The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.1

v2.c40.s7.t3.1

The question inevitably arises in what manner these views are to be connected with those of the Upaniṣads,³ and the further problem must be mentioned of the origin of Buddhism, which has been traced to the Sāṁkhya. The Buddhist system differs in one essential from the Sāṁkhya: it abolishes, as does that system, the principle of an absolute, with which the individual souls are identified, and it goes further than that system in seeking to deny the existence of soul. The latter aberration need not, however, be taken very seriously: the Buddhists, being determined believers in transmigration, had to produce an entity⁴ which would transmigrate; the entity provided does not differ, in any very essential way, from the ordinary view in India of a transmigrating soul, and certainly is philosophically inferior to the ordinary conception, unsatisfactory as that in itself is.