How to: Paganism as a Hinduism cognate in Europe

[Midas]

As another bit of prep for a long TL I am planning (last thread was on a Greek Antiquity-cognate in the Horn of Africa), I am looking at how to alter religion in Europe.

As the title of the thread says, I am most interesting in exploring a "pagan" Europe. I know pagan comes packed with a variety of connotations, so by this I don't mean it lacks religious organization or substantial religious texts: I am specifically referring to non-Abrahamic, Hinudism/Chinese-folk-like traditions in Europe. I don't know how this would look, and any thoughts on the matter or links to TLs people have read that perhaps explored this are much appreciated.

In the TL I'm working on Jesus of Nazareth is still going to end up born, however ASB that might be, simply because I think it connects better to read more about things you're familiar with and see where they diverge. Knowing this, I want to also make this Hindu paganism durable to Christian influence. This doesn't preclude there being a Bishop of Rome or Byzantium or whatever, nor a strong prosthelytizing Christian population. In fact, I like the idea of Christianity becoming a powerful urban religion to Europe much as Islam was to India. However, despite fervous missionary activity throughout history (ranging from ancient Nestorian to modern Anglican), India remains firmly Hindu (though with a very large Hindu/Islamic minority). China likewise has demographically visible Christian and Islamic minorities but they remained just that. I want to explore how that might affect Europe.

But before getting to do that, I need to see how it would look like. I'm really not sure how it would. General trends in the Vedic religious tent are thoughts on dharma, theological opinion on karma, the soul or god; various specific Vedic religious practices etc. I don't know whether these things could end up being similarly discussed in Europe: I imagine to an extent some would. The thing about Hinduism is it's very organic, complicated and very decentralized when you look at it as a whole: but there are many thousands of sub-sects within the Vedic umbrella that are very centralized. That kind of chaos is really hard to conceptualize (especially when you have 900 million Hindus), and it's what I want to sort of build up in Europe- though obviously, not a Vedic tradition but some European tradition. But yeah, I'm a bit lost on how to put together the details for such a religion. One thing I do know is that a prophetic Greek scholar who takes Socrates' myth of the medals to an extreme would be an excellent candidate for a comparison on the Laws of Manu: specifically if such ideas could be codified and adopted by some state. I definitely want to take a look at that.

Sorry for always making these fluffy, open-ended threads by the way but they definitely help me think and organize my ideas.

 

[corditeman]

Hinduism in Europe???!!!

Paganism in North and Western Europe is/was primarily fertility-religion, shamanism and Nordic polytheism. Further south, there is the Gaullish polytheism (I hate Celtic or Druidic as titles) that ended up being controlled by the Druids and which scared the Romans stiff. By the time you reach the Balkans, there is the Greek Pantheon of Gods and nature spirits to consider - not that far removed from Nordic Polytheism and fertility religions. But no Hindu tradition. You'll probably have to go well into BC to create that - and what will carry it? There will be strong (if passive) opposition from a variety of pagan religions.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

As another bit of prep for a long TL I am planning (last thread was on a Greek Antiquity-cognate in the Horn of Africa), I am looking at how to alter religion in Europe.

As the title of the thread says, I am most interesting in exploring a "pagan" Europe. I know pagan comes packed with a variety of connotations, so by this I don't mean it lacks religious organization or substantial religious texts: I am specifically referring to non-Abrahamic, Hinudism/Chinese-folk-like traditions in Europe. I don't know how this would look, and any thoughts on the matter or links to TLs people have read that perhaps explored this are much appreciated.
....
India remains firmly Hindu (though with a very large Hindu/Islamic minority). China likewise has demographically visible Christian and Islamic minorities but they remained just that. I want to explore how that might affect Europe.
...
But before getting to do that, I need to see how it would look like. I'm really not sure how it would. General trends in the Vedic religious tent are thoughts on dharma, theological opinion on karma, the soul or god; various specific Vedic religious practices etc. I don't know whether these things could end up being similarly discussed in Europe: I imagine to an extent some would. The thing about Hinduism is it's very organic, complicated and very decentralized when you look at it as a whole: but there are many thousands of sub-sects within the Vedic umbrella that are very centralized. That kind of chaos is really hard to conceptualize (especially when you have 900 million Hindus), and it's what I want to sort of build up in Europe- though obviously, not a Vedic tradition but some European tradition. But yeah, I'm a bit lost on how to put together the details for such a religion. One thing I do know is that a prophetic Greek scholar who takes Socrates' myth of the medals to an extreme would be an excellent candidate for a comparison on the Laws of Manu: specifically if such ideas could be codified and adopted by some state. I definitely want to take a look at that.

