Medieval europe + buddhism = ?

That or no Islam or Judaism because of Euro-Indian buddhist alliance retaliating against Kebab incursions whilst having no shared cultural heritage wih Abrahamic religions, allowing the systematic purge of those sand cults and their holy sites and texts wherever they appear.

You act as if Buddhists and Muslims never met, interacted, or coexisted ever.

why didn't Islam take over East asia then?

checkmate

My homebrew Elves. With a dash of Shinto/Druidism.

False.
Occupation of Spain by the Ummayad Caliphate was from 711 to 1086 (at which point they had been pushed out of half the peninsula). the People's Crusade didn't begin until 1095/spring of 1096. the threat in spain had already been largely dealt with before the first crusade.

/thread

Western Sohei would be pretty rad.

I'd say that while Japan has a cultural heritage of Buddhism, it's far more Shinto.

Japan and Albion are the two best settings imo.

You're missing the point, you walnut.

Pretty much this.
Without Christianity to help centralize things you'd have pretty much the equivalent of Japan. Feuding lords and decentralized power.

>I'd say that while Japan has a cultural heritage of Buddhism, it's far more Shinto.
Depends on time period.

You do know that Japan had centralised rule as long as buddhism was kept strong as fuck... right?

>it's far more Shinto.
And Buddhist Europe would have a lot of pagan cults still kicking around.

>You do know that Japan had centralised rule as long as buddhism was kept strong as fuck... right?
What makes you think that'll be the case in Europe?

Not him, but I could see it filling the same niche as Christianity in Europe.

I fail to see how those two connect at all, unless I start using some paranoid /pol/ perspective and openly ignore historical facts

Europe centralized? You know how long feudalism lasted before nation states became a thing, right? Have you seen a map of the HRE?

>Sengoku Japan
>unifies into one nation and stayed that way

>Medieval Europe
>stayed as several warring states centuries after

There are at least 2 blatant /pol/ threads on Veeky Forums every day. The alt-right is a mental illness and they seek validation. Just report the posts that are off topic and try to discuss Veeky Forums stuff.

this is platinum-tier bait

What makes you think it wouldn't? Buddhism literally allowed to turn overnight a bunch of semi-tribalistic savages into highly-cultured civilization. Well, as much as "overnight" goes in terms of cultural development. Japan as such didn't just "jump the gun" during Meiji Restoration with the whole westernisation - they've did that shit during Asuka period, too.
Then comes the fact that Buddhist monasteries are pretty much interchangable (if not better) in their administrative function than Christian equivalent, so yeah. As long as you don't mind having semi-theocratic rule or at least strong clergy, here you are.
Which wasn't all that different in Europe and both ended up with feudal clusterfuck anyway.

tl;dr it makes absolutely no difference. Medieval Europe with buddhism is literally Japan, as far as socio-economical and cultural life is concerned. Depending on the way of getting to Europe, this style of buddhism would also probably had strong cultural ties with the place of "origin".

Yeah, wrong. Go look up the Ikko-ikkei.
Yeah, literally EVERY religion has armed whack jobs killing people. Religion doesn’t create that sort of stuff, it’s just the excuse people use to justify it.
Japan and China BOTH have several examples of well-armed violent Buddhist rebellions and priests. Several of Japan’s most famous war hero figures were Buddhist monks.

>Feuding lords and decentralized power.
Sounds like feudalism alright

I think it's a genuine stupidity.

