Buddhism was the first of these major religions to arise. Born of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, called the Buddha or enlightened one, in India in the fifth century BCE (Before the Current Era), it grew out of the tradition of Hinduism. In the main it appealed to the newly emergent merchant class. Their attraction to it was threefold. First, it spoke to their reaction against Hinduism because of that culture's lack of responsiveness to their needs and failure to accommodate their improving situation vis-à-vis their caste status. Further, it acted as a method by which they could distinguish themselves from the upper class which supported Hinduism and, hence, the caste structure which they were hoping to modify. Lastly, it presented a code of spirituality that posited an universal moral ethic more in line with the requirements their business life demanded. Even though Siddhartha was born a prince and made use of some Hindu practices; such as, meditation and asceticism, his philosophy differed from Hinduism in that it did not postulate a pantheon of gods, but, rather, the salvation of the individual through his own efforts. This is just the type of attitude that would appeal to a group that made their way by their wits, as did the merchants. In stressing individual responsibility and initiative it fell neatly into line with their desired parameters.
Buddhism spread through India in much the same way that the process of proselytizing by mendicant monks and long distance traders enabled it to leap the Himalayas into China. That is, by coming into an area with the trade diaspora and developing through the patronage of that community and its subsequent ties to the populace and elite it was able to establish itself within the host society. In China, Buddhism ran head-long into the traditions of Daoism and Confucianism which had little in common with the new religion. Until the Buddhist disciples could modify the ideology and adapt the teachings to the Chinese language there was little progress made in installing it as a major religion in China. Only when the Buddhist scholars were able to begin to express the ideas of Buddhism in a way to which the Chinese could relate and when they had syncretized it with a leavening of Confucian philosophy, particularly the concept of filial piety, and with the Daoist thought on immortality, were they able to gain a meaningful number of converts.(1) The process of conversion to Buddhism in China was one of voluntary association and syncretism as propounded by Bentley. This acculturation to Buddhism occurred over a long time span (some hundreds of years) after its initial introduction to China. Part of the reason for this is that the attitude toward conversion was never one which sanctioned coercion as a legitimate vehicle for expansion nor was the wherewithal present to employ such coercion. Therefore, it had to rely on persuasion and syncretism in order to gain adherents. Buddhism reached its zenith in China around the year 500 CE (Current Era).
Interestingly, at approximately the same time that it was finally making notable gains in China, Buddhism (in its Chinese syncretization) was disseminated to Japan and, with some slight modifications and adaptations to Shintoism, enjoyed a relatively swift acceptance there and a flowering during the same period as in China. The agency of transmission to Japan was monks of Chinese and Japanese origin who were specifically requested to carry the new philosophy to the Emperor's court by a faction of the Japanese aristocracy, although there was a small element of trade involved. Thus, in Japan, there was a predominantly top down introduction of Buddhism by the ruling class in order to underpin their presumption to power.(2)
Buddhism also made some inroads along the silk roads in Central Asia. Again merchants were the primary agents of dissemination and the impetus for acceptance was the mitigation of business transactions. While it did enjoy some success in these areas, it did not realize the overwhelming conversion rate it did in China or Japan at the time of its greatest prosperity during the middle of the first millennia CE. The peoples of these areas appear to have used Buddhism more as a trade link to China or as a political counter to other competing peoples than as an overarching philosophical or cultural base. This is perhaps best demonstrated by their swift and sweeping acceptance of Islam at its appearance in the region later.
The Middle East was the setting for the birth of the other two creeds. Christianity and Islam grew out of the Judaic traditions of monotheism. Both consider themselves to be monotheistic, although Muslims argue that Christianity is basically a polytheistic religion due to its concept of the trinity as three persons in one god. This was in stark contrast to most of the surrounding areas which were predominantly pagan and polytheistic. It is interesting to note that the initial Buddhist teachings did not involve a god figure, per se, although, as it was syncretized in China and Japan and subsumed into Hinduism in India, it gained a polytheistic character and is now identified with a pantheon of gods so extensive as to invite comparison with paganism.