1) look at
Suebi Superpower (

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ... Last Page)
Lysandros Aikiedes

2) Interesting concept, but with bucket loads of problems.

3) I think it's possible, with Hinduism as proof of concept. However, Hinduism had several advantages. Here's a couple.
a)Firstly, there was a single group of invaders with a relatively coherent set of gods, unlike Europe, where every (large) cultural grouping had its own pantheon.
b) Hinduism is old enough that the other 'higher religions' weren't around. by the time that Europe (beyond Greece, at least) is ready to create civilizations, there are already Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, (plus the various 'Oriental mystery religions' like Magna Mater, Isis, Mithras, etc). Creating a unified neo-pagan polytheism when monotheism is in the air is difficult. The 'export' version of Egyptian polytheism, for instance, came down to Isis and/or Osiris. Note that Hinduism is the ONLY polytheism to have transformed itself into a higher religion and kept the polytheism. Almost all the others picked one god and dumped the others.

4) China is Buddhist, with other things like Confucianism, Taoism, etc. It is most assuredly NOT an example.



To get a pagan religion doing a 'Hindu' in Europe, it's got to be at least as early as Greek times. It's got to involve a unified central authority (probably political). And it's PROBABLY going to do a lot of forced identification of unrelated gods.

The Romans fulfilled the latter two requirements, but not the first. The TL I pointed out above fulfills all three.

By the time you get to Socrates, I think you're too late already, at least for Greece. Certainly, the philosophical explorations that developed in the classical era of Greek philosophy were moving far beyond the 'stories about a superhuman warband behaving like children', which is what Greek mythology (or Norse or ...) really is.

If you wanted to base it on Greek mythology, you'd probably need an earlier Greek Empire (which is difficult, given the fractional nature of Greek society), which expands massively. The Delian League is PROBABLY too late, but something like that - which absorbed Magna Graeca colonies and moved north, forcibly assimilating Pantheons to their own, and using the famed Greek argument and abstraction to turn the religion into something more ... well, religious, might work.

Paganism in North and Western Europe is/was primarily fertility-religion, shamanism and Nordic polytheism. Further south, there is the Gaullish polytheism (I hate Celtic or Druidic as titles) that ended up being controlled by the Druids and which scared the Romans stiff. By the time you reach the Balkans, there is the Greek Pantheon of Gods and nature spirits to consider - not that far removed from Nordic Polytheism and fertility religions. But no Hindu tradition. You'll probably have to go well into BC to create that - and what will carry it? There will be strong (if passive) opposition from a variety of pagan religions.

Umm... I'm fairly sure the OP meant a Hindu-like evolution of the Greek/Celtic/Germanic pantheons into a higher religion like Hinduism (uniquely) succeeded at.

 

[Malta]

Hmm this is true, European-Med. Paganism is more divided, its because of the general geography with the civilizations being based around the Med. Sea and not that far north until the late Classical Period. While with India you can just waltz right into the Indo-Ganges Plain....but still Southern India was alot harder to take over and remained Hindu and culturally distinct from Northern India.

Greek Paganism was really transforming into the Higher Religion bit during Socrates time and extended for a long period until the 4th or 3rd century AD really, what with the so called "Philosopher Religions". Or with the Greco-Egyptian sythesis that began under the Ptolemes. The Isis-Osiris Pluralism is the best chance you have possibly because the Egyptian Cosmology was always the most like Hindusim in terms of syncretic-compromise as well as absorbing religious ideas with much debate by the Priest Class.

