Asia without Buddhism

You know, I think people are too fixated on this approach. Reality is not a Paradox game where the moment you include a discordant factor everything goes completely off-the-rails. Things happen in history for a reason. The emergence of Islam wasn't an accident, it was a result of hundreds upon hundreds of years of history of the Arabian Peninsula. Changing one element in a (at that point) unrelated part of the world doesn't have to butterfly it away (though it can).

Paradox games have far too much predetermination to be considered true alternate history (not that I blame them; it'd take a supercomputer to calculate all the ways history could differ from every seemingly insignificant action). The fact is that any PoD completely changes history. A one second delay means that different babies will be born, different events will happen- perhaps it will result in people meeting or not meeting at a crucial time, etc. The PoDs multiply after the initial PoD- we're not talking about one little change, we're talking about millions, billions, perhaps trillions of changes, which will only increase as time goes on- those genetically different infants will grow up and not necessarily act the same way as those that were born OTL, and they'll definitely marry different people- it's not that Mohammed wouldn't just be born, it's that several centuries of his ancestors wouldn't be born.
 
You know, I think people are too fixated on this approach. Reality is not a Paradox game where the moment you include a discordant factor everything goes completely off-the-rails. Things happen in history for a reason. The emergence of Islam wasn't an accident, it was a result of hundreds upon hundreds of years of history of the Arabian Peninsula. Changing one element in a (at that point) unrelated part of the world doesn't have to butterfly it away (though it can).
The issue is that Buddhism being removed from history is a gigantic POD that does derail a lot of history. Even in more modern times to any POD this would require we can look at something like the Sengoku Jidai and there were very influential warrior monks who only existed due to a literalist interpretation of many buddhist myths, living in a way that only makes sense in the Tendai buddhist tradition not native to Shinto and without them it is very unlikely that the civil war would have turned out in a remotely similar fashion.

Buddhism in particular would help shape the way that various asian philosophies would understand and interpret themselves. It is all well and good for instance saying that confucianism would have developed neo-confucianism as an anti-mystic and reason based position regardless, but when you bear in mind that it developed this position in response to buddhist metaphysics then you have a hard position to justify. No Buddhism, no anti-buddhism and so forth.

Sure similar events may occur. As I discussed earlier a better developed Carvakism could have easily spread and then a neo-confucianism could have developed as a sobre, stoic and altruist critique instead, but it wouldn't be the same.
 
It's a fascinating question; I think Asia in general will be less connected. No Chinese monks on pilgrimages to India in the Sui and Tang, for instance.
 
Well, of course, Islam and Christianity (let alone any given variant thereof) are butterflied away by any PoD as early as preventing/suppressing Buddhism.

Will there be some ascetic, fanatic religion come out of the desert and sweep across continents? Certainly. Will it be based on Judaism? Quite possibly. Will it particularly resemble Christianity or Islam in many details? Almost certainly not.

Said religion could also be based on e.g. Zorastrianism or possibly some other local nation's peculiar god. (Peculiar TO the nation, not 'odd'.)

I don't know, but it seems to me, that the Roman World was pregnant with Christianity. At some point it was just inevitable, that some Jewish guy said that Jahve was a God of all people and this funny sect would forget such jewish things as circumcision and pork-eating taboo. And they would mix Jewish fanaticism with some hellenistic philosophy. Zoroastrizm was already in this mix since very beginning in Judaism, but it was added from Mithraism as well. And this healthy mix got very competitive prozelityzing and won.

I guess something like that happened with Buddhism, it was just one of the most competitive forms of the local hinduistic religions which amalgamated the most attractive trends in religious thinking.
So buddhism had to appear, maybe in a slightly different form, but quite close.
 
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I don't know, but it seems to me, that the Roman World was pregnant with Christianity. At some point it was just inevitable, that some Jewish guy said that Jahve was a God of all people and this funny sect would forget such jewish things as circumcision and pork-eating taboo. And they would mix Jewish fanaticism with some hellenistic philosophy. Zoroastrizm was already in this mix since very beginning in Judaism, but it was added from Mithraism. And this healthy mix got very competitive prozelityzing and won.

I guess something like that happened with Buddhism, it was just one of the most competitive forms of the local hinduistic religions which amalgamated the most attractive trends in religious thinking.
So buddhism had to appear, maybe in slightly different form, but quite close.
...I am getting a hard time getting this post. No offence but part of it reads like you are making a comical joke and the other half appears serious. I don't' btw mean a joke in the context of "that idea is stupid/shouldn't be taken seriously" but more "I feel this guy is attempting humour".
 
