Pythagoras and Reincarnation

Pythagoras is similar to some to many of the other materialist pre socratic readers in that he believes there is one key to understanding the universe. But, instead of water or air, he believes it is numbers. Honestly though, this aspect of Pythagoras does not interest me. His introduction of the concept of reincarnation  was what really grabbed my attention.

My first idea was that maybe Pythagoras had encountered Hinduism and its belief in reincarnation during his travels. Curd tells us that he visited Babylon and that is close enough to the Indian sub continent that I don' believe it is to far fetched for him to have heard of it. But, his idea of reincarnation is quite different from the Hinduism's. For instance, his version of reincarnation seems to be random while your Hinduism believes you can influence your next life via good karma/moksha. Also, at least according to the story presented, Pythagoras believes you could identify souls you have previously met claiming that he recognized his old friends soul in a dog.

I think that Pythagoras and his concept of reincarnation is especially important to western thought because of the emphasis on the soul. Similar to more recent christian thinkers, Pythagoras introduces the idea that human souls are not only unique, but eternal.