But the Buddha did copy the idea of kamma from Hindu— ism didn’t he?

QUESTION: But the Buddha did copy the idea of kamma from Hindu— ism didn’t he?
ANSWER: Hinduism does teach a doctrine of kamma and also reincarnation. However, their versions of both these teachings arc very different from the Buddhist versions. For example, Hinduism says we arc determined by our kamma while Buddhism says our kamma only conditions us. According to Hinduism an eternal soul or at man passes from one life to the next while Buddhism denies that there is such a soul saying rather that it is a constantly changing stream of mental energy that is reborn. There arc just some of the many differences between the two religions on kamma and rebirth. However, even if the Buddhist and Hindu teachings were identical this would not necessarily mean that the Buddha unthinkingly copied the ideas of others.
It sometimes happens that two people, quite independently of each other, make exactly the same discovery. A good example of this was the discovery of evolution. In r858, just before he published his famous book The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin found that another man, Alfred Russell Wallace, had conceived the idea of evolution just as he had clone. Darwin and Wallace had not copied each other’s ideas; rather, by studying the same phenomena they had come to the same conclusion about it. So even if Hindu and Buddhist ideas about kamma and rebirth were identical, which they are not, this would not necessarily be proof of coping. The truth is that through insights they developed in med it a non Hindu sages got vague ideas about kamma and rebirth which the Buddha later expounded more fully and accurately.