Historical setting question

[Wook]

Alternate history idea as part of one of the founding elements in a historical setting I've had percolating around the back of my mind for some time.

If bhuddist missionaries had reached the arabian peninsula and persia by the 2nd-3rd centuries CE do you think that Bhuddism and in particular Zen philosophies would have persisted despite the rise of Islam or do you think it could have even prevented the rise of islam?

[JasonStarfire]

Alternate history idea as part of one of the founding elements in a historical setting I've had percolating around the back of my mind for some time.

If bhuddist missionaries had reached the arabian peninsula and persia by the 2nd-3rd centuries CE do you think that Bhuddism and in particular Zen philosophies would have persisted despite the rise of Islam or do you think it could have even prevented the rise of islam?

For a game setting, I'd just go with whatever you think sounds more fun. (Or whatever you can come up with more ideas for.)

Personally, I'd like to play out how the two cultures would interact with one another.

[Wook]

For a game setting, I'd just go with whatever you think sounds more fun. (Or whatever you can come up with more ideas for.)

Personally, I'd like to play out how the two cultures would interact with one another.


Well it's supposed to be an underpinninng of a much later culture. Basically the mithraim, instead of getting just coopeted into christianity, split into 2 distinct groups. One that goes christian and gives rise to the chivralic knight of europena history and another that becomes sort of a zen legionaire. Think of how the Japanese adapted zen into bushido and you start to get an idea only instead of a sythesis with shino belief it's gets synthesized with worship of the bull god. :D I know how I want christianity to fit, and I know how I have the mithraim fitting, and I know how the germanic/celtic/norse tribes are going to fit. I just haven't figured out how I want judaism and Islam to fit.

[JasonStarfire]

Well, there's always the Judean People's Front... and the People's Front of Judea. :D

[ldygmr1]

Alternate history idea as part of one of the founding elements in a historical setting I've had percolating around the back of my mind for some time.

If bhuddist missionaries had reached the arabian peninsula and persia by the 2nd-3rd centuries CE do you think that Bhuddism and in particular Zen philosophies would have persisted despite the rise of Islam or do you think it could have even prevented the rise of islam?



I dunno. People like to hate themselves. And other people. They LIKE to look down on others to make themselves feel better. So embracing something that encourages us to look within ourselves? Maybe not so much.

[Wook]

I dunno. People like to hate themselves. And other people. They LIKE to look down on others to make themselves feel better. So embracing something that encourages us to look within ourselves? Maybe not so much.

There's been plenty of ethnocentricity within bhuddism contrary to what the Dali Lama might want you to thing. ;) There's a reason white guys has to sneak into Tibet in the first place and why some were killed for attempting such IIRC. I'm not out to create a utopia. Just a different version of the mess that happened. Most important for my purposes is that I need some external force to act upon the roman empire but not break it to itsy bitsy pieces so that they can persist long enough to figure out how to actually USE steam technology rather than just figure out that it exists.

(Imagine skipping the dark ages and rennaisance and just hitting the industrial revolution full strike circa 900 CE with rails ringing the mediteranean. :D )

[Parzival]

There's little reason to doubt the exposure happened. India is a lot closer to the arabian peninsula than Japan. The dominant migrations of the time period were westward. There was trade between the ME and India. Bhuddism took pretty well in Afghanistan. <shrug> There's little doubt that Persia acted as a buffer to overt expansion westward, but with the relatively free flow of people, be they merchants or missionaries, there was undoubtably exposure.
It just didn't take root.

[Wook]

There's little reason to doubt the exposure happened. India is a lot closer to the arabian peninsula than Japan. The dominant migrations of the time period were westward. There was trade between the ME and India. Bhuddism took pretty well in Afghanistan. <shrug> There's little doubt that Persia acted as a buffer to overt expansion westward, but with the relatively free flow of people, be they merchants or missionaries, there was undoubtably exposure.
It just didn't take root.

My initial foray's into the history say that there was nowhere near the push west as there was into China and Japan. There was definitely a lot of trade and you can see more than a little cultural influence on things like architecture in the arabian peninsula and it did reach up into Afghanistan fer certain but just doesn't seem to be the big missionary push that places like China and Sri Lanka got. More exactly it doesn't appear to have permeated any farther than Persia/Afghanistan.

So my what if is what if the silk road trade of the day carried buddhism, (Where the hell I got it in my head that it's spelled bhuddism is beyond me. I must work to correct this. :p ), to the mediteranean and it took root in the middle east *before* the rise of Islam. (In my writeup this is going to be at the expense of expansion into Sri Lanka and Indonesia which is going to remain largely aboriginal.)

[David Argall]

There are records of missionaries being sent to the unbelieving West, but no word of them having any success, most likely because they didn't have any. And there is little reason to think any rerun of history would have a different result here.

Possible factors keeping Bhuddism to the East...
Hindu and Bhuddism contain a number of major elements deemed nonsencial by Western thought. Whether it was in fact any more so than their own beliefs is not important here. The missionary faced a hostile audience.
Religion moves by people and armies. The Hindu and Bhuddists moved North and East, but it was the Arabs that came to them from the West so they lacked the base to spead their beliefs from. [While Christianity early started to recruit from the general population, they heavily drew from the Jewish at first. The few Bhuddist headed West lacked this starter base.]
The religions of the far East were rather primative and offered weak opposition to Bhuddism. [Confucius is an extremely secular religion, making it quite easy for the believer to believe it and bhuddists.] By contrast, the West had their own set of deeply thought out religious theories, which were on their home ground, and rather difficult to dislodge.

All in all, it seems there was little chance of Bhuddist expanding to the West.