Christianity arose first in the Levant of the eastern Mediterranean in the First Century CE as an outgrowth of the Judaic biblical idea of a messiah which the new religion believed was incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ. At the time the area was dominated by the pagan Roman Empire. The new religion had almost immediate syncretization forced upon it in order to ensure its survival. It spread as a predominantly clandestine movement. In the highly stratified society of the Roman Empire it stressed equality before god. This stress on equality made this religion particularly attractive to women, who actively worked to disseminate it to their husbands and other women.(3) In contrast to Islam and Buddhism, Christianity suffered acute persecution in its early centuries which is one of the forms of what Bentley calls 'resistance' in the host culture. However, in this case coercive measures failed to crush it and the urge to assimilation with the existing (pagan) culture was resisted rather than vice-versa, as is more commonly the circumstance. When the empire began to disintegrate Christianity continued to flourish and, indeed, gained momentum, eventually becoming the state religion. In those times nomadic peoples sought to join with Rome even as they were undermining it. They would adopt the religion, as part of their attempt to facilitate their assimilation into the polity. When the devolution of power reached its maximum and the feudal era ensued, the new power structures, which were much more localized, looked to the Christian church of Rome (Roman Catholic) for legitimization of their temporal power. In this manner the church built up a power structure throughout Europe, particularly in the north, that encouraged adoption of the faith and cultural traditions of Christianity by the newly founded feudal states and their immigrant inhabitants. This also had the effect of confirming the local elites in their ruling position, a function which has been indicated above concerning Buddhism's spread and will now be shown in Islam.
Islam arose in the merchant class of western Arabia in the Seventh Century CE. It is based on the Qur'an, a book which relates the messages of a series of visions which were experienced by its prophet, Mohammed, who was himself a merchant. Like Buddhism, Islam offered a highly moralistic culture which dove-tailed with the perceived needs of the merchant class to which it most appealed.
Its eruption from the peninsula and spread across the wide belt of agricultural lands of Afro-Eurasia in the northern mid-latitudes by jihad established an Islamic state(s) over all the region. However, the subsequent conversion of the population of the area was not through coercion by the sword or political repression, which the Qur'an specifically prohibits, but by economic and social pressures. The state set up incentives that encouraged the people to embrace Islam by making adherence to various other faiths more onerous. Exemption from certain taxes and availability of positions in the bureaucracy were just two of the incentives that the state developed to invite conversion. There were also ties that bound the ujama, the Islamic community, which helped to reinforce a shift to the new culture. The hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca brought a feeling of belonging to a larger society to all who participated and reinforced a conversion that might have been less than whole-hearted. The legal codes' universal application in the Muslim world allowed a level of comfort in travel and business which encouraged conversion. Moreover, this facilitation of business was a major factor in the continued spread of Islam even after the fall of the more far-reaching Islamic states to conquest and/or internal disintegration. The trade diaspora of the Muslims scattered widely in the Indian Ocean basin and central Asia. With their cosmopolitan basis they provided the same legitimization to the ruling elites in their expanded trading realms that the Christians were able to confer on the 'barbarians' of northern Europe and the Buddhists in China and Japan.
As we have seen there are some commonalties among the three religions. Another salient similarity involves the salvific nature of all three faiths. All of them offer personal salvation through belief and adherence to specific tenets laid down by the founders of each as modified throughout the ages by various church authorities and religious scholars. This emphasis on individual salvation was and is one of the main attractions they offer. It places the responsibility for the process of salvation squarely on the individual in a way that the animist and pagan traditions that preceded them did not. It directly involves the individual in that process on a day to day basis. The hope of the afterlife in heaven in Christianity and Islam or of reaching nirvana in Buddhism affected each of the believers at the personal level. This engendered a moral and ethical stance that promoted honesty and integrity which in turn nourished the merchant communities that abetted the spread of these cultural traditions. Thus, the salvific nature that is a basis of all three had a great impact on the customs where these religions were adopted.
