Why didn't Indian religions spread westward into the middle east and mediterranean?

Anawrahta

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IOTL, Buddhism and to smaller extent Hinduism spread from India via trade routes to Central, Southeast, and Eastern Asia. However despite heavier trade links with the middle east and Mediterranean, Buddhism and Hinduism maintained no discernible presence in these regions. The strange fact is that western peoples such as the Greco-Bactrians and some parthians(An Shigao) were prominent in the development and propagation of buddhism, but yet no mentionable buddhism in the west. Why is this so?

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My guess you had similarities with the pre-Christian Greco-Roman-Egyptian faiths and the Hindu faith and when Christianity came along it copied Buddhism to some degree. A lot of scholars argue that jesus went to India during his 33 years.
 
Trade between India and Europe often had a middle man, most commonly the Persians. This naturally led to a sort of separation existing between them. The same didn’t exist with Indian empires - for instance, the Buddhist and highly Indianized Kushan Empire has vassals as far as East Turkestan - and so, there was no middleman that resulted in separation. This was beginning to change with the expansion of Indian naval routes during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, such as trade between Gujarat and South Arabia, but then Islam burst on the scene, conquering as far as Sindh.

Well Zoroastrianism had Avestan origins and Avestan was from what is now Pakistan.

Was it? Theories I’ve read say that Zarathushtra was Central Asian.
 

Deleted member 97083

Was it? Theories I’ve read say that Zarathushtra was Central Asian.
Maybe, maybe not. The only guarantee is that he was from somewhere in eastern "Greater Iran".

Avestan is the language of the Avesta; not an ethnic group, nation, or place.
And the Avestan language came from a specific place, which was somewhere on the border of Central Asia and South Asia
 
Avestan is the language of the Avesta; not an ethnic group, nation, or place.

It was the language of some region at one point, though it long ago became little more than a liturgical language. Compare to, say, Vedic Sanskrit (a language which Avestan is, incidentally, highly similar to).
 
This is not a popular line of thought with modern scholars. There's no evidence of it.
Just to add to this point, the general line now is now a rejection of that claim altogether. The claims that Christ's teachings are Buddhist influenced breaks down when you realise that the two religions are really not reconcilable outside of mental gymnastics (literally from ethics, metaphysics and theology they are somewhat complete opposites) and that the prevalence of cynic philosophers in the region makes far more sense.
 
As others have noted, Buddhism was known in the Greco-Roman world but struggled to attract adherents. This may have been partly due to trade intermediaries meaning that contact and opportunities for conversion were more limited.

But it may also be that Buddhism was far enough outside of the Greco-Roman conceptual universe that it was a difficult sell as a conversion attempt. My impression has been that early Buddhism didn't really have much success outside of regions which shared a similar conceptual universe (roughly the Indian subcontinent and some nearby areas influenced by cultural contact).

This changed with the development of Mahayana Buddhism, which seems to be more successful at spreading to areas outside of that culutural sphere (Central Asia, China, Japan etc).

The development and spread of Mahayana Buddhism probably came too late to spread west as effectively, since by then the Abrahamic religions were fairly entrenched.

But what if a different school of Buddhism emerged earlier, which wasn't tied to the original conceptual universe? Not exactly Mahayana, but something which has some of the same features.

In terms of timing and synergy, something could arise within the early Epicurean philosophers, if one of them met with some of Ashoka's missionaries and had some fresh inspiration. Perhaps Hermarchus, as the leading Epicurean after the death of the founder, had some ideas...

I've toyed with this idea in the past, but never tried to turn it into a TL.
 
Pyrrho was certainly influenced by Dharmic religions, not only he visited India, but also his thoughts reflect directly some Buddhist ideas. Early Buddhism was much more comparable to Greek Philosophy than to a Middle Eastern Religion.

IMHO the answer here is that we have Persia between the Mediterranean World and India. Persian religions have a highly dualistic worldview (ie. Good vs. Evil) which is incompatible with Buddha's teachings, that said, a few similar concepts survived in dualistic religions like Gnosticism, Manichaeism and Christianism.
 
Persia may be the key indeed, as many have alluded.
So how can we change that? There are next to no plausible options for incorporating most of Iran into either an Indian, or a Hellenist or Greco-Roman polity.
But you could have post-Hellenic Iran united and controlled by a more Easterly group than the Parthians. If the semi-nomads who take the place of OTL`s Parthians came from what we call Eastern Afghanistan, they would have assimilated a lot of Indian influences. While their rule is likely to show the same kind of religious tolerance the Parthians showed, too, there might still be a lot of permeation between Hellenic and Indian philosophies, including Mediterranean / Middle Eastern "paganisms" and Buddhism.
Zoroastrian Persia is likely to put up cultural resistance (this is where the Sassanid state formed), but you could always have wave after wave from the North-East wash over them, perhaps with an offshoot of the Kushans taking over from their precursors, only to be replaced by some proto-Hephtalites etc.?
 
