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

What kind of Buddhism are we talking about, anyway? The original which was more a philosophy, or the later one which had turned ex-prince Siddharta into a god?
 
What kind of Buddhism are we talking about, anyway? The original which was more a philosophy, or the later one which had turned ex-prince Siddharta into a god?

It depends which period we are talking about. By the time of the Indo-Greeks, it was more of the former, but by the time of the Kushan, it was more of the latter.

In any case, I suspect that the Buddha would be, at the very least, turned into a divus.
 
It depends which period we are talking about. By the time of the Indo-Greeks, it was more of the former, but by the time of the Kushan, it was more of the latter.

In any case, I suspect that the Buddha would be, at the very least, turned into a divus.
Gonna be fun with interpretatio graeca and romanae. While they did consolidate the mythology of the Greeks and Romans together (if only because people now focus on the Greek versions instead of the Roman ones people did until about a century and a half ago) though never did it for the Celts, Germanic, Norse, etc. Who knows what those were once like, before they in turn were consolidated by monks? Might even excuse how the Romans saw different gods leading different pantheons. I think they also believed that the God of Abraham was Chronus. Seems the Greeks and Romans had a degree of respect to the faithfulness of the Jews, though they didn't really understand how things went. Part of why they accused Christians of being atheists.

Back to Buddha, though. Whoever he comes, it is likely to be an altered form. Meaning Greek. He will have certain attributes stay the same, but he already had the polish needed to ship him back to the Classical world with you too much trouble. Then again, you could hardly move walls or statues that far. May be his image is best brought back on coins. Do you think Buddha will be given the interpretatio thing I mentioned above? Can't find anything saying which the Greeks coated him to, though that they saw him in a less polytheistic light. I couldn't say either way.

I do wonder if people will tie Alexander into this in any way. Was he before Buddha? Whether or not he was, I can see people toeing in him stopping at India as either being that he had a child there (of whom Buddha was a descendent, thus having the necessary pedigree for whatever areas deified Alexander) or that his spirit moved over there in a fashion. Reincarnation will be tied into this, if it is brought up. Since Buddha was supposed to have declined conquering the world through arms, it could be seen as Alexander conquering gods and spirits themselves. Of course they would need to rethink Greek and Roman ideas of the afterlife. Not sure if any of the Mediterranean countries believed in reincarnation. Heck, some stories have Hercules/Heracles being split in two when he died, the mortal part going to the afterlife for heroes, the divine going to Olympus.
 
Although we have lost a lot of information on it, I believe that Buddhism received something of a following in Alexandria. Perhaps with Ptolemaic support (something hard to achieve considering divine kingship favoured them), Egyptian Buddhism could become a major force across the med just as Alexandria influenced Christianity.
 
Outside of precious metals and luxury goods, Europeans didn't really have too much outside of precision equipment to offer in return.

They paid either in gold or with materials Asians didn't produce back then, most importantly glas. For this reason, some have even nicknamed the Silk Road Glass road.

There is, of course, evidence of that in Alexandria, with Buddhist statues existing there

The evidence I thought of isn't from Alexandria, but from the India itself, where it was quite common to commemorate gifts to Buddhist monasteries by craftsmen and merchants. According to McLaughlin (Rome and the Distant East), merchants from the Roman Empire took part in this religious patronage. Indeed, some inscriptions written in Prakrit mention new converts to Buddhism who are thought to have been tradesmen from the Roman Empire. This means that Roman or Greek merchants lived in India, at least for some time, and adopted parts of Indian culture, like Buddhist religion.

There are gigantic amounts of Roman gold coinage in India, but they are, with a few exceptions, almost entirely overland.

Thousands of Roman coins have been found in India, most of them silver denarii, but also some golden aureii. The majority of the coins were unearthed in southern India, which is quite logical given that the Roman maritime trade between Egypt and India ended in the Tamil kingdoms of the South.

but the thing is that the bulk of the India trade was overland as it was quite a bit cheaper.

