World Religion Possible?

In the early 16th century the Chinese were slowly adopting Christianity.

No they were'nt, if anything that was one of the period where Christinaity was at its lowest following the destruction of the last Nestorians and it being a period where missionary work from Europe was not only highly limited do to geographic constraints, but the Ming government not being happy about it and iscouraging it as well.
 
Isn't it possible that the whole "one world religion" thing is OTL, just back in Cro-Magnon (or earlier) times? Lots of headless female statues from all over Europe looking mighty similar to each other from back then..
 
Isn't it possible that the whole "one world religion" thing is OTL, just back in Cro-Magnon (or earlier) times? Lots of headless female statues from all over Europe looking mighty similar to each other from back then..

Their was no such thing as religion back then, rather just tribal spiritual beliefs and supersitions, that said though Humans existed in Africa and Asia at the time, so even if their was some hypothetical religion in Europe, it would'nt be the majority of Humanity at the time.
 
Their is one large flaw in this, that being the assumption that everyone would accept it; you can have Romans adding Hindu or Amerindian deities to their Pantheon, but it does'nt mean the Native Americans or Indians are going to accept the other way.

I'd also point out that Monotheism is found in many places in the world, so you'd have that as a block as well.

Perhaps, but the fact that it is already assumed that there is more than one god would probably give rise to the idea that the other guy's gods are just demons or something. The kind of religion I'm thinking of would be very doctinally diverse, so if there was one culture who considered one deity to be separate from another while another thought of them as aspects of the same god, that wouldn't be a problem.

As for monotheism, are we talking true monotheism or just mololatry? Because the latter could coexist and possibly blend in with my World Polytheism. Even a true monotheism which sees certain commonly worshiped deities as aspects of the One God would be fine. Again the only way for any "world religion" to work is that it would have to be doctrinally diverse, which was why I was thinking it could be like Hinduism where there are even atheist and pantheist schools of thought.
 
I don't think it's impossible. Christianity after all was an obscure sect and spread to half the world, so why couldn't Buddhism, which had converted India and made its way into all of the Sinosphere?

I guess my concern isn't so much plausibility as whether it's within the op -- in my scenario, after all, at least 25% of the world's population is "Hindu".
 
Actually, now that I think about it, I'm kind of intrigued by the particulars of my example. For example, how exactly would India-based philosophy (as Hinduism, Buddhism, or something else) spread across Africa?
 
Actually, now that I think about it, I'm kind of intrigued by the particulars of my example. For example, how exactly would India-based philosophy (as Hinduism, Buddhism, or something else) spread across Africa?

Geographically? From the Horn of Africa and East Africa; the latter was a major area of trade from the Middle-East, so with an expansionist India it'd be one places that it would spread to.

Interestingly IOTL their have been a small, but notable amount of converts to Hinduism in West Africa.
 
Interestingly most of India was Buddhist before a hindu revival during the first millenia. I don't know enough about Indian history, but obviously this decline of Buddhism must have had reasons, so it should be possible to prevent it from happening with an early enough POD by eliminating these reasons.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true at all. Pre-Islam, Buddhism was just one of the several competing philosophies - there were Logicians, Sankhyas, Buddhists, Jains, Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Kapalikas, Dualists, Non-Dualists, Atheists, etc, and all of them were considered Hindu (but considering that the word Hindu itself is a foreign one used to describe the people of India, it is hardly specific or descriptive). Since neither Buddhism, nor Hinduism is an exclusivist religion (and indeed, in ancient India, people did not count themselves as Hindus, Buddhists, or whatever), common people followed an eclectic mix of beliefs. Actually considering oneself a follower of a particular philosophy was the eccentric preoccupation of a tiny tribe of philosophers, and thinkers, and the common people believed in an esoteric mixture of whatever they wanted. The idea of India being divided into Buddhist and non-Buddhist denominations is an attempt to impose a western (Abrahamic) worldview on a part of the world that does not subscribe to it.

