In 209 BC, Buddhism still flourishes in India. There are converts and visiting co-religionists in Bactra. We are told that:
"At last the teaching of Gautama Buddha would ebb from his native India until there it was all but forgotten." (p. 47)
While Buddhism receded in India, the Buddha was repackaged as an avatar of Vishnu, the most comprehensive monotheist deity. Vaishnavism and Buddhism are a personalist and an impersonalist religion, respectively. If I ever came to be persuaded of a personal deity, then I would be drawn towards the former. But my present understanding is that the Teacher is all reality, the Teaching is all experience and the Community is all beings.
Poul Anderson treats religious traditions so sympathetically that we can (sometimes) be drawn into saying what we think about them.
Homage...
2 comments:
Relgion has been central to human experience since the emergence of behaviorally modern human beings about 80K years ago (actually between 80K and 60K years ago, which is when modern humans started to spread out of Africa).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It's also possible that questing after the ultimate is even older than 62/80 thousand years ago. Here I mean how the primitive hominins seen in "The Little Monster" are shown as also having that religious impulse, as seen in the veneration they had for the skull of "Old Father."
Ad astra! Sean
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