= pic related

>albion
>wanting to be raped repeatedly by EXPLOITED
>not bowing willingly to an angry italian who got BTFO by swedes and abandoned his allies
the point is that the moorish threat in the iberian peninsula was no longer a sufficient threat compared to a much larger and more organized military actively pressing into Europe.
1009 - Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah burns all christians in Jerusalem
1012 - Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah orders the destruction of all jewish and christian holdings in his lands
1012 - Berber forces capture Cordova and order that half the population be executed
1056 - The Almoravid (al-Murabitun) Dynasty begins its rise to power (fanatics who rule north africa with an iron fist)
1061 - Roger Guiscard leads Norman forces in a 30 year war to retake Sicily in 1091
1071 - Normans conquer the last Byzantine holdings in Italy
October 25, 1085 - The Moors are expelled from Toledo, Spain, by Alfonso VI.
August 1094 - The Almoravids from Morocco land near Cuarte and lay siege to Valencia with 50,000 men.
Spring, 1096 - Peasants' Crusade sets out from Europe. Three armies don't make it past Hungary.
Go ahead and convince yourself that the crusades were anything more than a war against the voracious expansion of the Caliphate, using religion to motivate the peasantry and reticent nobility, doesn't change the fact that your inane point - that if the crusades were about muslim aggression they'd have focused on spain - is completely pointless. Spain, Sicily, and Italy were reconquered prior to the first crusade.

>a sufficient threat compared to a much larger and more organized military actively pressing into Europe.
>Go ahead and convince yourself that the crusades were anything more than a war against the voracious expansion of the Caliphate

>Albion
>Not identifying with the Romans

...

All hail the Bodhisattva Roman Emperor
inb4
>Bodhisattva
>Roman
>Emperor

The point was that That Buddhist Europe wouldn't be Islamic Europe because the Crusades weren't about preventing Islam from coming into Europe. Otherwise, the occupation of Spain would've been the start of the crusades and not a separate occurrence, you walnut.

I wanted to make an Albion Online joke to lighten the mood
i'm sorry

Never actually heard about it, but I'll look into it.
It's ok user, sometime jokes fall flat.

Why are you feeding that thing, instead of just reporting and ignoring?

I thought of an Alternate Timeline about that once

>Jesus Christ is never born, or simply never becomes a prophet, thus Christianity (and so Islam as well) never come into existance.
>Around the period Jesus would have preached, several buddhist monks travel from India to the Roman Empire, and begin preaching Buddhism, quickly spreading the religion through the West
>After a couple centuries, Buddhism is the most common religion in the Empire, but the presence of other religions and schools of thought leads to a situation similar to China, where several religions coexist in relative peace, all taking elements from a common greco-roman mythology
>Buddhist monasteries take the role of preserving knowledge after the Roman Empire collapses that the Catholic Church had in our timeline
>Later Buddhism spreads to northern Europe, where the lack of organized religions to oppose it leads a quick mass conversion from the germanic and nordic tribes who desires the benifits of civilization that the monks brought. Those tribes then quickly spread through northern Europe and the British Isles
>By the year 1000 Éurope is primarily buddhsit, and is culturally diviided between the Norse influenced north and the greco-roman Mediterranean

>>Around the period Jesus would have preached, several buddhist monks travel from India to the Roman Empire, and begin preaching Buddhism, quickly spreading the religion through the West
Why not just getting more in touch with Bactria?
It's not really that far-fetch if you think about it and know a bit about their history.

It's a possibility too, the actual POD is not that important

My point, in providing the timeline of events, is to demonstrate precisely that the Crusades were a response to islamic aggression. a force does not begin a large scale attack into the heart of an enemy empire when that empire has forces at your rear which will be capable of ravaging a largely defenseless homeland (eg Spain, Sicily, and southern Italy, all of which were used by the muslims for several hundred years as strongholds from which to raid into mainland europe). They were separate occurrences, sure, but so were the Nazi invasions of Poland and Russia. One necessarily preceded the other, far more so in the case of the Crusades, since it dealt with numerous different nations many of whom were hesitant to band together. the Crusade, therefore, was a necessary method of unifying warring states against a common enemy

>Crusades were a response to islamic aggression

I'm sorry Hitler but it's true, and I know that it looks bad for your Turkish allies but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Not him, but he is technically correct, just not in the way he thinks it is. It really had nothing to do with Europe, mostly just reclaiming the holy land. He wants to justify Creeping Sharia historically.

It's important how you introduce an idea or a religion, especially considered how buddhism as such is a pretty non-missionary religion. Add Bactria to the equation and you have a plausable way of transition of the religion from India westward, while also already being put through Hellenistic lense, thus making it easier to swallow in the Med region.
Maybe even more as a philosophical school than a religion, which would also be interesting - focusing on the truly unique thinking patterns of it, rather than just folk religion aspect could have just as big implications.

