WI: Buddhism requires pilgrimage to India?

Christianity and Islam both have a tradition of religious pilgrimages which led to conflict as well as exchange of ideas. To both, being well traveled was a virtue and as a consequence Christian and Islamic societies tend to be less insular and their empires saw rapid expansion.

What if Buddhism required pilgrimages to the holy land in India? The location of Buddhas homeland was much less accessible compared with Jerusalem or Mecca. I wonder how this would work out.
 
That would actually be Nepal (sort of). It is an interesting thought. Perhapos it leads to more trade and cultural diffusion between societies that did not have it in OTL.
 
Christianity and Islam both have a tradition of religious pilgrimages which led to conflict as well as exchange of ideas. To both, being well traveled was a virtue and as a consequence Christian and Islamic societies tend to be less insular and their empires saw rapid expansion.

What if Buddhism required pilgrimages to the holy land in India? The location of Buddhas homeland was much less accessible compared with Jerusalem or Mecca. I wonder how this would work out.

Well, Buddhism has it too. It was common in Buddhist India, and plenty of Chinese Buddhists made the pilgrimage into the early Tang, until the Buddhist communities died out in India.

Then you still had them in China itself. I can't speak for Japan, however.

What you really seem to be asking for is a more diffuse Buddhism, with a longer lasting Buddhism in India.
 
There actually are various traditions of pilgrimage in various forms of Buddhism - there's a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka which claims to have one of Buddha's teeth, which attracts thousands of pilgrims each year.

In order to create and maintain a strong tradition of pilgrimage to the land where Buddha lived, you'll need to make sure that some form of Buddhism remains the poltically dominant religion there.

IOTL, Indian Buddhism was largely re-absorbed by Hinduism, and the invasion of the Ghurids and the Ghaznavids resulted in the destruction of quite a few major Buddhist monasteries and universities in northern India, further weakening an already weakened Buddhist community.
 
What if Buddhism required pilgrimages to the holy land in India? The location of Buddhas homeland was much less accessible compared with Jerusalem or Mecca. I wonder how this would work out.

This reminds me of a Chinese novel called Journey to the West which was based on a set of Chinese folktales about a Buddhist monk called Tripitaka who was asked to travel to India to collect some Buddhist scriptures. He was accompanied by three spirits/creatures, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy
 

Hendryk

Banned
This reminds me of a Chinese novel called Journey to the West
Yeah, this is one of the classics of Chinese literature.

I second Faeelin, Buddhism does have a tradition of pilgrimage, which prompted many a Chinese monk to take the long journey to India across the Himalayas from the 3rd to the 8th centuries CE, and a surviving Buddhist tradition in India would help keep it going. As for shorter pilgrimages to local holy sites, they're around to this day.
 
This reminds me of a Chinese novel called Journey to the West which was based on a set of Chinese folktales about a Buddhist monk called Tripitaka who was asked to travel to India to collect some Buddhist scriptures. He was accompanied by three spirits/creatures, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy

Ah, Journey to the West. Very good, though I find it hard to get hold of a decent full-length English edition. Penguin publishes an edition under the title Monkey but this is just selected highlights. I used to have a massive full-length, fully illustrated hardcover edition when I was a kid but I don't know where that went.

Sun Wu-Kong rocks- I have a kid in school who acts much like him.
 
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