No Hinduism in India

Say Hinduism or Sanathana Dharma (SD) never developed in India. The homogenous animilistic or shamanism got retained by different groups with no coherent religion. Come greeks and India gets dabbled in greek gods to a little extent. Zorastrianism and Jewish religions also present due to merchants. Then come the islam and like any other SE Asia whole india becomes islamic. As there is no SD no buddhism, jainism, sikhism also. what is the impact of this scenarios

1. Islamic India with a billion muslims supporting islamic causes in South East Asia
2. No Buddhism, how will this impact countries like China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Srilanka, Thailand etc
3. Once India becomes islamic would the muslims have run a conquest of nearby asian countries making half the world islamic(east)and half the world christian(west)

In the OTL i feel India always acted as a stopping point for islam.
 
Say Hinduism or Sanathana Dharma (SD) never developed in India.
This is like saying is like say Europe developing without paganism.

1. Islamic India with a billion muslims supporting islamic causes in South East Asia
2. No Buddhism, how will this impact countries like China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Srilanka, Thailand etc
Even in the Islamic world there are non-Muslims. There happened though to be advantages of being Muslim, eg in taxation. What did not happen in India as happened in North Africa and the Middle East were large scale conversions. From my reading of Indian history, the Mughals were fairly tolerant although there were some less so. If instead they had leveled every temple and smashed every festival, Hinduism would have found it harder to continue. Then again without large numbers of non-Indian colonists the Mughals would have had a manpower problem with which to start such a process.
 
No Hinduism in India means that there will no Buddhism in East Asia. It's big effect to the history. First since there's no Hinduism in India, Islam religion would penetrate more in South Asia. Second is there is no Buddhism, Islam will spread more to East Asia and probably all East Asian or Southeast Asian nations will be Islamic in culture and religion.
 
If there even is an Islam. It is quite likely that eliminating a coherent Hinduism, thus butterflying away Buddhism, might also butterfly away Christianity, and Islam as we recognize it. It depends on how much Buddhist merchants in Judea actually influenced local religious philosophers. Which might be none, but it also could be a lot.

However, the influence Hinduism had was world-changing. If gone, you have just ruptured a large piece of Chinese and European, not to mention South Asian, history. All bets are off. :D
 
1.hinduism and india are inseparaeble, as hinduism evolved and flourished along with the development of humanity in india.

2.hinduism is not actually a religion like islam and christianity,but a compendium of various religious forms and philiosophies, in essense its like a discussion forum like alternatehistory.com.

3.the only possibility is any other religious format might have evolved and called hinduism.

4.no hinduism, no buddhism.
no buddhism no christianity
no christianity no islam.

mathematically,
no hinduism no zero and no modern mathematics or sciences.
as hindu conception of zero, is the infinite , reaching and figuing it is the ultimate destiny of mankind.

as per many philosophical traditions, zero means nothing, out of which comes everything and all going back to the nothing.that nothing is the beginning and end of everything.
5.india through hinduism determined the whole cultural pattern of asia for nearly a millenium, before islam.

6.without buddhism china would have been much different.

7.if huns or any other invaders built apowerful empire for some centuries, zorastrianism or manichreanism might have evolved, in one of my past timelines i have wrote about zorastrian india after persians unite india racially and all of india being ethnically same like han chinese.

8.hinduism is much more complex in nature and had become part and parcel of indian cultural heritage, it will be there in one way or another.
 
WOW ! i am amazed that Hinduism is believed to have influenced the other world religions. So a world without hinduism will totally be an alternate reality. I know people outside india believe Moghuls were benevolent rulers but i do not believe it is true. To think that due to them hinduism survived in india is funny to me. The tenacity of hindu beliefs are not recognized elsewhere it is like ocean accepting rivers. this is the only anology it comes to my mind when ever i think of hinduism. My recent visit to metropolitan museum of art (their chinese and japanese exhibits) i found that they had so many names which are indianised and their clothing also looked familiar.

so what would happen if the buddhism disappered from these SE Asian countries. what is the impact culturally and otherwise.

Because in India buddhism profoundly influenced for few centuries but still got merged with the ocean of hinduism. If northern frontiers of India like Afghanistan had not become buddhists then they could have faced arab and islamic invasions effectively. If they had retained a monotheistic shaivism the conversion to islam would have been harder and though it would not have changed the world but would have affected india profoundly.
 