The Eleusinian Mysteries might offer some guidance.

 

[carlton_bach]

There was such a religion, to all intents and purposes, in the later Hellenistic and Roman period. It unified and sort-of-reconciled divergent traditions under a universal concept of the divine (systematised by the Neoplatonic philosophers later on) and had its body of scripture (Homer, the Theogony, the various myths recorded in a number of collections, but at that time much more present in oral tradition, a presumably large, but now almost extinct body of song and story, and the interpretative works of a large number of revered teachers such as Plato, Apollonios, Saccas or Plotinus). Its survivability in the face of civilisational collapse was never tested, since the Theodosian Empire destroyed it, but it's quite conceivable that it would have developed into something brpoadly similar to Hinduism or traditional Chinese religion.

 

[Malta]

Is it just me or do alot of religious figures go to India? Dionysus, Heracles, Apollonius of Tyana, Jesus....

 

[Errnge]

if you don't want christianity to spread as fast or fervently as it did, st. paul is gonna have to never convert AND the idea of spreading the gospel is gonna have to be dispelled from christian thought somehow. without christians, there are no muslims.

the romans used to adopt almost every god they encountered from the tribes they conquered. much of their pantheon was based off greek, but they also had some itallic, and several celtic gods, not to mention egyptian. if the roman empire never converts to christianity, keeps up the trend of accepting new pantheons, that should create a kind of european hinduism over enough time.

OR you could take the easy route, and have the aryans invade europe instead of india.

 

[wolf_brother]

I agree with the general trend so far; basically you're going to need to curtail early Christianity somehow, or at least slow its spread - it cannot become 'the' religion of Rome for the outcome you're looking for to happen. Allow Hellenism/Roman Polytheism continue to expand, contract, absorb and synthesis with new cultures for at the least a few hundred more years. Especially in Germania and greater Europe; have the Germanic/Norse pantheon absorbed and synthesized into the already-present Greater Greco-Roman pantheon.

Note that while you might be able to create 'pagan' polytheistic majority Europe this way, the majority of the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia is going to go to one monotheism or another.

 

[Tobit]

Hinduism even though it is polytheistic is very much a religion of "the book". By that I mean it is based on a few ancient texts that are beautifully poetic and passed down from generation to generation. I don't think the Europeans had such a tradition. Then there is the Brahman class of people that keeps that tradition and rituals alive.

I think one problem with Europeans creating something as long lasting and as widespread as Hinduism, population will have to be a lot higher and denser.

 

[Flocculencio]

Hinduism even though it is polytheistic is very much a religion of "the book". By that I mean it is based on a few ancient texts that are beautifully poetic and passed down from generation to generation. I don't think the Europeans had such a tradition. Then there is the Brahman class of people that keeps that tradition and rituals alive.

It's also important to acknowledge that Hinduism is just a catchall term for a group of beliefs with a common philosophy and shared mythos. The "book" religion is the official prestige version but it's also backed up by thousands of local variants.

 

[Midas]

I don't have a ton of time so I'll give a few responses and espouse some more ideas when midterms are over .

I didn't articulate myself very well here. I did not mean to suggest that Chinese people lack religion or that they are like Hinduism. I merely meant that religion in China is complex as, like in India, people tend to syncreatize various traditions and philosophies even where there's significant opposition. You see this in places where people hold strong Buddhist ideas of morality but worship Guan Yu or pay tribute to a local river god. I wanted this explore whether or not this sort of 'hard to define' religion would be possible in Europe and what it might look like.

China is Buddhist, with other things like Confucianism, Taoism, etc. It is most assuredly NOT an example.

I'm definitely not set on it being Greek, having just re-read Plato's Republic, Socrates' myth of the medals stood out as a possibility for an interesting comparison to (though quite different from) the Laws of Manu.

