Due to positive responses I've received on my posts for the alternate governments and the Asian State in the New World thread, I decided to do a timeline based on meshing my ideas from both posts. I'll do this first one as a test installment. Tell me what you think. In the one post, I had Buddhist monks discover California while searching for Fusang as described by another monk who probably meant Japan and it later turned into warring Chinese warlord kingdoms, while in the other it was one settled later by the Song, then abandoned, and eventually annexed by the US. This timeline will stick closer to the first idea, with some of the cooler stuff from the second post, but I'm not having the US annex it and the TL effects are probably going to butterfly the US for all intents and purposes.
1
485 CE
The five monks from Kipin, as they called Gandhara then, had sailed many li longer than they thought they would have. Fusang, as Hui Shen had told the Chinese court, should have been further behind them, to a great degree. They were running low on food and potable water. One of them was becoming violent, and claiming the Buddha and the Eightfold Path were foul lies that had tricked them into sailing to their deaths at the jaws of sea monsters in a great whirlpool.
It was then they saw the island looming in the mists before them. One of them shouted with joy. They navigated their ship to it and saw it was a great stony place rising from the sea, with flocks of pelicans circling their boat and congregating on the shore.
They brought the boat to the edge and dropped an anchor stone. The monks climbed the rocky cliffs to the vegetation on top and saw through the haze and fog a great land just beyond the island, green and plentiful.
They went back into their boat and went to the shore beyond it, naming the island they had visited The Lone Rock (1). They saw plumes of water erupt from the ocean not far from them and saw a great sea beast rise from the waters, its skin jet black with a fin protruding, then disappear back under the waves.
On the shore, they came to a salt marsh (2). They disembarked and started walking, past palm trees and beach sands seeing noone for some hours. They set up camp, and ate what little food they had left.
Then they saw two men. The two men eyed them uneasily and then ran away before the five Gandharan monks could speak to them.
Later, more people like the two men approached the camp. Twelve of them. They had ear and nose piercings in some cases. They otherwise wore little if any clothing.
One of them approached the five monks camped on the beach. He spoke, saying something that sounded like "Parwes Taares" but they did not understand him. He took a stick and made drawings in the sand of what looked like a village and a hummingbird.
They took sticks and drew China and Gandhara and the Buddha. Then they offered him rice.
The monks were later lead to a village and had figured the meaning of enough of the strangers words to discern that they called themselves the Ohlone.
(1) Alcatraz Island
(2) Crissy Field Beach
What do you think?