I've got a better idea: discuss fucking Buddhism or start your own, separate thread

We've got enough /pol/ threads, I'm just waiting for a mods to get rid of this cancer.

Was gonna saying it would be boring, but actually that would be the reason to do OP's idea.

Another would be doing an unholy mix of buddihism and gnosticism just for the lulz.

Not really actually. The kofun period seems to precede buddhism's arrival in Japan, and it already pretty much included the bulk of Japan.
Confucianism is one hell of a drug.

Cathars are pretty close

The rise of islam cannot be explained without a christian mediterranean. Budhist europe cannot be explained if Rome goes christian.

>Confucianism is one hell of a drug.
Shame it wasn't introduced all the way till Nara period. Just saying.

That makes sense, but I like the idea of this new foreign religion quickly becoming popular before absorbing greco-roman philosophy ideas. I didn't give much thought to what happens in Central Asia besides Persia staying powerful and successfully spreading Zoroastrianism through the region
I Just hope they don't delete the whole thread, I really like this topic

i know nothing about confucianism, please exprain

>mods
what are those

The Church centralized Europe outside of the system of feudalism.

Also looking at maps of the HRE is a dumb way of understanding how it worked on the ground, Goethe, for example, could travel to any part of the HRE with just his Weimar passport, all those different splotches on the map were more unified than you think.

Man, it came in 285 BC traditionally. Probably it's a little bit later and I highly doubt there was something that wouldn't make the chinese (or the koreans) laugh, but still.

Actually in a normal timeline Persia would've went christian (nestorian) eventually if not for islam.

Ashin Wirathu did, and is doing, nothing wrong

Very long and relatively complex story down do bare minimum:
A really handy philosophy useful for running orderly and well-organised societies and countries. Strong emphasis on hierarchical order, respect toward elders and smarter people, MASSIVE emphasis on merit and acculturation, and pretty much the very epitome of all Far East states.
Want to know more? Read a book. Or two. I'd preferably start with Feng Youlan and his Short history of Chinese philosophy, got a nice, short, coherent synthesis on Confucianism.

t. almost-Sinologist Masters defense this June

Maybe, but I like the idea of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism being the major religions in the world

Why not have Jesus travel east and convert to Buddhism, then come back To preach?

Cuz that's kind of dumb

Traditionally, Japan has a line of emperors going all the way to Amaterasu, you know.
And sure as hell Chinese influences were close to nothing until very late into Kofun period. When in turn it was a trade with Korean kingdoms, so it was an indirect contact back then. Then Asuka happend, but the contact with China was strictly religious in matter, regarding buddhist affairs. It wasn't until late Asuka/start of Nara when China was declared something to awe and copy, coming from those extensive religious "missions".

tl;dr it's a gradual thing, but sure as hell Confucianism wasn't present in Japan before 7th century AD in any way or form.
It actually never really caught up,
only serving as an inspiration for local ways of doing things and having in-direct effects,
rather than real influence.

Yeah. Let's just forget they didn't leave the peninsula until we forced them in 1492.
And hell yeah, lets just forget about all that happened. It is not as if Islam didn't invade half Europe before that.

>spoiler
Good on you user. Good luck

It won’t ever happen now.
Hiroshimoot has killed this sight by buying it and then just ceasing to bother with the duties of helping run it.

Welcome to nu/tg/pol/.

Problem is, buddism can be violent (jesus fucking christ, japan itself is a VERY good example in this regard), but I don't think it has something like the crusades in any case. The whole notion of "convert or perish" kinda falls flat, these guys don't care about gods, actually they like the idea and use them liberally as basis for their own version of religion.

The actual ME crusades were there because of Christ's places, something that has no equivalent for buddhism whatsoever.

One would almost ask himself how we would do a confucianised Rome, but that's honestly too absurd.

I don't have any idea WHAT they've would taken to Japan if not confucianism (bastardized as it would've been, certainly). Ok, aside from shiny new weapons.
I always tought Yayoi period was already catching up with Korea's tech, which would let me think the Kofun "unification" happened pretty peacefully, as something of a social engineering thing.