If you wanted to base it on Greek mythology, you'd probably need an earlier Greek Empire (which is difficult, given the fractional nature of Greek society), which expands massively. The Delian League is PROBABLY too late, but something like that - which absorbed Magna Graeca colonies and moved north, forcibly assimilating Pantheons to their own, and using the famed Greek argument and abstraction to turn the religion into something more ... well, religious, might work.

I'll definitely read it.

The Romans fulfilled the latter two requirements, but not the first. The TL I pointed out above fulfills all three.

I don't mind the presence of monotheism and I think it'd add a very interesting dynamic to explore if more polytheistic/non-Abrahamic religions had survived (better) how they'd interact more.

Note that while you might be able to create 'pagan' polytheistic majority Europe this way, the majority of the Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia is going to go to one monotheism or another.

//Note that apart from speculation, if anyone has any actual ideas on what these religions might look like, feel free to offer speculation there too.

 

[Skokie]

Hinduism even though it is polytheistic is very much a religion of "the book".

meh. Judaism and Christianity aren't even "religions of teh book." Never mind Hinduism, for pity's sake...

I think the most important thing to have a pagan renaissance (aside from The Renaissance ) is to keep Christians away from the Roman state and vice versa. That way, the priesthoods, temples, civic rituals and various pagan libraries survive the various crises from the third century on.

There were already tremendous changes afoot in Greco-Roman polytheism, like carlton bach noted.

 

[Eurofed]

I think that the key to see such an "advanced paganism" Europe into being is to make Rome much more successful. If the Empire can survive its late decline, and absorb Northern Europe, Christianity would be deprived of a critical component of its success, the welfare and psychological relief it provided to people hard-pressed by the various hardships of Roman collapse. As others have pointed out, late paganism was evolving into a form that was broadly similar to Hinduism and traditional Chinese religion. ITTL it would quite likely absorb and syncretize Germanic/Norse and Celtic polytheisms with Greco-Roman ones and create a Pan-European religion.

 

[jakewilson]

Hinduism isn't a single unified religion. It's diverse set of henotheisms (Vaishnavites, Shaivites, Shaktists, etc.), a set of philosophical schools (some of them atheistic or atomistic), and on ongoing rationalization of the Vedic gods found in the old epic texts. I imagine Hellenism (or whatever you would want to call it, but Hellenism is what ancient pagans identified their religion as in contrast to the Christians and others) would have developed in much the same way.
Already in Roman times henotheistic devotions existed alongside polytheistic folk traditions. The gods of the mysteries could easily become the pagan mainstream. Helios/Mitra, Kybele (the Greek Mother of Gods and Roman Magna Mater), and Dionysus could easily see the sort of glory that Vishnu/Krishna, Shakti, and Shiva get. At the same time, these popular pieties existed alongside Platonism, Plotinism, Epicureanism, Stoicism and all the rest. And finally there are the Olympian gods who would go the way of the Vedic gods, existing in folk traditions, art, and ancient myths, but mostly rationalized away.
As for a Western equivalent to dharma, if you really need one, why not Aristotle's obsession with virtue?

 

[jakewilson]

Hinduism even though it is polytheistic is very much a religion of "the book". By that I mean it is based on a few ancient texts that are beautifully poetic and passed down from generation to generation. I don't think the Europeans had such a tradition. Then there is the Brahman class of people that keeps that tradition and rituals alive.

I think one problem with Europeans creating something as long lasting and as widespread as Hinduism, population will have to be a lot higher and denser.

Well, it's not a religion of the book in the way that the Abrahamic faiths claim inerrancy for their respective books.
Outside of that, though, I don't see why the Iliad and Odyssey, the Homeric Hymns and the Works and Days, and even later lyric and dramatic works couldn't play the part of the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Rigveda, and the Upanishads.

 

[Tobit]

The Vedas are considered revelations of God, to some, in the same way that the Quran is. Even though there are naturally those that do not follow them. Religions never follow their texts or even their tenets perfectly.

