Part 8, the big finish. So as anyone who's ever practiced yoga knows, Hinduism is the most flexible of all the world religions, which is part of the reason it's often described as polytheistic. The belief that gods can take many forms makes it easy for Hinduism to assimilate other religious traditions, which is exactly what happened with Buddhism. In time, the Buddha came to be worshipped as another incarnation of one of the Hindu gods and not as a mortal teacher. So in the end, Hinduism, rather than purging the Buddha, enveloped him. So all this means that while Hinduism has a tremendous amount of variety and flexibility, its core tenets of samsara, karma, and the caste system have provided a remarkable amount of cultural and social unity to the Indian subcontinent for millennia. Fortunately for the Buddha, his teachings migrated east to China.