Manual of Indian Buddhism c3.s3.1

c3.s3.1

Owing to the unsettled state of Indian chronology we cannot with full certainty fix the absolute date of the Nirvāṇa⁴; yet we may confidently assert that the rise of Buddhism nearly coincides with the close of the Upaniṣad period. From the very tenets of Buddhism it is evident that the theories of the Vedānta had reached their full development, albeit not in the scholastic form of the Brahma-Sūtras. The practices of the Yoga, which though dogmatically no integral part of the Vedānta are not repudiated or disapproved by the Vedāntins, were scarcely less developed in the days of Buddha than later in the time of Patañjali, the author of the manual titled Yoga-sūtra. The doctrine of Karman, of metempsychosis, was already so deeply rooted in the popular conscience that Buddhism has retained it notwithstanding its standing in the most glaring conflict with Buddhist psychology, which denies the existence of soul altogether⁵.