Why is India such a potent cultural and religious force in Asia?

Nepal seems to be quite different.

It's because Asians are copycats, not because india so enriched.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_subcontinent

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_India

Aryan genes favor religion and spirituality.

A couple of factors:
>Historically large population which drives a lot of commerce
>Located at the gate into East Asia by both land and sea, so trade from further west will invariably pick up Indian goods and culture on their way East.
>Population centers located closer to remote centers of spirituality than its cultural rivals, so new developments are filtered through Indian culture on their way out, or are first influenced by India before coming into contact with others nations.

Free thought

Buddhism was the first proselytizing religion

Is that why Europeans are good at copying some desert nigger religion?

Really makes you think

Because for the longest time there was no such thing as "India," it was a diverse place filled with multiple cultures who kept on coming up with shit.

You're a retard. You can call it Vedic or whatever instead, but modern nationalities don't cancel out cultural spheres of influence 2,500 years ago.

Copying what desert religion? Do you even know who crucified Christ?

This board has reached new levels of retardation.

because that areas collective memory and history goes so far back when the fucking gods came down from heaven and told them how not be be scamming shitting pajeets. they got their shit in order and schooled half the world only to become smelly stereotypes

Indian(the region) population was considerably less than that of other similarly sized places like Europe for a lot of time and only surpassed in the last two centuries, along with increasing poverty.

Good ol congress who initiated the green revolution but did not account for population growth and refused to improve the economy to create jobs for the large amount of people.

Typical socialist bullshit that ruins nations.

>Greater_India
>Yunnan, Tibet and Philippine
Tibet is a bit debatable, but Yunnan and Philippine? No.

Philippines had a hindu religious past.

South East asia can be seen as mixture of India and China, with Chinese physical features and Indian culture.

South India is wewuz tier

It's skewed by all the tourists in Kathmandu.

Most South East Asians don't really look all that Chinese, they're generally shorter and browner, and have funny noses.

real consensus

if im not mistaken nepal was not vedic during the buddhas time or at least the civilisation he came from wasn't

That's an interesting way to look at it. So most of the world's major religions came out of the Middle East-Persia-South Asia area.

The Buddhas main policy was to be !notHinduism but he invokes Krishna's name at points and his early form of Buddhism is actually pretty militaristic compared to Chinese Buddhism (aka what most of the world understands as Buddhism).

I think you inversed green and blue

there was no nepal during that time moron.

>Greece
kek

The Romans?

Christianity has and always will be an Eastern religion. Sorry friend.

Aka south chinese

This is also a south Chinese, moron.

>cherrypicked K-pop-ed Taiwanese idol

Because they have strong women leaders, but for the life of me I can't figure out why they always seem to have insects on their foreheads?

Is this a DHARMA thread? If so can somebody tell me about them Aghoris?

I know they worship the dead and society tends to avoid them but not much more than that.

>cherrypicked tanned pedestrians in mainland
Nice try, moron.

The area where the Buddha was born was on the very edge of Vedic civilization. He probably wasn't Hindu himself, but he was still greatly influenced by Vedic society and philosophy.

>edge of Vedic civilization
Nepal isnt an edge. It is a part of indian civilization. There was also no 'Hindu' back then. It was a term coined by british to group the people who didnt follow abrahamic religion in the indian region. So by this logic nobody was hindu back then, and yet everyone was a hindu since they followed the same basic hindu principles yet may have followed different sects or deities.

I don't even know if Hinduism existed yet, but at least some type of fringe-Vedic I'd think.

I may sound like a fanatic hindu nationalist, but by this logic buddhism is also a part of hinduism, since the practice of debating each other was common among sages and many held vastly different views. And buddha was a sage at that time.

India is the world's oldest continuous civilization.

Egypt? China?
There was a period in between the fall of the Indus Valley Civilization and the Vedic period, after all. And it's arguable that the Vedic Aryans didn't really become civilized until centuries later.

It was on the edge at the time.

Egypt was Islam'd and China was Commied

Did they ever collapse the way Rome and the IVC did?

>right next to the holiest city in Hinduism
>right at the time the holy texts were being codified
>the edge
nigga u stoopid.

Guys, it'd not just Buddhism. A lot of Hindu gods have representation throughout Asia. Even out to Japan. Ganesh is all over Thailand

South East Asia was considered one of three "Indias" - it's where the term 'East Indies' came from. The third Indies was supposedly ruled over by Prestor John, the best candidate was Ethiopia. Then by some strange twists and turns of history, the Caribbean was found and became known as the 'West Indies'. Mystery solved! Sorta...

Later on, when Yuros realised the East Indies was also right next to China, they called the mainland Indo-China. But everyone there hates the Chinese, and Indian influence has fallen dramatically in the last thousand years, so they got together and decided to call themselves South-East Asia. Which, given their maritime history, makes for a very fitting acronym: SEA!

>tl;dr Thailand used to be thought of as part of India

Not him but Japanese being influenced by hinduism also seems true though. I can see many similarities between Shinto and hinduism, but most of my knowledge about shinto comes from Touhou, so that might also not be true.

Well, I don't know much about Japan, but I know there was regular trade from India to Japan, and probably from SEA too. Given that the closest Hindu kingdoms, just before the Yuros barged into the scene, were in the Philippines and central Vietnam, it seems likely that at least some Japanese would be familiar with the religion.