As others have noted, Buddhism was known in the Greco-Roman world but struggled to attract adherents. This may have been partly due to trade intermediaries meaning that contact and opportunities for conversion were more limited.

There is archeological evidence that Roman and Greek merchants converted to Buddhism in India. And there were no intermediaries in the trade between Rome and India. Intermediaries became only important in the trade with China and south-east Asia, regions that were too far away for Roman navigators.
 
My guess you had similarities with the pre-Christian Greco-Roman-Egyptian faiths and the Hindu faith and when Christianity came along it copied Buddhism to some degree. A lot of scholars argue that jesus went to India during his 33 years.
And I am sure you will name them. Seriously though, I remember reading on how someone claimed a temple in Asia had inscriptions telling them teaching of Jesus and the monks there said 'no, that is not true'. Best way to convince people you have evidence is to claim it is someonewhere isolated. Not talking about you but the scholars. Anyways, Jesus was in line with the Old Testament, though including changes which involved dropping a lot of ceremony. Actually, stuff like 'an eye-for-an-eye' he mentions in the New Testament actually refer to traditions and legal rules outside of Scripture that had leaked into Judea. As for similarities to pre-Christian faiths, you might manage it with Hinduism to an extent. Though whereas the Classical world had thousands of years of changing deities, with the Greeks and Romans basically slapping the ame of their own deities onto local ones all over the Mediterranean, the Hindus had their main deity beating and humiliating the deities of smaller states. Which actually goes a bit into the Zeus thing, as there are suggestions that he was a representation of Cretan power and his erotic conquests showed his defeat and annexation of various cities. Well, that and royal families liked to claim they descended from him.

If you have Buddhism come over, it will be mangled like with Isis (who was made a pan-female deity for all goddesses) or Mithra (the Romans did some weird stuff with him). Some similar things happened to Christianity briefly with the Gnostics, but the Apostles and various discipes spread out so far that no local changes really set hold in integrating Jesus into a pantheon or something. The Christians were rather adamantly against that.
 
There is archeological evidence that Roman and Greek merchants converted to Buddhism in India. And there were no intermediaries in the trade between Rome and India. Intermediaries became only important in the trade with China and south-east Asia, regions that were too far away for Roman navigators.
Around the Greco-Bactarians? I think there is also somethgin about an iron pillar, where some believe the Greeks or Romans used the names of local deities because of their belief that everyone had the same Olympian pantheon, but that others used different names. So they just rolled with it.
 
There is archeological evidence that Roman and Greek merchants converted to Buddhism in India. And there were no intermediaries in the trade between Rome and India. Intermediaries became only important in the trade with China and south-east Asia, regions that were too far away for Roman navigators.
I did refer to Greco-Roman world. The trade with India was conducted mostly through intermediaries at first, though direct trade followed later. While there was some direct Greek trade with India, the volume was reportedly much later than that of Roman trade. Once there was significant direct trade, there was only a relatively narrow window of time before Christianity became established in Rome.

In contrast, India had significant direct trade with SE Asia, over a much longer period, which led to the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism there (the former largely supplanted by Islam). The opportunities for Greco-Roman trade were more limited by indirect trade (at first), and then had only a relatively short time afterward.
 
I did refer to Greco-Roman world. The trade with India was conducted mostly through intermediaries at first, though direct trade followed later. While there was some direct Greek trade with India, the volume was reportedly much later than that of Roman trade. Once there was significant direct trade, there was only a relatively narrow window of time before Christianity became established in Rome.

In contrast, India had significant direct trade with SE Asia, over a much longer period, which led to the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism there (the former largely supplanted by Islam). The opportunities for Greco-Roman trade were more limited by indirect trade (at first), and then had only a relatively short time afterward.
True. The whole thing about the Greeks, Romans, and later Europeans was to get to the stuff from all over Asia. Outside of precious metals and luxury goods, Europeans didn't really have too much outside of precision equipment to offer in return. At least not with the distances needed to travel.
 
There is archeological evidence that Roman and Greek merchants converted to Buddhism in India.

There is, of course, evidence of that in Alexandria, with Buddhist statues existing there, but the thing is that the bulk of the India trade was overland as it was quite a bit cheaper. There are gigantic amounts of Roman gold coinage in India, but they are, with a few exceptions, almost entirely overland. Maybe if the Kushan somehow conquer Persia (damn, that would be a massive empire), and thus cut the middle man out, Kanishka the Great could send missionaries to Rome, but otherwise, I just can’t see it.
 
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