Because in India buddhism profoundly influenced for few centuries but still got merged with the ocean of hinduism. If northern frontiers of India like Afghanistan had not become buddhists then they could have faced arab and islamic invasions effectively. If they had retained a monotheistic shaivism the conversion to islam would have been harder and though it would not have changed the world but would have affected india profoundly.
But it seems that monoteistic tendencies in hinduism are from islamic and maybe christian influence.

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Hinduism is the basic form of Indo-European derived paganism that was originally shared from the British Celts in the far West to the Aryans on the Indian sub-continent. Positing no Hinduism posits no Aryan invasion. That so fundamentally changes very early Indian history that it's almost impossible to know how things would have ended up. The Indus Valley civilization was probably already on its decline at this point, so don't exactly expect a 'Harappa Triumphant!' thing, but honestly it could go anywhere so a recovery is perfectly possible. But, to give you an idea of just how fundamentally this alter Indian civilization: No Vedic Period!

EDIT: There's also the point that the original branch of the Indo-European migration that eventually formed the Aryans and Vedic civilization has to go somewhere if it doesn't go to India. Aryan northern China, anyone?
 
Hinduism is the basic form of Indo-European derived paganism that was originally shared from the British Celts in the far West to the Aryans on the Indian sub-continent. Positing no Hinduism posits no Aryan invasion. That so fundamentally changes very early Indian history that it's almost impossible to know how things would have ended up. The Indus Valley civilization was probably already on its decline at this point, so don't exactly expect a 'Harappa Triumphant!' thing, but honestly it could go anywhere so a recovery is perfectly possible. But, to give you an idea of just how fundamentally this alter Indian civilization: No Vedic Period!

EDIT: There's also the point that the original branch of the Indo-European migration that eventually formed the Aryans and Vedic civilization has to go somewhere if it doesn't go to India. Aryan northern China, anyone?
AFAIK Indo-European beliefs weren't the only source of Hinduism and again the modern Hinduism is not the same as prebuddhistic one.

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But it seems that monoteistic tendencies in hinduism are from islamic and maybe christian influence.

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totally wrong! to some extent buddhism and jainism i can agree on to popularize Dvaita and Advaita schools of thought by Adishankara and Ramanuja. IMHO Islam never had that much to offer to hinduism to change the basic structure of hinduism itself.
 
totally wrong! to some extent buddhism and jainism i can agree on to popularize Dvaita and Advaita schools of thought by Adishankara and Ramanuja. IMHO Islam never had that much to offer to hinduism to change the basic structure of hinduism itself.
But monotheism didn't change the basic structure of Hinduism

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Hinduism is the basic form of Indo-European derived paganism that was originally shared from the British Celts in the far West to the Aryans on the Indian sub-continent. Positing no Hinduism posits no Aryan invasion.


Hrmm. There's a difference btween the Brahmanic religion practiced as late as 300 AD and what we call Hinduism, which is more complex and systematic.

It's psossible for a non-Hindu India to worship Vishnu; Indra, after all, shows up in Gandharan Buddhist art.
 
AFAIK Indo-European beliefs weren't the only source of Hinduism and again the modern Hinduism is not the same as prebuddhistic one.

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Hinduism never claimed that it has not changed over millenia, it is the adaptability of hinduism which helped it survive the brutality of foreign forces. so the question of unchanged hinduism is null and void. it is only a problem when followers think their religion is not recognizable in its present form but as such hinduism and its followers never had that problem.
 
There ara some apocryphic story that Jesus Christ some years spent in Buddhist monastery.


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Even discounting that (and it's not terribly likely), there is a good case to be mae. The ideas of unworldliness, non-engagement with the structures of government and society, of radical, non-quietist pacifism, the embrace of all humanity in unquestioning charity, strict moralism and the defeat of an enemy through moral superiority expressed in love are all pretty alien to the ancient Mediterranean, but all these ideas begin sloshing around there around the end of the Classical period. The Christians were not the only group that adopted them (though this mix is theirs). Pagans sometimes referred to the Christian lifestyle as 'Pythagorean' because that was the one they understood best (though the Pythagoreans had a completely different theology underlying theirs that, interestingly, included reincarnation). The whole development is often and credibly attributed to contact with India.
 
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