Reigion library : Buddhism
At the time of the Buddha's birth, a religious tradition based on sacrifice to powerful and sometimes capricious deities had dominated the land we now call India since 1500 B.C.E., but was yielding to new religious ideas that had been emerging for several centuries. Among these were karma and reincarnation, which had been readily adopted, and may have represented the revival and reconceptualization of ancient ideas already present within the culture.