To various degrees all three promoted equality among people. In Buddhism and Islam this was an elevation of the merchant class in societies which had looked fairly askance at the endeavors of businessmen. Conversely, in earlier Christianity it came somewhat at the expense of this same class. But, all of them have a mass appeal based on egalitarian premises. This produces an invitation to an extensive population that can find upward mobility in the new cultural tradition more readily than in the old and thereby creates an enormous incentive to convert.
With Buddhism and Islam the expansion of their cultural traditions came essentially through the merchants' trade diasporas. Although the spread of Islamic culture began with conquest and the religion/culture was identified with the ruling power of the state and elites, at the disintegration of the first caliphates and with the Mongol destruction of the Abbassid Caliphate, the trade diaspora became its primary instrument of diffusion. The intercourse with the more cosmopolitan and extensive cultural tradition that these merchants represented, to say nothing of the opportunity for profit, appealed to the elites in the varied areas of contact. In addition, the approbation of this external authority enhanced the ruling elites' claims to legitimacy in their own countries. While in Christianity this growth was not accomplished through trade as with Islam and Buddhism, it did utilize the method of confirmation of ruling elites within its purview to augment the religion's power and increase its geographic and demographic scope within the framework of the secular power of the ruling elite. In the event, Buddhism and Islam were identified, or even in some cases were, the state, while Christianity developed as a state within the assorted states of Europe or as a support of those states, with only a small base of temporal power. The legitimization of elites by voluntary conversion to the more universal religions is a common practice which we encounter in all three religions. The elites throughout the Afro-Eurasian land-mass used their recognition by the religious authorities in order to more effectively control the populace and maintain their rule. Should the populace also deign to accept conversion to the new culture, so much the better, since it doubly reinforced the elites' claims to ascendancy.
All three religions have experienced times of flowering in political and cultural terms. However, these have differed in time, extent and world significance.
As is befitting the first to arise, Buddhism was the first to enjoy this cultural and political efflorescence. Its time of cultural hegemony came in the middle of the first millennia in the eastern reaches of Eurasia. In China and Japan it became institutionalized as part of the state and acquired state support and mass conversions. The term of this dominion was fairly short, for when the worldly power of the religion began to threaten the elites it was suppressed. This does not imply that it ceased to be a cultural factor, but that its path would now be set away from domination on the political level and toward a more social role. At its greatest extent it was influencing cultural traditions from south and south east Asia to east Asia and even to the doorway of the Steppes. Curiously, as it reached this zenith it was losing its force in the area in which it was born, becoming enveloped by the flexibility of Hinduism and integrating into that cultural tradition. Basically fading away from its individual identity in the sponge of Hinduism. As the centuries passed after this, Buddhism remained a force in east Asia, but was replaced in much of south east Asia with Islam and in India with Hinduism. Therefore, we must say that although Buddhism was a strong impetus for cultural change in history, its scope in terms of geography and time, the remoteness of its period of blooming and the contraction of its influence show the limits of its effect on world history.
Islam differs in many respects from the two other religions in its impact. Firstly, its almost literal explosion from the Arabian Peninsula was an event of seismic proportions. It rose from the religion of an obscure tribe of the desert to world prominence in less than a century. Its effects were felt from Africa to the Levant to central and south Asia in an incredibly short time span. Islam can be considered to have established the first world system in history because of the extent of its influence. Coupling the geographic extent with the centuries of its cultural hegemony throughout the lower mid-latitudes of Afro-Eurasia shows a continuity that was unknown to the world previously.