The reasons for the disappearance of Buddhism are actually very simple. Buddhism was centrally organised, around monasteries, which required significant support, from either the state or private. Post Islamic invasions, support for monasteries disappeared, and starved of funding, the monks disappeared from India. However, the lay `Buddhists' were simply absorbed into the larger Indian cultural framework. Funnily enough, even today's Hindus consider Buddha an avatar of the God Vishnu, and Buddhism simply integrated into the Indian metaculture, without retaining a specific label. The lack of the Buddhist clergy after the disappearance of monasteries meant that it was non-Buddhist lay rituals that were followed.

However, Buddhist monasteries actually thrived as long as there was state support, and right up to the fifteenth century, there were Buddhist monasteries functioning in south India, where state support from the Vijayanagar empire was available.

Now we only have to make sure that Buddhism finds its way to Europe. A possible option would of course be a surviving Alexandrian Empire which serves as a bridge from India to Europe. Thus Buddhism spread throughout the middle east prempting the various Abrahmical religons and supplanting/merging with Zaraostriansim.

Buddhism is not a religion in the way Christianity/Islam/Judaism is. Buddhism does not have a God at all. Buddhism is heavily based on people following certain ethical principles. There certainly are a very large number of philosophical works about what the Buddha said/did and how it should be interpreted, but this is again of no consequence to any common follower. If Buddhism flourishes in Egypt, you will have Buddhists worshipping Isis. In India, `common Buddhists' worshipped Indian Gods, in Tibet, Buddhism layers with the traditional religion (Bon), in Japan with the Japanese Gods, in China, with Chinese ones, and so forth. If, by Buddhism, you mean just a bunch of ethical principles, then, ninety nine percent of the world already purports to follow Buddhism (Buddhist ethical principles are not unique, by any stretch of imagination).

Going that way, you might get a world wide Buddhism (where everyone acknowledges the contribution of the Buddha in ethical terms), but they will be so different from one region to another as to be totally unrecognisable, in the way, say, Indian Buddhism, today, is totally unrecognisable to a Japanese Buddhist.
 
Well hopefully some time in the future there will be a new world enlightenment and people of the earth will realise the futile stupidity of it all and take up spiritualism. ;)
 
Unfortunately, this is simply not true at all. Pre-Islam, Buddhism was just one of the several competing philosophies - there were Logicians, Sankhyas, Buddhists, Jains, Shaivites, Vaishnavites, Kapalikas, Dualists, Non-Dualists, Atheists, etc, and all of them were considered Hindu (but considering that the word Hindu itself is a foreign one used to describe the people of India, it is hardly specific or descriptive). Since neither Buddhism, nor Hinduism is an exclusivist religion (and indeed, in ancient India, people did not count themselves as Hindus, Buddhists, or whatever), common people followed an eclectic mix of beliefs. Actually considering oneself a follower of a particular philosophy was the eccentric preoccupation of a tiny tribe of philosophers, and thinkers, and the common people believed in an esoteric mixture of whatever they wanted. The idea of India being divided into Buddhist and non-Buddhist denominations is an attempt to impose a western (Abrahamic) worldview on a part of the world that does not subscribe to it.

As I said I don't know much about Indian History, but I no enough that this picture of a happy coexistence of Buddhism and Hinduism is at least partially incorrect.

The indian writer/philosoph sankara decried Buddha as an enemy of the people. In southern India (Andra Pradesh) several rulers (like trilochana) and hindu clerics (like Panditaradhya) persecuted Buddhists, condemning them as atheists, closing their temples and monasteries or converting them into temples dedicated to Shiva or Vishnu, and in some cases killing the monks.

So Buddhism was definitely recognized as something different by at least some Hinduist.

The reasons for the disappearance of Buddhism are actually very simple. Buddhism was centrally organised, around monasteries, which required significant support, from either the state or private. Post Islamic invasions, support for monasteries disappeared, and starved of funding, the monks disappeared from India. However, the lay `Buddhists' were simply absorbed into the larger Indian cultural framework. Funnily enough, even today's Hindus consider Buddha an avatar of the God Vishnu, and Buddhism simply integrated into the Indian metaculture, without retaining a specific label. The lack of the Buddhist clergy after the disappearance of monasteries meant that it was non-Buddhist lay rituals that were followed.

