New Reality Seeds

[PTTG]

I want Buddhism to be the most popular global religion, and particularly a major force in Europe. What can we change to bring that about?

I'm thinking it has to start with the Romans. They did come rather close to linking India with Europe early enough to change religious history.

If Buddhism is out of the question, Hinduism might be a suitable alternative.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I want Buddhism to be the most popular global religion, and particularly a major force in Europe. What can we change to bring that about?

I'm thinking it has to start with the Romans. They did come rather close to linking India with Europe early enough to change religious history.

If Buddhism is out of the question, Hinduism might be a suitable alternative.

The problem is, what would make a large number of Buddhists travel along the Silk Road to the Far West -- which is no more advanced than remaining in India or China? Moreover, what would make the Romans turn to Buddhism, with its rather diffuse and undramatic (as compared to Christianity's high drama)concept of redemption through multiple lifetimes of effort by the soul?

I'd think the right time to pick is the foundation of the Mauryan Empire in India, at about 268 BC. Ashoka had conquered most of the Indian sub-continent and unified it into one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen.

He then began to find Buddhism attractive for two reasons. Firstly, it seemed to provide a means by which to unify the Mauryan Empire in the face of Hindu beliefs, which mostly centered around local temples operated by local monks who supported local rulers. Secondly, it gave Ashoka a better way to cope, psychologically, with the massive casualties he'd inflicted during the wars of conquest and the subsequent rebellions that cropped up, periodically.

Ashoka adopted Buddhism as his personal faith, and he began to support the spread throughout his empire. He felt it was a way to bring his world into peaceful unity.

So, what if he took that one step further, and decided it was a way to bring the entire world into peaceful unity? So, not only does he sponsor the creation of Buddhist temples and the production of Buddhist texts for India, he also decides to export the faith as far as he could (reasonably) afford (Ashoka was a smart, practical ruler and not a religious fanatic).

So, not only does Buddhism spread (more or less) autonomously up into China and over to Southeast Asia, he also sponsors Buddhist "missionary" monks to travel west, along the Silk Road.

Buddhism makes initial gains in the Afghanistan and other areas immediately adjacent to the Mauryans, but once they get into the Seleucid Empire, they run smack into the energetic and well-established faith of Zoroastrianism. Under the Seleucid emperors, Zoroatrianism, combined with Greek philosphical thought, was seen as a way to bring cultural unity throughout their vast domains. As such, the introduction of such foreign religious thought was seen as undesirable, and the Buddhist missionaries found themselves opposed by the Seleucid satraps.

As such, in Hellenistic Persia, they make few gains and experience at least some (and in many cases, considerable) oppression from the fire-priest hierarchy backed by local governors.

A fair number of missionaries choose to return home, or stay in place to tend to their oppressed flocks in the Seleucid Empire, but some of the others decide to head west. They've learned of the existence of the Mediterranean, and that the lands around it are fractured into multiple polities. That means they're not under the thumb of a powerful central empire in a symbiotic relationship with an established religious organization.

By about 250 BC, or so, the Buddhists begin to trickle into the Mediterranean Basin, and find a region in turmoil. The city-states on the Peloponnesian Peninsula are considered by most people to have, hands-down, the greatest military forces in the region, following the conquests of Alexander in the previous century. However, the Levant is a fractured shatterzone between Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucids; the Greek city-states quarrel amongst themselves unless Macedon cracks down; and Carthage rules the western Mediterranean through a combination of a strong military, a stranglehold on trade and a cruel religion in which gods demand sacrifice.

Right in the middle of all this is the rising power of the Roman Republic, which has only just recently taken control of the entire Italian Peninsula, and is seen as a rising threat by the Carthaginians to the west and the Macedonians to the east.

In Greece, the Buddhist monks run into one of their greatest challenges. As the undisputed hearth of Hellenistic culture, the Greeks are highly resistant to foreign ideas, but confident enough to allow the monks to speak. For their part, the monks struggle with how best to deal with a culture that subjects their faith to disciplined, rational inquiry of philosophical thought in an unprecedented way.

In their efforts to find arguments to use in debates with the Greek academies, the Buddhist monk begin to correspond with their colleagues to the east. The "Letters from the Athenians" begin to circulate, in which the Buddhists describe the arguments used against them, and how they responded. This creates a lively debate via correspondence that stretches as far east as the Mauryan Empire.

