TRANSMIGRATION denotes the process by which, after death, either a spiritual or an ethereal, subtle, and thinly material part of the personality, leaves the body that it previously inhabited; it then "migrates" to enter (i.e., is reborn in) another body, either human or animal, or another form of being, such as a plant or even an inanimate object. Other terms often used in this context are rebirth, especially in connection with Indian religions, palingenesis (from Greek palin, "again," and genesis, "birth,"), metempsychosis (from Greek meta, "again," and psychê, "soul") and, increasingly in modern popular parlance, reincarnation (from Latin re "back" and caro, "flesh"). Manichaean texts in Syriac use the expression tašpikha or tašpikha denafshata, corresponding to Greek metangismos (from Greek metangizesthai, "pour from one vessel into another one, decant"; similarly, Latin transfundi) and conveying the underlying notion of a transfusion or change of vessel whereby...