You will have to give me a source for this statement, because what I read says something else. In ancient times, sea trade was much cheaper and faster than overland transport. This is especially true outside the Roman Empire, where traders couldn't rely on the Roman roads built for the fast movement of the Roman army. Furthermore, ancient sources almost exclusively speak of voyage by sea when speaking about journeys to India. The sea trade to India is thus, and for archeological reasons like shipwrecks, much better known than the land route. The land route probably was much more dangerous, slower and thus more expensive than the sea route. Travelling overland, a Roman (or Greek) merchant would have had to cross Parthia, the deserts of Gedrosia and the Kushan Empire before reaching his destination, the Tamil countries of southern India.

So no, it seems that the bulk of Greco-Roman trade with India was in fact by sea.
 
I'd say it really depended on who was doing it. There was a profit to be made on all areas, but the Greco-Bacterians were well placed for overland trade. I believe that there St. Thomas is supposed to have went to Kerala, at least that is what the claims go. Supposed to be a Jewish populatoin back then, which there are still a few around, I believe. Might be that they also took part in ocean trade, but simply weren't swallowed up like the Greeks were.
 
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?

800px-Periplous_of_the_Erythraean_Sea.svg.png

View attachment 346332
Kalmyk Expansion from Caucasus area much further west to the Balkans. Kalmyk Khanate in Serbia.
 
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.

The direct trade route between Ptolemaic Egypt and India was opened in ca. 118 BCE by Eudoxos of Kyzikos. While under Ptolemaic rule, tradewith India was very limitted, the Roman conquest of Egypt changed everything. To be able to exploit the gold mines and stone quarries of eastern Egypt, the Roman government improved the desert roads connecting the the Red Sea ports to the Nile and thus to the Mediterranean world. The Romans improved the Egyptian infrastructure by building hydreumata, caravan stations with water cisterns, and establishing watchtowers to control the trade and protect the caravans against bandits. According to Strabo, the merchants trading with India had to travel through the desert by night, but Roman infrastructure effort made it possible to do the crossing during daylight.

Your post suggests that Buddhism would have been more influential in the western world if the contact happened earlier, to give Buddhism more time to spread before Christianity gained hold. I think a good way to achieve this would be to strengthen the Ptolemies. In the 1st century BCE, they were a weak power which did little to improve its roads and encourage eastern trade. If you can change this, maybe by reducing the conflicts between Jews, Greeks and Egyptians, and by giving Egypt some competent Ptolemaic rulers, it might result in a scenario in which direct trade between southern India and the Greek world begins much earlier. This gives Buddhism more time to establish itself as religion in the Roman Empire, and the butterflies from a strong Ptolemaic kingdom will likely butterfly away Jesus Christ.
 
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.

You're probably right, but it's important to point out that most people agree that the Mysteries of Mithras were independently formed in the Roman Empire with some Persian "flavor", as most contemporary scholars failed to find a similar cult in Persia itself. Thus, the "Mysteries of Buddha" would probably have very little to do with Buddhism, probably drinking heavily from a Gnostic and Manichaeistic source.

IIRC Mani did mention the Buddha and his thoughts here and there. Also, some early Christians did think of Buddhism as a part of Manichaeism.
 
I may point out that Indian religions were rather good at spreading eastward and southward instead and that may be a contributing factor as to why there weren't many Buddhists/Hindus/Jains in the "West"?
 
I may point out that Indian religions were rather good at spreading eastward and southward instead and that may be a contributing factor as to why there weren't many Buddhists/Hindus/Jains in the "West"?
Dharma can religoins are too often lumped together. Including by the government of India, which has Hindu lay apply to Jainists, Sikhs, and Buddhists. Really, the main thing of what made Hinduism Hinduism was sticking to India, and one day having the British start grabbing whatever Dharma they could find and start making all non-Abrahamic peoples obey certain rules as if they were a monolithic religoin rather than a confederation of beliefs. And there was less desert to the south and east, making it a bit easier to spread that way. I'd say that part of why there aren't more Suotheast Asia and Indonesia is that the Buddhists and Muslims took the local cultures and rleigoins, either replacing or altering them, before the Indians could get there and coopt it.
 
What kind of Buddhism are we talking about, anyway? The original which was more a philosophy, or the later one which had turned ex-prince Siddharta into a god?
Just to clarify, neither description well describes the history of Buddhism.