...I am getting a hard time getting this post. No offence but part of it reads like you are making a comical joke and the other half appears serious. I don't' btw mean a joke in the context of "that idea is stupid/shouldn't be taken seriously" but more "I feel this guy is attempting humour".
... or English is the second language of this guy and sometimes when this guy is in a hurry he might get pretty much unintelligible.
 
... or English is the second language of this guy and sometimes when this guy is in a hurry he might get pretty much unintelligible.

I presumed this was the case. Either way I would like some clarification as it seemed there is an interesting topic there.
 
Hinduism covers a larger area and it doesn't feel the pressure to reform. Maybe a modified Hinduism outright takes the place of in East Asia. What the effects greater than that would be, I can't guess.

Hinduism has been subject to reform movements practically every century for the last 3000 years. It is doubtful, in fact, that "Hinduism" means anything other than "the religions of India" since the majority of "Hindus" follow Bhakti faiths that do not recognise the caste system and anyway follow priests from what would be their own caste, not traditional Brahmins.

What might work is for another reformer other than Gautama to inspire a missionary movement, but without Buddhism completely I'm all for Manichaeism to sweep the East.
 
Hinduism has been subject to reform movements practically every century for the last 3000 years. It is doubtful, in fact, that "Hinduism" means anything other than "the religions of India" since the majority of "Hindus" follow Bhakti faiths that do not recognise the caste system and anyway follow priests from what would be their own caste, not traditional Brahmins.

What might work is for another reformer other than Gautama to inspire a missionary movement, but without Buddhism completely I'm all for Manichaeism to sweep the East.

If most Hindus don't recognize the caste system, then how is it that the caste system is still a big part of Indian society and all of the Indian ethnic groups I've met seem to have a form of caste system that distinguishes Brahmins, Warriors (forgot the name), Sudras, and so on?
 
...I am getting a hard time getting this post. No offence but part of it reads like you are making a comical joke and the other half appears serious. I don't' btw mean a joke in the context of "that idea is stupid/shouldn't be taken seriously" but more "I feel this guy is attempting humour".

Second language or not, I think the Russian's post is perfectly intelligible. I like his turn of phrase as well. The Roman empire was pregnant with Christianity. The particulars of Roman and Judean societies were seeded over the course of hundreds of years. You might get a different religion that offers the same core "advantages" to its believers -- proselytizing, targeting the general populace rather than the elite, promising salvation, the idea of a personal God, etc. -- but whether the religion that adopts these structures comes as Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, or what have you, it will naturally fill the niche the Roman religious market.

If I'm not mistaken, he then argues that India was pregnant with Buddhism in the same way, and I must agree. There was significant resistance to the caste system stretching far back into history. Whether or not Buddhism comes into being as we know it, another religion that offers the same package, including enlightenment, asceticism, and escape from the cycle of karma, is likely to step in.
 
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If most Hindus don't recognize the caste system, then how is it that the caste system is still a big part of Indian society and all of the Indian ethnic groups I've met seem to have a form of caste system that distinguishes Brahmins, Warriors (forgot the name), Sudras, and so on?

From what I gather, caste system knew periods of different importances : some where it wasn't see too much favourably, and others where it was more important. Critically in the XIXth where caste system may have been systematized more than before due to colonial rule and stratification of the society it provoked.
 
Second language or not, I think the Russian's post is perfectly intelligible. I like his turn of phrase as well. The Roman empire was pregnant with Christianity. The particulars of Roman and Judean societies were seeded over the course of hundreds of years. You might get a different religion that offers the same core "advantages" to its believers -- proselytizing, targeting the general populace rather than the elite, promising salvation, the idea of a personal God, etc. -- but whether the religion that adopts these structures comes as Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, or what have you, it will naturally fill the niche the Roman religious market.

Except the PoD (no Buddhism) antedates the Roman Empire by several centuries. It's like expecting Rastafarianism to show up if there was no Protestant reformation. Sure, the two aren't directly related, but the sheer amount of time involved makes such developments extremely unlikely.
 
Jainism is supposed to be so non-violent, they aren't even supposed to kill insects by accident. There is a little flexibility for self-defense, but, that
non-violence thing seems like something political leaders would like, to discourage insurrections. That's all I had to contribute here.
 
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