be dealt with, whether they were cremated, buried, or left to be eaten by birds. He goes on further to discuss the feet and how they are important as well in the Indian culture and how that plays itself into the European thought.

He does not spend much time on the European aspects but briefly brushes over them so it is a little difficult to understand how these concepts work together.