Whilst Buddhism doesn't well fit into usual standards of religion (I've said on here before that the differences between many schools are far more pronounced than the Judaism, Islam, Christianity divide), it was never "just a philosophy" and he was never venerated as a god outside of Hindus doing so ironically.

But from the completion of the Pali Canon, Siddhartha Gautama was treated above a god, as he proves that an Ishvara can also be bound to samsara. Later schools if anything deemphasized him in comparison, focusing largely on the Bodhisattvas and their helper deities.
 
Dharma can religoins are too often lumped together. Including by the government of India, which has Hindu lay apply to Jainists, Sikhs, and Buddhists. Really, the main thing of what made Hinduism Hinduism was sticking to India, and one day having the British start grabbing whatever Dharma they could find and start making all non-Abrahamic peoples obey certain rules as if they were a monolithic religoin rather than a confederation of beliefs. And there was less desert to the south and east, making it a bit easier to spread that way. I'd say that part of why there aren't more Suotheast Asia and Indonesia is that the Buddhists and Muslims took the local cultures and rleigoins, either replacing or altering them, before the Indians could get there and coopt it.
Got to address this as well. Whilst Hinduism is diverse, its not at all accurate to say it only gained a semblance of philosophical unity with the arrival of the British. Proto-Hinduism had its own identity going back to the time of the Buddha, and the Vedas are a common thread which has binded the Hindu schools ever since.
 
I didn't lump the religions of India together as though they're the same or facets of one another, that is not the case; anyway, the OP asked why Indian religions didn't spread westward, Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism are all Indian religions. I simply offered my opinion on why that didn't happen.
 
If I had to guess I'd say that monotheism is a bit like a weed and can't be dislodged from a group of people once it makes up 75% of a city's population. They can only be replaced by... other monotheistic relgions. Either that or monotheistic religions lucked out in OTL, I have no idea.
 
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.



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

But then this brings up the question of why Buddhism doesn't seem to have spread into Iran proper. Cities like Merv seem to be the westernmost limit. Why is this? Christians were certainly able to build up a fairly sizable minority community in the heart of Sassanid power in Mesopotamia.

Your note about expanding Indian naval routes is quite interesting. Would Hinduism or Buddhism be able to spread into South Arabia or coastal East Africa in the same way it spread into Maritime SE Asia if not for Islam? Or is the dynamic different? Did Islam play a role in the expansion of the naval routes? Why were they expanding?

Although we have lost a lot of information on it, I believe that Buddhism received something of a following in Alexandria. Perhaps with Ptolemaic support (something hard to achieve considering divine kingship favoured them), Egyptian Buddhism could become a major force across the med just as Alexandria influenced Christianity.

Interesting. What's the evidence for this?
 
But then this brings up the question of why Buddhism doesn't seem to have spread into Iran proper. Cities like Merv seem to be the westernmost limit. Why is this? Christians were certainly able to build up a fairly sizable minority community in the heart of Sassanid power in Mesopotamia.

But only in Mesopotamia. They got very few converts in solidly-Zoroastrian Iran itself. One thing that should really be noted is that the cultural heart of the Sassanids was really Persia, and they were the ones responsible for the present dialect of Persian becoming the literary dialect. Mesopotamia was doubtless important, but it was no longer the most important part of a Persian empire as it was under the Achaemenids or even the Parthians.

Your note about expanding Indian naval routes is quite interesting. Would Hinduism or Buddhism be able to spread into South Arabia or coastal East Africa in the same way it spread into Maritime SE Asia if not for Islam? Or is the dynamic different? Did Islam play a role in the expansion of the naval routes? Why were they expanding?

I think Hinduism and Buddhism may achieve some converts and some syncretism may happen, but Christianity will ultimately outcompete it in that region.
 
The main thing with Buddhism I feel is that it should require some previous cultural belief in reincarnation. For Europe there is a variety of believes about the dead, but many of the cruelest burial cultures involving killing slaves upon the death of their master. Not all of them, but just enough to keep them company and serve them in the next life/afterlife. It suggests they don't see themselves coming back to Earth. For Porto-Hinduism we have castes were, no matter how well you behave, the only way to rise in society is to die, and your children will never rise in status either. To break the cycle of death and reincarnation would be rather more desirable there.
 
Top