Great, so now all that needs to happen is to keep the support for the monasteries, ensuring that the Buddhist clergy persists.



Buddhism is not a religion in the way Christianity/Islam/Judaism is. Buddhism does not have a God at all. Buddhism is heavily based on people following certain ethical principles. There certainly are a very large number of philosophical works about what the Buddha said/did and how it should be interpreted, but this is again of no consequence to any common follower. If Buddhism flourishes in Egypt, you will have Buddhists worshipping Isis. In India, `common Buddhists' worshipped Indian Gods, in Tibet, Buddhism layers with the traditional religion (Bon), in Japan with the Japanese Gods, in China, with Chinese ones, and so forth.

I'm aware of that which is another reason why Buddhism would be well suited to become a world religion. It can easily blend in with already present traditions and does not have to remove them. As the OP noted the religion does not have to be uniform, to fulfill his challenge.
 
As I said I don't know much about Indian History, but I no enough that this picture of a happy coexistence of Buddhism and Hinduism is at least partially incorrect.

Who said anything about a happy coexistence? I said there was no specific division of the people of the country into `Buddhist' and `Hindu'. No one identified himself as a `Hindu' or a `Buddhist'. Were there tensions between Buddhist philosophy and non-Buddhist philosophies? Yes. There were also tensions aplenty between other contemporary non-Buddhist philosophies as well, and even violence. What I am trying to tell you is simply this - There was no division stating that Buddhism and Hinduism were separate religions. The concept of different all-encompassing religions is itself alien to Indian philosophies. Buddhism was just one of the several competing schools of Indian philosophy, whose power and influence waxed and waned with the attitude of the king.

The indian writer/philosoph sankara decried Buddha as an enemy of the people.

Considering that Shankara himself was called `Hidden follower of Buddha' by his detractors, and that `enemy of the people' is a classic communist phrase, I am very sceptical about the wording, and interested to know exactly what Shankara wrote. Do you have a reference to the original quote from Shankara?

And in any case, this proves less than nothing. Philosophers calling each other names is par for the course in all philosophy works that criticise others. I can quote dozens of Buddhist philosophers calling non-Buddhist philosophers uglier names. Does that mean that Buddhist philosophers who said that were violent?

In southern India (Andra Pradesh) several rulers (like trilochana) and hindu clerics (like Panditaradhya) persecuted Buddhists, condemning them as atheists, closing their temples and monasteries or converting them into temples dedicated to Shiva or Vishnu, and in some cases killing the monks.

All I could find in support of this was the unreferenced sentence on Wiki. Do you have a full proper reference to the source material? I cannot even find Trilochana Pallava in my list of Pallava rulers.

But it also brings me to a point I want to highlight. The tensions were between the philosophers and preachers, not between the lay people. You can find individual instances of preachers, and monasteries being targeted. Most of the time, you will find that it is the case of one preacher who managed to get the ear of the king and persuading him to kill off his hated rivals. The tensions were at the level of philosophers, and not at the level of the lay people.

But you won't find royal declarations of Buddhism being declared as a heretical sect, or Buddhists being given a choice to convert to face persecution. You won't find this kind of order, because Buddhism was not recognised as a separate religion. All Indian Buddhists were part of the pan-Indian religion (and indeed, religious identification was never part of Indian mindset). This is because none of the Indian religions are exclusive.

To emphasise the point, Simhavishnu Pallava (one of those accused of anti-Buddhist leanings in the Wiki) also had several functioning Buddhist monasteries in his capital. The same Pallavas were among the most notable state funders of Buddhism. Xuenxang, in his travel diaries, lauds the reigning Pallava kings (he was visiting during the reigns of the son and grandson of Simhavishnu Pallava, Mahendravarman, and Narasimhavarman) and says that he found a hundred Buddhist monasteries and eighty other temples flourishing in Kanchi (the capital) and that the Buddhist monasteries had been functioning for hundreds of years.

