AHC: Hellenized Japan.

Your challenge should you accept it is, that with a PoD of 400 BC, Yayoi period Japan is in contact with hellenic civilization and have it's culture being influenced by the Greeks.
 
Your challenge should you accept it is, that with a PoD of 400 BC, Yayoi period Japan is in contact with hellenic civilization and have it's culture being influenced by the Greeks.

Well, considering that it's arguable that some of the cultures of South Asia are influenced by Hellenistic culture (heck, even Sanskrit has Greek loanwords) which then eventually spread out via Hinduism and Buddhism into South-East Asia and East Asia, it's possible. Just remember that what eventually happens in that point in time, Greek influence (whether it be Hellenistic or not) will just be one of many influences entering Japan, including influence from China, Korea, the Austronesian countries, and others.
 
Well, considering that it's arguable that some of the cultures of South Asia are influenced by Hellenistic culture (heck, even Sanskrit has Greek loanwords)
I mean, that doesn't really seem surprising given Alexander and the trade routes from Ptolemaic Egypt to India. Sanskrit was a living language at that time, after all.
 
I mean, that doesn't really seem surprising given Alexander and the trade routes from Ptolemaic Egypt to India. Sanskrit was a living language at the time, after all.

Well yes... and no.

Pānini had already published the Astadhyayi a century prior to Alexander’s invasion marking the solidification of Classical Sanskrit as an elite literary language. And yes a very similar form of the same Sanskrit, descending from the colloquial Vedic Sanskrit that the Vedas are composed in, was being spoken in the Gandhara region when Alexander invaded. However that language cannot be defined as Sanskrit but has to be called a Prakrit.

The language that Ashoka spoke was not Sanskrit. The Gandhari that spread Mahayana Buddhism cannot be considered Prakrit. Pali isn’t even derived from the same branch of Indo-Aryan as Vedic Sanskrit. Therefore one cannot really assumes that Sanskrit was ever a living language after the c.5th century BCE. It had already diverged into multiple dialects and nascent languages that can only be compared to Vulgar Latin in their standing.
 
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