"command not found" for ls, which, open, etc.

I was trying to get git to work. After instaling it, doing "which git" gave an errmsg like "~bash: command not found" or something similar. Then I followed instructions found here http://www.jaredeasterday.com/524/issues-with-git-path-git-command-not-found/. I went to the root directory by "cd ~/" and did a "find .bash_profile" but no such file was found. So I created it per instructions on that website with just this line in it "export PATH=/usr/local/git/bin".

Having done that, "which git" now says "which: command not found". I tried to do "ls" on any directory, it says "ls: command not found". I can't even do "open -e .bash_profile" since "open: command not found".

It seems I need to find a way to edit my $PATH variable but most of the unix commands are not accessible (except cd). Can someone please help me get out of this hole I dug myself? Thanks a lot.