Although the Islamic 'world system' does not meet the Wallerstein criteria for such a system, it has been proposed that his parameters may be too narrow and that a new criterion consisting of a system of 'discourse' (ideas, economics and cultural consistency) be added to his theory. Further, even with the decline of its political status in the Afro-Eurasian region its cultural and economic influence continued to expand through its trade diaspora and added immensely to its area of cultural ascendancy. It supplanted Buddhism in parts of south and south east Asia and pagan and animist cults in sub-Saharan Africa. Consequently, its world system continued through the Sixteenth Century and although it has had a much lessened impact in the intervening years, it still exhibits considerable influence on today's world. The nature of the spread and the immensity of the variety of cultural traditions assimilated into Islam and its linking of much of the Afro-Eurasian land-mass in its culture illustrates the magnitude of the impact of Islam on world history. From the time it burst onto the world scene it has effected more cultural change than any comparable occurrence and only the advent of a more technologically sophisticated culture was able to disrupt it.
The technologically sophisticated culture of which I speak is, of course, that which grew out of the Christian tradition in north west Eurasia. As the feudal era drew to a close and nation-states formed, the Christian culture acclimated to the new conditions. One of those adaptations was the consequences of the Protestant Reformation which reversed the position of the merchant in European society, promoting them as had Buddhism and Islam previously to a more prominent position. However, it was the Catholic countries of Iberia that first lead the way to the new expansiveness, although the Protestant countries and their elevation of merchants to higher status gave added stimulus to the expansion. The Spanish imposed their culture on the territories of the Americas, treating the indigenous peoples to a brutally coercive style of cultural imperialism. The English, Dutch, and, to a lesser extent, the Portuguese and French developed the imperial and colonial age on a wider scale designed to encompass the world and not just the Americas. On the way to economic and political domination they attempted the cultural imperialism modeled by Spain in America. The Europeans first attempt at cultural expansion through the Crusades had ended in ignominious defeat at the hands of an unalterable Muslim world. One would have thought that the experience would have given pause to attempts at forcible cultural expansionism. However, this was not the case. The second attempt, in Spain via the Reconquest, was lengthy but had gone rather better. Perhaps the deciding factor being a previous Christian heritage in the Iberian Peninsula which had resisted assimilation into the Islamic culture. Their third attempt met with incredible success. As had the Muslims, the Christians of western Eurasia erupted in a conquest of a world wide nature. But, unlike Islam, the Christians had little compunction over using force for the imposition of their culture on other peoples. The results of this have been rather mixed as far as the persistence of the Christian culture throughout the world is concerned. Although the population of the Americas, Australia (not necessarily including the aboriginal peoples), parts of Africa and Oceania solidly maintain the Christian culture, other areas of the European world system, within which we live, have never succumbed to this through the phenomenon of resistance. Moreover, this current world system is more classically economic and not culturally based as was the Islamic.
In general, the three religions we have investigated have left an indelible cultural mark on the planet's peoples. Through the traditions that come down to us today we see the evidence of them. The continuing power of Islam from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Pakistan to Indonesia and the Philippines is readily apparent even if it is diffuse. There is still the opportunity for an Ibn Battuta to travel the Islamic world to the extent (or perhaps even greater, given the technological assistance that can be utilized) of the original. In many places, a modern day wanderer would find little variance in the culture of Islam. Thus illustrating the true nature of that world culture even today. Buddhism still exerts tremendous influence in east Asia and its cultural hegemony in the area has never been seriously challenged even at the height of the Islamic expansion and Christian imperialism. And, as noted, Christianity has carved out a substantial niche for its culture in the world. The three religions showed different aspects of assimilation in various places. Whether using persuasion, social pressures or outright physical coercion to effect conversion, they adapted to the local circumstances or they became victims to resistance, as was the case of the Nestorian Christians in east Asia. Their ability to syncretize their message with the predominant culture of any particular area is one of their greatest strengths and contributed mightily to their expansion and longevity. It is doubtful that any of the three founders of these religions would recognize some of the permutations that have resulted. The flexibility and adaptability to the milieu in which they find themselves is among their premier tools.
We have seen that there are many similarities among the three great world cultures of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. A few of the more obvious differences have also been examined. The imprint on history that each has created is indelible. Together they have changed and continue to change the world as they themselves have changed and are changing to syncretize into yet different forms. This, in turn, enables them to convince yet more peoples to convert to their particular vision of what cultural tradition entails.