Still there is no doubt that the earliest Buddhist texts and the discourse ascribed to the Buddha himself speak, when using ordinary untechnical language, of rebirth and of a man dying and being born[434] in such and such a state.  Only we must not suppose that the man’s self is continued or transferred in this operation.  There is no entity that can be called soul and strictly speaking no entity that can be called body, only a variable aggregation of skandhas, constantly changing.  At death this collocation disperses but a new one reassembles under the influence of tanha, the desire of life, and by the law of karma which prescribes that every act must have its result.  The illustration that comes most naturally is that of water.  Waves pass across the surface of the sea and successive waves are not the same, nor is what we call the same wave really the same at two different points in its progress, and yet one wave causes another wave and transmits its form and movement.  So are beings travelling through the world (samsara) not the same at any two points in a single life and still less the same in two consecutive lives:  yet it is the impetus and form of the previous lives, the desire that urges them and the form that it takes, which determine the character of the succeeding lives.

But Buddhist writers more commonly illustrate rebirth by fire than by water and this simile is used with others in the Questions of Milinda.  We cannot assume that this book reflects the views of the Buddha or his immediate followers, but it is the work of an Indian in touch with good tradition who lived a few centuries later and expressed his opinions with lucidity.  It denies the existence of transmigration and of the soul and then proceeds to illustrate by metaphors and analogies how two successive lives can be the same and yet not the same.  For instance, suppose a man carelessly allows his lamp to set his thatch on fire with the result that a whole village is burnt down.  He is held responsible for the loss but when brought before the judge argues that the flame of his lamp was not the same as the flame that burnt down the village.  Will such a plea be allowed?  Certainly not.  Or to take another metaphor.  Suppose a man were to choose a young girl in marriage and after making a contract with her parents were to go away, waiting for her to grow up.  Meanwhile another man comes and marries her.  If the two men appeal to the King and the later suitor says to the earlier, The little child whom you chose and paid for is one and the full grown girl whom I paid for and married is another, no one would listen to his argument, for clearly the young woman has grown out of the girl and in ordinary language they are the same person.  Or again suppose that one man left a jar of milk with another and the milk turned to curds.  Would it be reasonable for the first man to accuse the second of theft because the milk has disappeared?