raharris1973
Well-known member
What if the Buddhist religion, originated in India, and spread in South Asia, with eventual spread to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and missions but a notable lack of permanent success in Persia, the Middle East, Greece, and points west, similarly failed to make the broad and enduring historic impact it has made on East Asia, most especially China, Korea, and Japan, and possibly Mongolia and Tibet as well?
This does not have to mean that from 200 BC through the 1500s AD or the 1999 AD there was never any Buddhist proselytization or Buddhist communities in China, Japan, or Korea, just that these communities never grew larger, nor were more lasting than ephemeral historic religious communities in China that had some adherents, but like Judaism, Nestorian Christianity, Mazdaism/Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, that never "caught on" for "the long haul" to the modern day. Korea and Japan may well reach the modern age never having heard of Buddhism at all.
What happens religiously in East Asia instead? Building blocks would include East Asian native folk religion/animism in each country, in China joined with Taoist religion/philosophy/thought, and Confucian ethics and rites, in Japan, indigenous nature worship with the ideas of kami spirits, often summarized as "Shinto." China would still be touched, to a lesser, or greater,, degree by all those also-ran religions coming out of Persia, the Levant and Arabia, via the Silk Road and Arab maritime trade. Eventually, it would be exposed to Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, as would Korea and Japan.
Calculate a bit on the incalculable. Speculate on the highly speculative, what sorts of cultural alterations might we see?
This does not have to mean that from 200 BC through the 1500s AD or the 1999 AD there was never any Buddhist proselytization or Buddhist communities in China, Japan, or Korea, just that these communities never grew larger, nor were more lasting than ephemeral historic religious communities in China that had some adherents, but like Judaism, Nestorian Christianity, Mazdaism/Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, that never "caught on" for "the long haul" to the modern day. Korea and Japan may well reach the modern age never having heard of Buddhism at all.
What happens religiously in East Asia instead? Building blocks would include East Asian native folk religion/animism in each country, in China joined with Taoist religion/philosophy/thought, and Confucian ethics and rites, in Japan, indigenous nature worship with the ideas of kami spirits, often summarized as "Shinto." China would still be touched, to a lesser, or greater,, degree by all those also-ran religions coming out of Persia, the Levant and Arabia, via the Silk Road and Arab maritime trade. Eventually, it would be exposed to Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, as would Korea and Japan.
Calculate a bit on the incalculable. Speculate on the highly speculative, what sorts of cultural alterations might we see?