So Buddhism was definitely recognized as something different by at least some Hinduist.
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Was Buddhism a different philosophy? Yes. It was recognised by everyone who knew enough to read and write. But was it a separate religion, whose followers identified themselves as `Buddhist'. No. And that is my point.
 
I'm right now reading "The Rise and Decline of Buddhism in India" from Kanai Lal Hazra. The only book on that matter I could find in my bibliothek. As far as I have read so far, his argument seems to be that while there were never organized anti-Buddhist measures enforced, the centralized nature of Buddhism made it very vulnerable to the sporadic persecution by individual kings (he cites the examples I provided). Essentially if a ruler decided to destroy a certain Buddhist monastery it was a major blow for the organization in this area, while a similar destruction of an Hindu temple would have the same impact, as it could be rebuilt by other smaller temples still around.

Thus the removal of the key centers of Buddhism allowed the absorption of the lay people, preventing a reestablishment.

Was Buddhism a different philosophy? Yes. It was recognised by everyone who knew enough to read and write. But was it a separate religion, whose followers identified themselves as `Buddhist'. No.
What exactly is the difference between a philosophy and a religion? Why are Christianity and Judaism to different religions while Buddhism is a philosophy?

And that is my point.

And my point is that this different "philosophy" (if the word religion is not allowed) was removed from India where it once prospered. And that if we keep it there it would be a good start for a one world religion.
 
I'm right now reading "The Rise and Decline of Buddhism in India" from Kanai Lal Hazra. The only book on that matter I could find in my bibliothek. As far as I have read so far, his argument seems to be that while there were never organized anti-Buddhist measures enforced, the centralized nature of Buddhism made it very vulnerable to the sporadic persecution by individual kings (he cites the examples I provided). Essentially if a ruler decided to destroy a certain Buddhist monastery it was a major blow for the organization in this area, while a similar destruction of an Hindu temple would have the same impact, as it could be rebuilt by other smaller temples still around.

Thus the removal of the key centers of Buddhism allowed the absorption of the lay people, preventing a reestablishment.

I have read a very considerable amount of literature about the disappearance of Buddhism from India, but not Hazra. I will take a look at it.

The problem with the argument that the destruction of key centres allowed reabsorption of Buddhists is with the size of the monasteries involved. The large monasteries, whose activities were recorded until the arrival of Islam, were all untouched. No one has been able to make effectively the argument that key monasteries were destroyed by `Hindu' kings. Takshashila, Nalanda, Udantapuri, Vikramashila, Nagapattana, and Jagaddala were all huge Buddhist monasteries-cum-universities, and they all flourished untouched with funding by the state (and private). None of the big ones were destroyed, or even attacked at any time by any Hindu kings. Further, the number of Buddhist monasteries was never a small number. For example, the famed opponent of Buddhism, Shashaanka of Gauda (modern Bengal), had more than a hundred Buddhist monasteries in his capital, Karnasuvarna (also from XuenXang).

The actions against Buddhist monks by non-Buddhist kings in India, where they have occurred, can be classed into two categories.
1) Individual preachers who managed to get the ear of the king and get him to remove his hated rivals. This was invariably limited to individual opponents, or small monasteries. No king ever went after the big monasteries, or after small monasteries on a large scale or even a systematic way. Consequently, the idea of Buddhism being fatally damaged by individual kings is unsubstantiated. If we take your own example and accept that Simhavishnu Pallava went after individual monasteries, it could and would have been rebuilt under his son and grandson, who, according to Xuenxang, were great patrons of Buddhist learning. The number of monks the large monastery in Nagapattana (just about two hundred miles south of where the monasteries are said to have been attacked) was churning out would make it easily possible to rebuild and re-staff those destroyed monasteries, and state funding, according to Xuenxang, was available.