People underestimate how interconnected the world was back one or two thousand years ago. In the aftermath of the first Judeo-Roman War, a bunch of Jews sought asylum in India. Also consider that Islam was transmitted through trade from the Middle East all the way to the Phillipines.

Sure, cross-cultural exchange was for a minority of people, and slow, but it happened more and further than a lot of people appreciate.

If the domesticated chicken can get traded from the jungles of Vietnam to the Sahara desert >5,000 years ago, then Hinduism could certainly find the time to pop into Japan for a visit.

He's right though.

Modern anglo borders have nothing to do with the historical cultural indian sphere

Four of the 7 lucky gods are actually Hindu deities

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Lucky_Gods

What are you talking about? Beyond the Mediterranean civilizations, most of Europe was sparsely populated, and certainly not equivalent to India in population. Half of the Roman Empire's population wasn't even in Europe, but in West Asia and North Africa.

Hinduism is super-open to syncretism, one of the reasons why Buddhism is pretty much dead in India is because Hinduism pretty much just absorbed it, with people claiming that Buddha is an incarnation of Vishnu and shit like that. Bishamonten (who Shou is an avatar of in Touhou) is also known as Vaisravana and is basically a Hindu god who got popular amongst buddhists and peasants.

Also Buddhism best religion, Taoism a shit

Interesting. Any sources comparing Hinduism to Shintoism?

>the most successful part of india is run by the communist party
Really gets the noggin joggin doesn't it pajeet

at least socialist built factories, which now successfully have been destroyed by liberal democrats and millions people successfully died as hobos.

culturally nepal is very similar to india. keep in mind india itself is a union of several hindu-south asian cultures. nepalis just got have their own country cause the mountains made it hard to integrate them

India is to the Orient as the Middle-East is to the Occident

>Beyond the Mediterranean civilization
That's what really counts tho. The Achaemenid empire contained 44% of the world's population by itself.

They don't worship the dead, they use there remains in Tantra Siddhis to attain powers.

In short, these guys are like John Constantine of Saints - i.e. dabbling with the supernatural, who have nothing and no one to loose.

SHOW VEGENE AND BUBZ PLZ
AKSEPT FREND RIKUEST

Christfaggotry needs to end

They were also the only country in the subcontinent to never be colonized, so there's that too.

they licked the british feet better than anyone else.They were left alone as a buffer from china

"India" is potent because you have literally no fucking way of defining it. Traditionally, ANYTHING that is not Islam was Hindu.
Literally half of Asia was known as India, and the original concept of India was entirely within Pakistan.

India has become a nonsensical term.

Wewuzzing Pajeets will claim everything from Afghanistan to Indonesia because of the vague concept of "India".

>Paki goat fucker claiming India

WE

Indus river is Pakistani
So is Indus Valley
So are the natives of Indus

Pick up a fucking map sometimes Pajeet scum.

Historically Pakistan was certainly part of the region known as India, though, even if it is a separate contemporary country from the country called the Republic of India that is colloquially called "India" in the same way the USA is colloquially called "America".

WUZ

Not even the guy you have been speaking to, but what a low quality shit posting retard you are.

KANGZ

Yes and so are your inbred Muslim cousins living in the U.K. They are also native Anglos.

Kek

Nope

Pakistan was part of British Indian empire.
Mughal empire before that.

Your definition of India is retarded and designed by Wewuzzung Pajeets. It has no meaning whatsoever.

Fucking retard Pajeet. Are you suggesting that Pakistanis are not native to the Indus river valley?

kys

Paki calling anyone else scum

Indians are fucking insufferable nowadays
>the british stole all our wealth
>we have the largest number of billionaires etc
all these literal 3rd tier cuntries are getting their head on their asses,only turks have the same amount of unbridled shitiness on the current interwebz

pakis are the product of a thousand year rape by huns, turks, mongols, afghans and what not.

Why say "nope" and then make a post which agrees with what I said?

Usually when one says "nope" they are trying to refute rather than just agree with the poster they are replying to.

Because you were suggesting that there was a single region called "India" before the British came.

There were tons of regions called "India". Similar to the term "Orient", or as Churchill said, the equator, it didnt actually mean anything.

Pakistanis are Punjabis, Sindhis, Pashtuns and Baluchis. All native to the Indus valley.

Unlike most "Hindi" "Indians", we actually have names, languages and historic lands that mean something.

Pajeets speak a bastardised language introduced by Muslims and now refer to themselves as "people of the Indus". LOL. You literally do not have an identity besides a British created fuckup of the century.

The region is ill-defined, I will happily grant you that, but I'm not aware of any definition that did not include contemporary Pakistan.

As has already been pointed out the etymology of the word "India" is literally based on the Indus Valley, which is in Pakistan.

etymonline.com/word/India

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation

True, but my point is that generally speaking its a misnomer and its ridiculous to blur the differences between Indus region, Ganges region and the rest of India.

Don't take pakis serious. They are an inbred low IQ rape mutt race.

What happened to this thread? It was going great, why all this flamewar shit?
Go take your shitposting back to /int/ or whatever shithole you came from.

>the rest of India.

So you are now agreeing again with what I said. I'm glad we could come to agreement.

Blame the dirty Paki who is angry he has no history so he has to resort to WE WUZISM

>>British stole India's wealth
They're not wrong.

Tell me, how does it feel to be the bitch of the Arabs and Turks?

Replied to wrong post. Meant to respond to

so does India until 1948