There, an aging Ashoka finds the debates fascinating, and has the correspondence copied and distributed widely to monasteries throughout his empire. His successors (albeit with ever-declining enthusiasm) continue the practice (at least intermittently), and for the next several generations, the desire to create Buddhist answers to Greek philosophical inquiry profoundly strengthens Buddhist doctrine. Moreover, many of those who come into contact with the debate -- especially Arab merchants who carry the letters (and, ever-more frequently, monks themselves) as part of the southern Silk Road trade -- find themselves increasingly influenced by the evolving Greco-Buddhist thought.

While the experience in the Eastern Mediterranean resulted in greater discipline in doctrine, the monks who traveled further west found larger numbers of converts. The emotionally-difficult Carthaginian religion, in which the gods demanded sacrifice for any benefit granted, created a population ripe for words of salvation, and the Buddhists delivered. Soon, nearly every Carthaginian trade city had sizable (if frequently clandestine) organizations of Greco-Buddhist followers who sought alternatives to the worship of Tanit and Ba'al Hammon.

For its part, the Roman Republic, itself, had considerable cultural resistance to the adoption of such foreign ideas. The combination of a rich religious heritage adopted from the Etruscans, combined with a positive self-image generated by the Republic's ongoing success, meant that while many upper-class Romans found Greco-Buddhist thought "interesting," few felt any need to convert.

However, all that began to change when the Republic began to slide into decadence, in the First Century, B.C. By then, the Republic's expansion throughout the Mediterranean had meant the absorption of many different populations, and nearly all of them included Buddhists who offered a fairly rational, coherent doctrine of salvation through reincarnation, which had been honed and refined through two centuries of exposure to the crucible of Greek philosophical thought.

[PTTG]

C'est manifique!

I rather like this a lot. In fact, I could see that world in the "ordinary worlds with valuables" thread, if the Greco-Buddhi-Roman variant of Buddhism has an especial appeal to (substantially western-influenced) Homeline culture.

Subtly trying to introduce the printing press a thousand-odd years early so you can get more religious texts to export home, or even finding a Latin-speaking yogi with terminal cancer you can rescue and introduce to Homeline and advanced medicine.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by PTTG

C'est manifique!

I rather like this a lot. In fact, I could see that world in the "ordinary worlds with valuables" thread, if the Greco-Buddhi-Roman variant of Buddhism has an especial appeal to (substantially western-influenced) Homeline culture.

Subtly trying to introduce the printing press a thousand-odd years early so you can get more religious texts to export home, or even finding a Latin-speaking yogi with terminal cancer you can rescue and introduce to Homeline and advanced medicine.

Thanks for the kind words. I could definitely see this as an attractive alternative for Homeline agents to explore, even leaving aside the fact that they'd have a lot more access to Classical Greek philosphical works. The interaction of Greek philosophy and Buddhist thought would fascinate any number of scholars, on Homeline.

In the long term, I could some pretty significant butterfly-flaps. The desire to remain in correspondence with India -- the "Holy Land" of Buddhism, would definitely act as a motivator to maintain closer ties between the Mediterranean and India -- to the benefit of the lands between, and the merchants who ply the Silk Road and (as of about the 1st Century, AD) sail the Indian Ocean monsoon trade.

I don't think it would affect Judaism, that much, as the ancient Jews were remarkably resistant to cultural assimilation. However, I could see a three-way fight between Christianity, Mithraism and Greco-Buddhism, for the soul of the Roman Empire. The "messiness" of Mithraic "salvation" sorta restricts it to military followers, anyway, and that leaves Greco-Buddhism versus Christianity.

In that instance, I could see a split between a Greco-Buddhist upper class, in the Roman Empire, with a fair number of Christians amongst the poor populace. As a person begins to succeed, I could see him or her abandon Roman traditional religion and the Christianity that appeals to poor people and slaves, in favor of the more "sophisticated and rewarding" Greco-Buddhist views.

I also think the locus of Roman imperial power would shift more quickly to the east, as the ties between the Roman empire and India are that much stronger. So, maybe the Western Empire still falls to barbarians (who promptly see Greco-Buddhist monks set up monasteries throughout their realms), but the East remains a lot stronger than in OTL.

Throw in the notion that the Arabic traders might find Greco-Buddhist thought far more compelling than any domestic faith, and maybe Mohammed takes a pilgrimage to India, where he studies the ancient manuscripts and philosophical debates. He converts to Greco-Buddhism, makes tremendous contributions to the doctrine, takes over Mecca and Medina in the face of traditional opposition, and then becomes a (fierce and somewhat problematic, in a "tiger-by-the-tail" sort of way) ally to the Byzantine Empire.

At that point, the center of "Western" civilization shifts to the Silk Road, and the people who live there set the course of Western Civilization for the next thousand years, until Europe, with it's odd interpretations of Buddhist thought as it applies to the soul of the individual, begins its inexorable rise.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I want Buddhism to be the most popular global religion, and particularly a major force in Europe. What can we change to bring that about?

