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Kung-fu Jesuits
How Will Culture and Society Look in a Buddhist Medieval Europe?
- Thread starter RaptorWolf
- Start date
Because Buddhists are focused on detachment and letting go which means medicine or health care will not be the focus but technology outside of that might develop.
That's not how either of those concepts work, but I'll address the larger point at hand.
Medical advances in any society seem to progress regardless of the local belief system, and are often more reliant on technology and institutional knowledge rather than any squeamishness on the part of the greater citizenry.
Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is Classical Europe itself. The Romans and Greeks were both uncomfortable with disturbing the body post-mortem, yet it was during this time that the region saw a massive explosion in practical medical knowledge, especially surgery and anatomy. Galen is perhaps the most well-known for his observations that placed him as the foremost scholar of medical science for the next 1000 years. He began his work on animals that were anatomically similar to humans, and then applied those lessons to his surgeries on living, injured humans. He was able to easily bypass local cultural norms and establish a groundwork that would be greatly expanded upon in the next centuries. There is also evidence that the dissection of humans would proceed regardless of local laws or customs, as it was simply practical knowledge to have. After all, who would miss the body of a beggar found dead on the side of the road?
This of course leads into the second portion - practical medical knowledge fades without strong institutions to preserve it. A timeline that sees Buddhism spread from India into Europe would inevitably see much of the Middle East awash in missionaries. Should the Roman Empire fall as it did in our timeline (and there's no reason to believe that it would in the exact same manner, if at all), it would be quite likely that a learned, scholarly population would exist throughout the Middle East that would eagerly receive, translate, and expand upon the works of Galen, Hippocrates, and Dioscorides, just as Persian and Islamic scholars and physicians did in our timeline. Sassanid Gondishapur alone was one of the foremost centers of medicine, along with Constantinople.
This isn't beginning to touch on topics such as humourism, which would remain dominant without regard to any particular belief system. Indeed, humourism was adopted by much of Europe, the Middle East, and India, and Europe would not seriously begin to move away from it until Vesalius began his experiments in the 16th century.
So what would the medical practices of a Buddhist Europe look like? Well, it depends. I would argue that if Rome fractures in a similar manner to OTL, then whatever Buddhist Byzantine analog that remains will be well-placed to continue advancing medical knowledge independent of any stagnation that would grip the rest of post-Roman Europe. Greek knowledge would spread into the Middle-East regardless, with local kingdoms and empires translating, expanding, and transmitting the information at their own pace. Eventually, Europe would begin reverse-translating these new sources, and rediscovering the knowledge that had been lost or locked away. A Renaissance, if you will.
If Rome remains mostly whole? It's likely medicine continues as it did under the Byzantines - but with additional outside input coming in through trade with the east, discoveries would be spread faster. Even if the Middle-East is not majority Buddhist, such spread would still most likely occur, similar to the exchange of knowledge between the Byzantines, Sassanids, and Caliphates in our timeline, only on a larger scale due to the greater corpus of intact work being produced.
It also depends if Europe copies the cremation culture of the other Buddhist countries.
Egyptian mythology can also syncretize with Buddhism.
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The inherent anti-Jewish bias of medieval Christianity might be mitigated due to the lack of replacement theology. I say might because Buddhists are obviously capable of violence like every other religion, but Jews have fared better in Buddhist countries than in Christian or Muslim countries. Perhaps Jewish, Muslim, and maybe even Pagan communities in Europe have a better shot at survivial.
Otto Kretschmer
Banned
The stigma of Jews as murderers of God will not be present so Europe will treat all non Buddhist minorities with indifference
Possibly, but if you look at how the Buddhist government of Myanmar treats Muslims, it's certainly possible that something could go awry.
Otto Kretschmer
Banned
What the Myanmar gov does to Muslims is not even against Islam this much. It's a discrimination based mostly on nationalist grounds. Myanmar government also targets the Buddhist Karen people
Otto Kretschmer
Banned
But why would he convert to Buddhism? There was no Buddhist presence in the Empire at the time. There weren't even any dignitaries from Buddhist countries who could familiarize hom with Buddhism
I answered because it was less asb then Justinian and it was an off the cuff remark in that sense.
On the other hand, imperial patronage would automatically make a religion major, and if the realm prospered, people would see that as divine sanction/pleasure, which is a major reason Christianity went from minor cult to what it became in the 4th century.
I have read about Buddhist missionaries making it to the Empire somewhere, but do not claim to be an expert.
Not to mention that the Buddhists were the first groups to found universities, which were plentiful across North India. Nalanda alone had 2,000 faculty and 10,000 students, attracting scholars from as far away as Sri Lanka and Japan. This was in the 7th century, several centuries before Oxford even started. The destruction and pillage of these seats of learning was probably the most horrific damage caused by the expansion of Islam, which is saying something.
While the scenario would obviously require a massive butterfly net over Arabia, I do wonder how a potential Islam would respond to a Buddhist Mediterranean basin.
Right, because medieval Europeans never figured anything out for themselves. They were just sitting there playing with mud until someone accidentally bumped over a chest full of Cicero and Virgil
I mean it was already pretty irrelevant by the time Islam came along, Buddhism in the subcontinent was hardly flourishing
Optical_Illusion
Banned
I don't think you'd have a Jewish diaspora in Europe - that existed and expanded because you had this prohibition against Christian-to-Christian moneylending, creating a rich niche for trade and banking that served an urban based international group with a focus on literacy well (so they were able to expand demographically, generation after generation, for a long time). That's a prohibition as far as I know had no parallel in Buddhism. That exists in Christianity because of an particular heritage of prohibitions on lending within the pre-Rabbinic Judaism that got carried over to descendent religions, but wasn't applied between them (and was not applied strongly as within Islam and Judaism as I understand it). Without that, Buddhists would just trade with other Buddhists preferentially, and any group of Rabbinic Jews is probably going to be a small group that, if it's present, doesn't expand demographically in any way. European Jews seem to descend at some point from a very small group of people who expanded a lot due to this special niche, but think of China, where some group of Jews (the Kaifeng Jews) probably arrived in the 10th century or something and they don't really expand at all (even allowing for the much larger Chinese population) and there are like 1,000 of them today.
I'd guess I would also not think the Buddhists would get on very well with a subgroup that were all "You deny the One God! You will eventually know his wrath!" either. Plus Rabbinic Judaism is probably butterflied entirely if its early enough (which it would have to be) and certainly Islam would be.
The Nuns would come whenever a nobleman wanted to dump an inconvient daughter.
Icons would be fine with no religious prohibition against images.
Under Pagan diety survival, I think that means less of a cultural break and is a bigger deal. Things like martial arts that can be traced back to beserker techniques, meditations based off norse laying out and survival of cultural heritage we only have hints of.
Isn't that backwards? The biggest obstacle to Buddhism in Europe is a successful Christian Church, and Buddhism predates it by centuries. The earlier the better. You could easily have notable Buddhist communities in the Eastern Mediterranean before Constantine, never mind Justinian.