Development of Hinduism

Yet the doer has no existence:”
This is the Buddha’s teaching.
6. MONOTHEISM & REINCARNATION
“Classical Buddhist doctrine postulates the existence of skandhas, which are unrelated psychic
"causes" that are dissolved upon death and reactivated at birth. However, this is different from
the Hindu concept of an individual soul reincarnating; it is more impersonal. Each individual is
born with characteristics from a variety of past lives and other karmic sources, just as an
automobile might be assembled from miscellaneous parts in a junkyard.”
http://www.ccel.us/reincarnation.chap3.html
If the cars in the junkyard are all of poor quality, the resultant rebuild also will be poor. If they
are good, in general we will get another good car even from the junkyard.
Jainism is probably the earliest form continuity of ego as is understood by reincarnation today.
”According to Jainism, in addition to matter and energy, space and time, there are three more
entities in the universe: innumerable individual souls, principle of motion and principle of rest. A
soul is a distinct entity, different from other entities such as matter, energy, space and time.
Further, life of an individual involves interactions between his/her soul and the environment -
animate as well as inanimate. As long as a worldly being remains alive, the soul resides in the
body and all life-processes go on. Further, a worldly soul continuously obtains and sheds very
fine particles of matter (karma) on account of its interaction with its environment. When the
living being dies, the soul leaves the body along with the associated karma particles. All entities
of the universe are eternal. So the soul does not perish upon the death of a living being. The
soul assumes another birth on account of the karmas in its possession. Thus reincarnation is a
natural consequence of the concept of eternal nature of all entities of the universe.”
(Reincarnation In Other Religions, Jain Study Circular: Dr. Chandrakant P. Shah)
It is probable that some form of reincarnation ideas were in existence even before Buddha and
Mahavira since they assumed those ideas as taught by earlier Buddhas and Jain Saints.
Evidently, they were proposed as a rational explanation for inequalities and various forms of life.
Transmigration was known to early Greek philosophers of 4 th c BC like Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle. They were the rationalist of the period.
“The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and
having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has
knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to
remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all
nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things, there is no difficulty in her eliciting
or as men say learning, out of a single recollection all the rest, if a man is strenuous
and does not faint; for all inquiry and all learning is but recollection. -- Plato, Meno”
Only when we come to post Christian Hindu literature can we see the clear elucidation of
reincarnation as is taught today.
”We can therefore witness a fundamental shift in the meaning of afterlife from the Vedic
perspective. The Upanishads abandoned the goal of having communion with the gods (Agni,
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