I think an interesting POD would be during the younger days of Christianity. Perhaps if the Gnostic version christianity was the major sect, there would never be the centralism that a Pope or Constantine would bring. And since Gnosticism is already an agglomeration of many traditions perhaps it would allow others such as Mithraism or Sun worship to survive.

 

[jakewilson]

The Vedas, however, are mostly about the old Vedic gods like Agni or Indra, and so aren't as relevant to modern Hindus the way the Quran is to Muslims or the Bible is to Christians. They're as relevant to modern Hinduism as the Homeric corpus is to the worship of popular gods of the Roman Empire like Isis, Dionysus, and Sol. So I don't see the lack of revealed texts as an impediment to a successful religion.

 

[Midas]

Are there any good TLs you're aware of that explore a longer non-Christian Roman Empire? I should probably read more on the Christianiziation of the Roman Empire. My knowledge of that stops with Constantine I's reign.

I think that the key to see such an "advanced paganism" Europe into being is to make Rome much more successful. If the Empire can survive its late decline, and absorb Northern Europe, Christianity would be deprived of a critical component of its success, the welfare and psychological relief it provided to people hard-pressed by the various hardships of Roman collapse. As others have pointed out, late paganism was evolving into a form that was broadly similar to Hinduism and traditional Chinese religion. ITTL it would quite likely absorb and syncretize Germanic/Norse and Celtic polytheisms with Greco-Roman ones and create a Pan-European religion.

 

[Shevek23]

...
OR you could take the easy route, and have the aryans invade europe instead of india.

Um, they did.

Srsly. There are a lot of correspondences between Vedic and Nordic mythology, particularly in the most ancient parts of the creation myths.

For that matter, they call it "Indo-European" for a reason--all the European pagan traditions (well, barring non-IE peoples like the Basques and the Finns) stem from the same base. The Romans, for instance--don't look at their pantheon, sort of artificially reconstituted by giving Latin names to basically Greek gods--look to their legends about the history of the Roman Republic. They basically retold the ancient stories of the gods in humanized, civic form.

Now that might not have much to do with what Midas is trying to do here. But Toynbee speculated on the alternate history possibilities of the early Medieval Christian order collapsing completely between the hammer of Viking (and other pagan) invasions and the anvil of expanding Islam. IIRC he then faked right, having the Viking-dominated northlands convert to Christianity--but Celtic rite, surviving as the last forlorn outpost of Christiandom in Ireland. He felt that would be more compatible somehow with the newly Islamic southern Europe. What if no Christian rites survive anywhere in Europe, yet large parts of it never become Muslim either--you'd get paganism, in fact a paganism distantly branching from the same roots as Hinduism.

Mixed up pretty freely, as pagans tended to do (and so-called Great Religions as well--I'm looking at you, Mother Holy Roman Catholic Church!) with syncretic additions from everywhere and everyone they interacted with.

In addition to Nordic versions there were other Germanic variations, not to mention completely non-IE traditions like the Finnish and the Magyar.

 

[Lysandros Aikiedes]

I think that the key to see such an "advanced paganism" Europe into being is to make Rome much more successful. If the Empire can survive its late decline, and absorb Northern Europe, Christianity would be deprived of a critical component of its success, the welfare and psychological relief it provided to people hard-pressed by the various hardships of Roman collapse. As others have pointed out, late paganism was evolving into a form that was broadly similar to Hinduism and traditional Chinese religion. ITTL it would quite likely absorb and syncretize Germanic/Norse and Celtic polytheisms with Greco-Roman ones and create a Pan-European religion.

One doesn't need to make the Roman Empire more successful, you just need to keep people like Constantine out of the succession. Maximinus Daia was the first emperor to attempt the idea of organising the collective Pagan priesthoods into a single hierarchy, empowering the high priests as magistrates. Without Constantine's endorsement, any ideological shift within Roman Polytheism after 300 CE could occur if Christianity was still on the sidelines. The problem isn't cross-religious syncretism, but what new hierarchal structures and popularist ideologies could be applied to preserve traditional Polytheism.