2) Buddhist monasteries which got involved in politics. The example I cited, Shashaanka, went after individual Buddhist preachers and two monasteries in Kushinagara, because they helped the wife of his political opponent escape from his dungeons. The same Shashaanka, however, funded hundreds of monasteries in his capital, and there were more than twenty other monasteries functioning in Kushinagara, at that point of time, according to Xuenxang.

Post-Islamic arrival, the picture changed radically. No Indian philosophy got any state support, and central organisation, in the face of consistent persecution (especially under the Delhi sultanate and the early Islamic rule), was a significant liability. This meant that all Buddhist monasteries, which were centrally organised, unsupportable. To add to this problem was the fact that Arab and Turkish merchants replaced Indians in key trade. Mercantile support was always a significant source of income for all monasteries, and with both sources of funding gone, Buddhism simply died a slow lingering death, over the next few centuries, being absorbed into the Indian metaculture. It was not just Buddhism that suffered post-Islam. All centrally organised Indian philosophies, which required state support, or universities, vanished. Among the more prominent were the Sankhyas, the Logicians, the Legalists, Kapalikas, and Charvakists. The great tragedy post-Islam was that it greatly reduced the philosophical diversity of India. Only those philosophies which could thrive with little to no state funding survived.

The exact reverse happened in South east Asia. `Hinduism' had a great amount of penetration in south east Asia at one point of time (Khmer empire, kingdom of Champa, and the Majapahit empire were all `Hindu', in the fourteenth century). But `Hinduism' there got absorbed into `Buddhism'. Not because of any large scale persecution of Hindus, because state funded Buddhist monasteries were able to capture a larger mindshare by providing clergy for lay rituals.

Was Buddhism a different philosophy? Yes. It was recognised by everyone who knew enough to read and write. But was it a separate religion, whose followers identified themselves as `Buddhist'. No.
What exactly is the difference between a philosophy and a religion? Why are Christianity and Judaism to different religions while Buddhism is a philosophy?
I am no expert on either Christianity or Judaism, but from what I understand, the rituals of the two religions, from birth to death, are already determined and are very different from each other. The Jewish wedding/birth/death ceremonies are very different from the Christian wedding/birth/death ceremonies. This was never the case in Indic philosophies. The few differences you can find today are mostly modern. The amount of overlap between `Buddhist' and `Hindu' rituals, both personal and communal, in ancient India were huge.

The most important difference is that neither `Hinduism' nor `Buddhism' are exclusive. People were not asked to declare that they were Hindus or Buddhists. It also does not follow that if you are a Hindu, you cannot be a Buddhist, and vice versa. This is not true of either Christianity or Islam or Judaism. The lay people went to the nearest/most convenient/favourite priest when they wanted birth/marriage ceremonies. Can't get priest X, because the monastery where he lived is gone? Oh well - we'll get priest Y, who'll do the same rituals for us, albeit in a slightly different way. The rituals were still similar after all.

Same with communal rituals like harvests, spring festivals, etc. Get the most convenient priest, who will perform the rituals for you. No one cared what he believed in. Correct observation of the ritual was all that mattered.

And my point is that this different "philosophy" (if the word religion is not allowed) was removed from India where it once prospered. And that if we keep it there it would be a good start for a one world religion.
If you want to do that, you need to butterfly Islamic invasions in India away.
 
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If you want to do that, you need to butterfly Islamic invasions in India away.

Yes. This would be perhaps my favourite AU of all: No Islamic invasions of India. Not only would there be far more philosophic diversity and cultural/architectural heritage in modern-day India, but an absolutely huge amount of human suffering could be avoided.
 
Avoid the "officialization" of "proto-orthodox" Christianity as defined by the trinitarian credal statements and the establishment of this variant of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire. Allow the various competing Christological views of the docetists, arians, gnostics, and others to occur within a "big tent" Christianity. Such a broadly defined Christianity could probably much more easily accept Islam as an acceptable variant and also make room for most Jews and other abrahamic-related faith systems. Since some early Christian sects even maintained polytheistic and pantheistic views regarding the heavenly realm and its relationship to the material world, accomodation with other religious systems in a broadly synchretic faith is possible.
 
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