I might be wrong of course, but I wouldn't mind a cite.

>One would almost ask himself how we would do a confucianised Rome, but that's honestly too absurd.
Why? It was a mental exercised we had to do on first year, during the aptly called "Confucian civilisation" classes.
The general conclusion was Rome eventually coming out of the whole mess of gradual collapse and desintegration and then lingering throughout ages as an entity of warrying power, depending on how it would play its cards, but definitely never truly collapsing or dying like it did IRL. And at least it would sort out the never-ending succession issues Romans had.

Also, the "Roman-Han exchange" makes out like... 70% of all Roman settings for Infinite Worlds. And most of them actually make sense, unlike a hefty dose of all the ancient divergences.

Came here to post this. The Cathars were some sort of super weird mashup of christian and Buddhist beliefs.

To save the uninitiated a trip to wikipedia, the basic breakdown is this: there are Two Gods.

The God that created the world is evil and greedy and petty. Its why the world sucks and is full of unfair bullshit. Everything in the world we inhabit is made by said evil god, and is thus a trap.

The other god is good, but only has dominion over the immaterial. The Good god is responsible for souls, and offers enlightenment. That's why man has the capacity to be good.

When you die, you usually are too tied tot he material world and its trappings to escape it, and your soul gets reincarnated under the evil god again and again. If you learn to let go of the material world and embrace enlightenment, the good god can jailbreak you when you die and you don't have to reincarnate on this shitty earth anymore, instead joining the good god in a more peaceful realm.

Of course, the evil god doesn't want this to happen so the world is full of things to try and trick you into staying, like pleasures of the flesh or the allure of material wealth.

The Cathars followed a lot of Christian teachings, under the premise that Christ was one of the enlightened who intentionally stuck around one more cycle to tell us how to escape the Matrix too, but they had some beliefs that pissed off the Catholics. First off, they believed the eucharist is bullshit. Everything in the physical realm is made by the evil god, so it by definition cannot have divine properties. Any food you eat, like the shit you take, is just a part of this physical world. They also thought that the Pope handing out indulgences in return for gold was a sign that the church was too focused on material wealth, another trap.

>Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms consolidate and turn west to conquer Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world.
>Conquers early Rome and vassalizes or conquers Carthage.
>Collapses due to fuckhueg size and fragments into a hundred little polities.
>Germanics and other early steppe states pick up the Greco-Buddhist traditions.
Bam, eventual Medieval Europe Buddhism.

They were gnostic, not buddhist.

What would they use, teleportation?
Anyway I see the barbarians as kinda a pain in the ass to integrate in this hypotesis (IRL the roman mindset allowed for military prowess as a virtue). Which might work in favour of a continuing Rome, or not.

The cathars were pretty simply gnostics with an emphasis on dualism (in a sense they were more manicheist than most gnostics). Clearly derived from the bogomils and shit like that.

Now I guess one could make the argument that manicheism informed buddishm as well, but...

>funfact, there is an RPG about the fall of Montsegur

The Cathars only had a single sacrament they partook in, called the Consolamentum. Its ALMOST like a confession, but with some key differences. Unlike confession, a Consolamentum can only be done once in your life, as it involves disavowing all of your past actions and declaring yourself renewed to be a better person. If you have to do it twice, you obviously don't really mean it.
On top of that, the wording there was intentional. The Consolamentum wipes out ALL your previous actions off your record, not just your sins. You reset to 0. 0 does not do you any good in the reincarnation game, you don't have enough good to escape the world. So doing it just before death is functionally the same as dying full of sin anyway, to do any good you have to do it and then actually be a good person afterwards.

Because of the belief in reincarnation, the Cathars were fairly egalitarian for their time. Which is to say, they believes that race and sex only existed to divide mankind against itself as yet another ploy by the evil god, so practicing discrimination against a person for their physical form instead of their deeds was a mistake. Indeed, since your soul was immortal and sexless odds were good you had been both sexes and more than one race plenty of times over the ages, so try not to get too hung up on the whole thing.

