- Published: September 25, 2022
- Updated: September 25, 2022
- University / College: Yale University
- Language: English
- Downloads: 18
Throughout this class we learned many interesting historical facts but the one that really stood out and felt was important was the rise of universal religions. The period 300–600 CE saw the development from three extraordinary cultural units in Afro- Eurasia, each characterized in religious terms: Christianity in the Mediterranean and parts of Southwest Asia, Hinduism in South Asia, also Buddhism to East Asia. Religions that fascinated people throughout the world started to spread across different geographic zones.
The decision to universalize religions originated by the goal of expansion and growth of each established nation. Universalizing traditions can offer a degree of continuity in the face of dramatic political change. Across much of the world, spiritual concerns integrated scattered communities into shared faiths. This integration was facilitated in Afro-Eurasia in part by the spread of what we might call universalizing religions. Universalizing religions—specially Christianity and Buddhism appeal to diverse, widespread populations and challenge the power of nonreligious rulers and thinkers. Universalizing religions, like Christianity and Buddhism, were successful in part because of their diverse personalized appeal to men and women, rich and poor, and the upper and lower classes. Across Afro-Eurasia, these universalizing religions offer continuity even as powerful empires, specifically the Roman Empire in the West and the Han Dynasty in China, fall apart.
Because of political, internal, economic problems the empires begin to collapse. The fall of Mediterranean Rome and Han China led to era when religion and common culture provided the means for holding together large parts of Afro-Eurasia. New religious unity in Christianity, from Christian dissenters to Constantine to Catholic church in Western Europe.
Weakening the Han allowed Buddhism to spread into China. A weak central state in India led to reform of Vedic into Hinduism. Sub-Saharan Africa and Mesoamerica had large parts of Africa and the Americas expand common cultures built on religious beliefs shared by large, widely scattered groups. As in South Asia and East Asian, Brahmanism, or Hinduism, becomes the ruling religion among the Vedic peoples of South Asia. Buddhism spreads out of South Asia along the Silk Roads through central Asia and into East Asia. Along the Silk Roads, the merchants and rulers of Sasanian Persia, Sogdiana, and South Asia greatly influence the exchange of goods, people, and ideas between East and West.
In the “ worlds apart,” common cultural beliefs help bring together newly organized polities in Mesoamerica and new communities of Bantu-speakers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Buddhism stretches out of South Asia along the Silk Roads through Central Asia and into East Asia. Buddhism attracted many lands considerably past South Asia. As this religion extended and for long periods of time, the universalizing offers started to contrast starting with the unique Buddhist teachings.
Previously, 200 CE Buddhist believers started to believe he might have been a God. Specifically, the Mahayana Buddhists perceived Buddha as a divine being. This indicates how religion might change as they are universalized. In conclusion, universalizing religions were not a key element for cultural worlds with spread past local communities. Religion turned into a channel through which they transformed issues about loyalty and truth. Religion guaranteed to provide for answers about human beings and how they came to be. Religion claimed to differ right from wrong. Those supporters for these universalizing religions accepted that they would travel anyplace legitimately to secure their religion to any society.
Universalization wasn’t just for the sole purpose of spreading religion but giving people values. These human beings merged together and were searching for something else to hold directly to due to the fact their actual empires have been beginning to fall apart.