AHC: Hindu China!

With a POD before 2000 BC and after the birth of Jesus or whatsoever, make Hinduism in China popular with a lot of significant converts. Probably the Chinese can make their own version of Hinduism like they did with Buddhism.
 
The closest that you could probably get would be an Indo-European immigration to China, I guess through the Gansu Corridor or something. These migrants then settle down and spread their religion in China, and it becomes dominant. But by the present day, the religious scene would look completely different.

Any time after that would probably be too difficult.
 
With a POD before 2000 BC and after the birth of Jesus or whatsoever, make Hinduism in China popular with a lot of significant converts. Probably the Chinese can make their own version of Hinduism like they did with Buddhism.

Buddhism is in many ways evangelical Hinduism. You can't really convert to Hinduism proper- in SE Asia it came in conjunction with Buddhism and the local people emphasised one or the other over time. I don't think this works in China because in many ways what we call Hinduism is essentially a cultural package. SE Asia was always under heavy Indian cultural influence which is why Hinduism could spread there. Buddhism, on the other hand, has a lot more to do with philosophy and a lot less to do with culture.
 
Buddhism is in many ways evangelical Hinduism.

wut.

I think it's actually somewhat easier than a migration through the Gansu corridor. The Himalayas are China's natural wall, but invasion isn't necessarily impossible. I don't see it as impossible to think that an Indian conquerer (some sort of megalomaniacal Hindu version of Akbar the Great perhaps?) could establish a power base in the Himalayas, maybe do the Gansu swing, and initiate a war with China that ends with a Hindu dynasty briefly in power. Of course, native Chinese will always outnumber the Hindus, but there would forever be a Hindu population established in the Chinese mainland with their own subculture, but assimilated into the larger Chinese cultural sphere (much like the Hui).
 
wut.

I think it's actually somewhat easier than a migration through the Gansu corridor. The Himalayas are China's natural wall, but invasion isn't necessarily impossible. I don't see it as impossible to think that an Indian conquerer (some sort of megalomaniacal Hindu version of Akbar the Great perhaps?) could establish a power base in the Himalayas, maybe do the Gansu swing, and initiate a war with China that ends with a Hindu dynasty briefly in power. Of course, native Chinese will always outnumber the Hindus, but there would forever be a Hindu population established in the Chinese mainland with their own subculture, but assimilated into the larger Chinese cultural sphere (much like the Hui).

Is this idea impossible? No. Is this idea ridiculously unlikely? Yes. You are asking that India invade through perhaps the most impenetrable, unfamiliar, and difficult terrain on the entire planet, which by itself is filled with numerous tribes, many of them who were quite aggressive for a long time, to invade a country as large and populous as India, and somehow succeed.

Your analogy with the Hui doesn't really work well either: the Hui are mostly the descendants of foreign merchants and traders, not conquerors. The conquerors that did reach China, like the Xianbei or Xiongnu that settled down, assimilated completely.
 
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