The eventually got wiped out by the catholics for being too popular and making the catholic church look back, but many Cathars also refused to procreate as they say it as perpetuating the cycle of reincarnation. So that wasn't helping them in the long term either.

I also remember there being a thing about a catholic crusade being sent to root them out and failing amazingly because the guy leading it sent a letter back to the pope saying "I can't kill these men, for they are better Christians than I am." Didn't matter in the long run, but still incredible if true.

>What would they use, teleportation?
Who? What? I feel like I've missed something.

The point of the mental exercise was to try to thing of the effects of cultural exchange between the two civilisations. It's not that hard to imagine Romans getting weird ideas about a far-away ally backstabbing Parthia, which, you you don't fully grasp Central Asia geography, is imaginable if someone tells you "there is this huge empire right behind Parthia and they want to trade too". Plus, how do you think word silk and China are related in Latin?

How would the confucian experts happen to take a stroll into Rome, I mean. Shit didn't exactly have missionaries.

>The eventually got wiped out by the catholics for being too popular and making the catholic church look back, but many Cathars also refused to procreate as they say it as perpetuating the cycle of reincarnation. So that wasn't helping them in the long term either.

I was tempted to put out a chad catholic vs virgin cathar joke, but seriously, got a a cite for the "gender doesnt' matter" thing?

Not him, but like all ideas, ideologies and religions - via trade routes. All you really need here is Silk Road's path going through Central Asia being established sooner.

This thread...

> I was tempted to put out a chad catholic vs virgin cathar joke, but seriously, got a a cite for the "gender doesnt' matter" thing?

I'd have to go and find the book, I haven't read it since college. But IIRC women rose through the ranks in the Cathars pretty easily, and while men formed the majority in [name of the upper clergy for the Cathar religion, can't remember what they called them] it wasn't a huge majority. Like 4 out of 10 of the upper clergy were women, and they could preach or perform the Consolamentum like any man.

That ratio is contested, because the accounts of the catholic inquisitors reported than more like 1 in 10 of the clergy that was turned into them were women, but that has been theorized as simply the women being less likely to be turned over to the church/being better at hiding. After all, the catholic inquisition was naturally less likely to assume that a woman was a leader of the community, and thus more likely to overlook them in their investigations. Especially if there was a man who they thought fit the bill better instead.

I dunno, sounds a little farfetched. I always pictured confucianism as something difficult to condense into two books and go into a journey and convincing some peasants. It's something that needs rituals, books, schools even and works top-down.

But I might be wrong

I heard about the women being relatively free, I wanted to know if it was more (like, theologically "official").

>voracious expansion of the Caliphate
into formerly christian lands yeah

You are both wrong and not.
Confucianism is ABOUT rituals, books and schools, but in it's very core, it's pretty condense and can be fully put into a single book. The thing that is importat is the interpretation of said book and then comments to it. So while Analects can be easily published as a pocket-sized book of less than 100 pages (they really are short), if you study the text you've got pretty much all the important bits in it, bar few things that self-evolved from there on their own.
So it's more of the transit and translation issue at play here than the complexity of the idea itself. Granted, confucianism CAN get complex, but if you are "selling it" (in a sense of missionary-like work), it can be put in really simple terms.
Besides, one of the main "selling points" of Confucianism is how unique it is as a concept for given time period. From modern perspective, the whole merit-bases stuff, while simultaniously maintaining a strong hierarchical order is easy to imagine, because we managed to work out a socitety that at least tries to be meritocratic and in the same time maintains order, regulations, "rituals" and what not.
Back around the time when it became state-sponsored ideology of Han China? It was an unique stuff, even for Chinese standards. And if not for the constant ossification of "practical Confucianism", it is a pretty sensible philosophy even from modern perspective. Now try to apply Plato in modern world.

I dunno, I'm not that educated in the field. Problem is... did they ever do missionary work? As in, similar to bottom-up like the christians, the buddhists, the muslims did often if not most of the time?
So I got my impression that it worked on the lines of "impress the higher ups, then put up schools". More or less making it less of a religion, perhaps, and more of mindset.

Is that the tablet MMO that fell flat?

