Manu Joseph: How could a startup religion succeed in ancient times?

But what exactly was this influence? It was chiefly science and Buddhism, though Dalrymple’s enjoyable book cites other contributions too. Of these two influences, it is easier to understand how Indian science could have influenced the rest of the world. There is a universality to scientific logic. 

For instance, when Arab mathematicians, and the more backward Europeans, were grappling with an unwieldy way of writing numbers, it would have taken them just one glance at the decimal system to recognize its genius.

It is more difficult to get how Buddhism, which began in India, spread across most of Asia and across eras when the hold of entrenched religions was so strong.

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I believe that in ancient times, a new religion could survive its infancy because it wasn’t perceived as a faith as such, but as something mystical. 

Religious and caste identities were so branded into the souls of people that they weren’t threatened at all by a new philosophical idea. In fact, they barely noticed the religion of foreigners. 

Dalrymple points out that when Muslim merchants first arrived in India, they were almost never referred to by their religion, instead they were described by their languages and appearance, as though they were more significant markers. 

Their alien faith was not their defining characteristic. People who knew only one religion might have seen any new spiritual or philosophical or humane concept as something outside religion that they could in fact adopt without having to renounce their primary faith.

But there was another factor why Buddhism survived its early stages when it was only known vaguely as “the teachings." The cultural elite of the time found it fashionable to adopt it. It is likely these elites didn’t think they were abandoning their original faith.

In the India of the 6th century BCE, there was a spiritual explosion. Many charismatic seers sprung up and had extraordinary followings. One of them was Mahavira. 

He had a big influence on Siddhartha, who, though often referred to as a prince, was probably the son of a wealthy tribal chieftain. Siddhartha wondered about the meaning of life and set out on a difficult journey of discovery.

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He attempted extreme asceticism, which included starving for long periods of time, coming very close to death, and meditating motionless. But then he began to preach the moderate “middle road." 

This idea became popular, especially among the cultural elite, who were his first disciples. Even as they became his followers and evangelists, it is probable that they did not renounce Hinduism. A similar phenomenon occurred in Kerala, where some Brahmins are said to have become Christian. 

Today, many of Kerala’s upper-class Christian overtly or discreetly believe they have Brahmin ancestry. The scale of this conversion may not be true, but there is good evidence to suggest that at least some Brahmins did become Christian.

Why would someone at the top of the social order do that? Because he was not really renouncing his faith or caste. Christianity, like Buddhism, was probably a fashionable idea at the time in Kerala.

In Buddha’s era, many sects rose. Historian Abraham Eraly wrote there were probably more than 30, but only Buddhism and Jainism endured. Buddha himself appears to have faded from Indian memory. 

If we know him, it is because of his late acolyte, Emperor Ashoka, who created enduring objects that told the story as a part of his evangelism. But then, despite the backing of a great Indian emperor, Buddhism began to fade in India. 

No one can explain. The only reason that makes sense to me is that as Buddhism grew strong, it finally became a distinct religion and then Hinduism’s dominance asserted itself.

Dalrymple points out that after Ashoka, “…counter-intuitively, for a faith that embraced poverty and renunciation as an ideal, it was spread around the globe most effectively by wealthy merchants engaged in trade." This is not counter-intuitive at all. 

It is natural that Buddhism would be spread by the economic elite, given its provenance. Is there any successful religion that was not at first promoted by the elite? Or any sphere of human life; even a sport?

After surviving its infancy, the next phase of a new mystical idea depends heavily on how the society’s second rung uses it to challenge the top rung. Buddhism, as a humane religion, could have been the perfect tool of rich middle castes against the priestly class. 

But it did not work out that way. It declined in India. But it would thrive in China, first as a mystical idea brought by Indian merchants and monks that aligned well with principles of the entrenched Daoism, and later as a moral weapon of new aristocrats who wanted to replace the religion of a vanquished empire.

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Why don’t we see new religions today? Has the time of religion passed? I don’t think that is the case. New religions are all around us, they just don’t look like religion yet. They exist as moral ideas, if not mystical. 

Many centuries later, dominant religions would probably involve the fierce adoration of nature, or maybe a theological veneration of socialism. Their seeds are already here. And like Buddhism of a time, they do not appear to threaten any incumbent religion.