I'm thinking it has to start with the Romans. They did come rather close to linking India with Europe early enough to change religious history.

I think that works, the later Romans certainly had no problems experimenting with a wide array of Eastern cults, and its far from obvious Christianity would be the winning one. The other likely method would be a somewhat later divergence point that turns a Buddhist or partly Buddhist state into an expansionist global power before Europeans did that. China is the popular candidate for that, but Japan could probably have at least competed with the European powers, and there is that period of south Indian colonial expansion and cultural influence that brought Hinduism and Buddhism and "Indianized" kingdoms to southeast Asia and Indonesia, say the 1th to 7th centuries AD, that I've always felt is overlooked as a potential change point.

In a lot of ways it's harder to explain why there aren't any Buddhists or Buddhist influences in Europe than it is to add them. There's certainly some detectable cultural transmission the other way (Hellenistic stuff arriving after Alexander, and later small groups of Christians in both India and China). Yes you can with a little stretching maybe find traces (in Gnostic thought, Neoplatonism, interdependent development of cult imagery of Kuan Yin and the Virgin Mary, etc.) but it's surprisingly thin.

If Buddhism is out of the question, Hinduism might be a suitable alternative.

Hinduism is probably more difficult to make into a global faith really. It's not a particularly missionary faith, doesn't easily make converts (it's *hard* to join most castes), and even has some doctrinal interpretations that discourage sea travel and/or emigration. Your best shot might be to add a new branch that did have a more missionary orientation. It's not like "Hinduism" isn't a blanket term for some pretty divergent darshanas and bhakti movements that would be labeled different religions just about anywhere else, even leaving out its nastika relatives like Buddhism, Jainism or Charvaka. Adding another one (or using an extinct one we don't actually know much about the actual doctrine of) and calling it "Hindu" as well is not a big stretch. Certainly to the extent it spread in that southeast Asia expansion it did so in some pretty different forms - the major survivor of that, Bali, is pretty distinctive, though some of that is of course that Hinduism changed a lot *in India* in the middle ages.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I want Buddhism to be the most popular global religion, and particularly a major force in Europe. What can we change to bring that about?

I'm thinking it has to start with the Romans. They did come rather close to linking India with Europe early enough to change religious history.

If Buddhism is out of the question, Hinduism might be a suitable alternative.

In WhosWho 2 I came up with Felix Nauticus who converts Caligula to Buddhism. There was a Roman trading colony in India, one charismatic preacher reaching the city of Rome, which is what my scenario was, is all it takes.

[fchase8]

In The Years of Rice and Salt, 99% of Europe's population is wiped out by the Black Plague, and so the world ends up being divided between Muslim and Buddhist.

That has a bunch of Buddhism in it, I believe, and reincarnation.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by fchase8

In The Years of Rice and Salt, 99% of Europe's population is wiped out by the Black Plague, and so the world ends up being divided between Muslim and Buddhist.

That has a bunch of Buddhism in it, I believe, and reincarnation.

In our world's history, Islamic conquests tend to be very bad for Buddhism. This is mainly because Islamic conquests tend to wipe out Buddhist monks and monasteries, which wipes out Buddhism. For a Buddhist dominated world, slow down Islam. Some Persian and Roman victories early on would be most effective.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea. The Romans rebuild and/or upgrade the old Pharaonic canal between the Nile and the Red Sea in the later first century. Trade between India and Rome increases. Roman conquests take over the shores of the Red Sea and the main trade routes move south away from Persia. The local year is roughly 250AD but many technologies and plants that didn't go West until the middle ages are already in the Mediterranean basin.

Persia is bitterly unhappy, they've been cut out of the trade routes and Rome is far richer. This requires a war to close off these Roman trade routes.

Basically two ancient Titans slugging it out for the riches of the Eastern Mediterranean. Big armies and military action.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea. The Romans rebuild and/or upgrade the old Pharaonic canal between the Nile and the Red Sea in the later first century. Trade between India and Rome increases. Roman conquests take over the shores of the Red Sea and the main trade routes move south away from Persia. The local year is roughly 250AD but many technologies and plants that didn't go West until the middle ages are already in the Mediterranean basin.

Persia is bitterly unhappy, they've been cut out of the trade routes and Rome is far richer. This requires a war to close off these Roman trade routes.

Basically two ancient Titans slugging it out for the riches of the Eastern Mediterranean. Big armies and military action.

This is a fun alternative, too, and a way to bolster Byzantium at the expense of its most intransigent foe -- at least until Mohammed appears.