Suddenly reminded of an article talking about Afro-Eurasia being called the "Ecumene" and imagining this Buddhist-Pagan wank timeline being about "the first world religion that united the Ecumene supercontinent with its various traditions and perspectives"
How Will Culture and Society Look in a Buddhist Medieval Europe?
- Thread starter RaptorWolf
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Suddenly reminded of an article talking about Afro-Eurasia being called the "Ecumene" and imagining this Buddhist-Pagan wank timeline being about "the first world religion that united the Ecumene supercontinent with its various traditions and perspectives"
A more interesting scenario would be if Buddhism Neoplatonism and Christianity do not dominates each other. Instead they reach plurality. With the three in a constant struggle for influence. Would make for a very interesting setting for philosophical discourse.
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I guess the Silk Road would have to be seen as hugely important in all of this.
It must, might even be named as Buddha Road as all its important players are Buddhist except Iran.
Speaking of which, How would Iran react to Buddhist Europe and Hindu/Buddhist India on either sides of its Border, will Buddhism bleed into Zoroastrianism as well ?
Buddhism didn't (and arguably still doesn't) have a concept of "Christdom" or "Dar-el Islam" of a worldwide community of coreligionnaries, even in places it was dominant like East and Southeast Asia, Buddhism isn't a religion that excludes per say, in Asia it is hard to tell where Buddhism begins and traditional beliefs ends, so you have a problem for a continent-wide span of civilizations, kingdoms and empires to share a kinship on it alone.
You had some degree of syncretism between Mazdaism and Buddhism in Eastern Iran from the Greco-Bactrians through the Kushans and the Sassanians, records are sparce though so we don't have much idea, on his inscriptions the priest Kerdir claims to have "smiten" several heretics, including Buddhists, but considering how ruins of monasteries in Merv, Balkh and Bamiyan date from the mid to late Sasanian era he was either not very successful or the Buddhists ended up recovering.
I suspect that the same factors of being universal faith will develop with Roman Buddhism, we will likely also see similar institutions and administrative units as in Roman Christianity develop. I also suspect we will see it growing more intolerant of heterodox Buddhism simply because the Roman institutions benefit from bing able to create and enforce the orthodox faith.
So, maybe you could end up with Egyptian Buddhism, Hellenic Buddhism, Semitic Buddhism, Celtic Buddhism, Germanic Buddhism, Slavic Buddhism, Baltic Buddhism, Berber Buddhism etc.?
If Buddha and Buddhism is integrated into every major religion, then we can see Buddha as a central figure in all world of religions and the connecting force and figure between religions
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You need someone like Constantine, not Justinian. Justinian does not even control much of Europe.
twovultures
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I wrote a short story where Loki becomes adopted as the patron god of Buddhist monks and monasteries in a Europe that turned Buddhist after Christianity failed to blossom. The story was inspired from Tibetan myths about a named Padmasambhava who tamed demons and made them guardians of monasteries.
Which Buddha? Sidharta isn't unanimously revered across Buddhist sects, Pure Land Buddhism for example has Amidha Buddha. Once again, Buddhism was dominant on all of East and Mainland Southeast Asia and we didn't had a sense of "Buddhist pannational community" until the modern era.
I am referring to Modern Times, when Technology has caught up to OTL levels and in this Buddhist World, There would be a much more shared sense of Heritage and culture due to Buddhism but yes I should have specified which Buddha and time period I was talking about, I do believe that Siddhartha Gautama would still be revered across different sects.
This also brings another question, would Romans and Greeks start viewing Eastern world much more favorably, after all it is where their religion came and they do share some religious commonality
Hmmm.
You probably need a world without Christianity, and therefore no Islam. Pagan rome evolves into something a bit more like historical christainity based around neo-platonism and perhaps a few major condensed god figures, such as perhaps Sol Invictus.
Possibly Constantine still founds Constantinople. Centuries later one or another group of steppe tribes unite and conquer Constantinople, they end up converting to Buddhism as that is the religion that has the most prestige and influence in Central Asia in this timeline. As they now control the Eastern Roman Empire, they bring Buddhism to the west. The state religions that preceded it never really evolved the exclusive identities of Christians and Muslims, so it's not such a hard sell.
You probably need a world without Christianity, and therefore no Islam. Pagan rome evolves into something a bit more like historical christainity based around neo-platonism and perhaps a few major condensed god figures, such as perhaps Sol Invictus.
Possibly Constantine still founds Constantinople. Centuries later one or another group of steppe tribes unite and conquer Constantinople, they end up converting to Buddhism as that is the religion that has the most prestige and influence in Central Asia in this timeline. As they now control the Eastern Roman Empire, they bring Buddhism to the west. The state religions that preceded it never really evolved the exclusive identities of Christians and Muslims, so it's not such a hard sell.
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Rome (and Greece) was generally a monogamous society, so I don't think Buddhism would change that, concubinage and specially cousin marriage were always common among the aristocracy even in Christian Europe, no reason to believe it would be different ITTL
Yes but the pleasures of the flesh are illusions and the desire for them only lead to suffering.
Well, that was what someone from the Worldbuilding Stack Exchange suggested to me.
I had an idea for a timeline of a longer lasting Hellenistic era, and a part of it would include the introduction of Buddhism into eruope and how it interacts with Hellenistic philosophy. For example one of the ideas was monasticism would come to the Hellenistic schools of though, most notably Stoicism, Cynicism and Pythagoreanism. I was going to include Buddhist schools and Academies in Alexandria, Pella, Athens, etc, as well as explore things like the different buddhist schools of early buddhism and how there would be different practices brought into Hellenism, most notably meditation being a spiritual practice and new artistic styles of the meditating Athena, Zeus, Hera, etc.
I wasn't sure if this timeline would be one of where Alexander's empire survived or a continued Diadochi period.