Tang Dynasty did.
A LOT of it. The discussed in this thread spread of Confucianism somewhere during late Asuka/early Nara period in Japan? Guess the ruling dynasty in China.
The problem with this of course boils down that Tang rise to power roughtly a 140 years once Western Roman Empire was a done for good and that there is half of Asia between the two. But I'm bringing it to portray the fact Chinese did actively spread Confucianism. Mostly as a way of taming problematic neighbours and "uplift" of savages (reminder that under Confucianism your ethnicity, race and pretty much anything aside gender, Heavens forbid being a woman are not important, as long as you embrace superior knowledge and culture and became a well-educated, functional being - part of the reason why Jesuits were so successful in China was because they've decided to play along and embrace it). Of course there is the ugly underside of rabid ethnocentrism in it, as there is only one superior culture and that one happens to be Chinese, but how different is it from Romanization, really? It in fact is more efficient, as it provides a really strong incentive to play along.

Either way, it's a high-concept fantasy, mostly related with logistical issues of such contacts (either side would have to get into what nowdays is Uzbekistan for this to work), rather than the impossiblity of the exchange or spread of one idea or another. Confucianism, like also noted, is hell of a drug, so it would really get interest of if not currently ruling emperor, then any of the governors in the provinces, since it's a full package of problem solving when it comes to ruling the masses and a cost-efficient one.

So, for the top of my head:
>Romans besting Parthia/Persia/Whoever is currently Eastern Enemy Empire
>Setting up provinces all the way till Amu-Daria
>Rest happens on its own
Also, on unrelated note - I've just loaded current map of Central Asia to make sure I've got both the extent of Chinese influences and Parthian fringes right. Aral Lake is no longer present on the map. Fucking sad, man.

Basically the same thing

Orthodox Christianity dominating western Europe instead of Catholicism.

This legitimately sounds awesome.

The first crusade was a response to the Seljuk Turks -sorry, t*rks:
a) Raping and pillaging Christian citizens in Armenia, the Caucasus and Anatolia
b) Closing off the pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem used by Christians across Europe and the Middle East

>Closing off the pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem used by Christians across Europe and the Middle East
You mean "setting up toll booths to collect money", right? Because that's what they did

Which effectively closed it off to pilgrims. Also think less toll booths and more robber-barons.

I got that, but my impression is that confucianism "missionary work" is more converting the nobles than the peasants, at first, which is differnt from other religions. Higher education, not "kindergarten". Was just pointing out this difference, in our scenario it's not really a problem.

Roman culture had many problems (the one people don't get the most is violence. Cicero, not exactly a bloodlusty monster, flat out wrote that shit like the gladiators was something romans should enjoy to prepare themselves for the war mindset) but it was more or less open to other inputs. At its core they accepted that at least the greeks had been pretty cool. So I guess they would have THAT problem in our ucrony.
That being said, romans had a certain vision of the military that would've been a no-no for the chinese.

Oh no, you didn't.

Gnosticism is esoterism and complex beliefs (mind-boggingly comples and contradictory in fact) with more than an hint of magic, buddhism is about accepting that even knowledge will not help you. Which is pretty interesting considering at its core it's a intellectual religion (whereas say christianity is an emotional religion) but whatever.

I love this topic and have been thinking about it for a while. The way I kinda see it:

>Buddhism spreads westward into the Middle East at a faster rate than IRL during the reign of Alexander and his successors
>A western Buddha emerges in the first century, creating Nazarene Buddhism
>faith spreads like IRL, with less emphasis on converting nonbelievers
>fast forward 1000 years
>various pagan religions continue strong, adding the Buddha and saints to their faith
>Islam grows out of slightly different Mid-East traditions, still focused on early conquests, possibly fusion of Sikh and Jewish/Zoroaster ideology
>Crusades still happen, smaller scale, more emphasis on uniting a European Empire like with late Sengoku Japan

Any good? I'd prefer to focus on how the different pagan faiths adapt Buddhist teachings myself, but the thread autists seem fixated on Crusades era. I'd also propose Nazarene Buddhism would emphasize good works as necessary in the same way Calvinists believed good works were a symptom of being "Enlightened" or a Bodhisattva.