AHC: Western Buddhism

I think another thing that bears remembering is that it can be hard to determine what aspects of Western Civilization can be traced directly to Christianity as such and what aspects grew out of the grander social evolution of the Roman Empire -- for example, I think it'd be fair to say that Western societies, as such, would still be monogamous TTL, since that peculiar custom had deep roots in Egyptian and Greco-Roman civilization.
My big question is, how are you going to get Buddhism to expand beyond trading ports?
I know Hellenistic PoDs are pretty popular for this, but I actually think the OP is doable with a later PoD, after the Principate is established. I mentioned earlier Parthia doing worse vis a vis Rome; in addition to giving the Kushan more manuverability to spread southwest and get ports, they would now have lots of incentive to establish regular contact with the Roman Enpire to maintain their anti-Persian alliance; much of this contact will, no doubt, involve Buddhists making their way to and being received in Rome and her provinces.

CONSOLIDATION: So here's a weird thought I had -- arguably, and assuming Europe's population booms during the warm period at least as well as OTL, it's still fairly likely TTL that there will be something roughly analogous to the Crusades, by which I mean a large migration of warriors into religiously alien lands to forge new duchies/kingdoms/etc. TTL, I expect there'd be more focus on *pagan* East Europe and *Russia* than on Spain and/or the Mideast, but the very basic idea would be the same.
 
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