Re:is buddha indian or chinese?

so this had puzzled me for a long time. As most people "know", buddism was originated in india. But the strange thing is, it never get caught on in india. Indians believe in hinduism. And buddism eventually florished in china, korea, and japan. How can a religion be completely ignored in the place of origin and became so popular thousand of miles away with completely different race of people? (i.e. east asians) This led me to do some further research on the subject matter. was buddha really an indian or a chinese(east asian)?

Truth is, buddha was born in modern day nepal, which at the time buddha was born, was being controled by india and people spoke indian there. Now, if you look at the demographic of nepal today, you will see people of indian decent and east asian decent make up the majority. if buddha was east asian, who spoke indian and was living in napel, then it became logical why buddism is so popular in east asia and not in india. In fact, buddism isnt even the second most popular religion in india, the second most popular religion in india is muslim. Only 0.8% of indian population believes in buddism. 0.8%! That means almost nobody believes in buddism in india. This had never happened in any where in the world with any religion. Jewish believes in Judaism or Christianity; arabs believes in muslim, in other words, the people who invented their own religions believe in their own religion, except for buddism! The so called inventor of the buddism, indian, completely ignore it and believe in hinduism, which worship animals like cow. To me, it doesnt make sense.

If buddha is east asian, then it also make sense why tibetans are some of the most religious buddists out there. Nepal is right next to tibet!!

So, in conclusion, i believe that buddha was indian is one of the biggest lie or misinformation in the history of mankind. what do you think?

SO YEAH...ORIGINALLY FROM INDIA...HE WAS HINDU...DOESN'T MATTER ANYWAYS SINCE INDIANS ARE RELATED GENETICALLY WITH CHINESE...MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE REALIZE...SO NO NOT A COMPLETELY DIFF RACE OF PEOPLE...ACTUALLY INDIA AND CHINA BORDER EACHOTHER ON THE SAME CONTINENT

I can somewhat answer this question.

Buddha is indian, indians are a mixture of white, austronesian, middle-eastern and african, maybe a little asian (like burmese people).

The reason buddhism originated in india yet you hardly see buddhist temples there is because of politics, religion and war. India suffered many invasions by british powers, mongolian nomads and muslim conquerors, the indian buddhist monks were slaughtered, all their texts and temples were burnt and obliterated to primal scarcity. According to wikipedia all it states is "A continuing decline occurred after the fall of the last Empire supportive of Buddhism: the Pala dynasty in the 12th century CE. This continued with the later destruction of monasteries by the new Muslim conquerors and their attempts to spread Islam in the region."

Many chinese scholars and pilgrims traveled to india and have been translating buddhist sutras and texts for hundreds of years. Some of them even cut their abdominals and sewed the sutras and texts inside their bodies because it was illegal to distribute them to foreign lands. So I think the Chinese preserved the teachings of buddhism before it was taken out mainly by the muslim invasion in india.

So if all the teachings are preserved why don't indians rebuild their temples and reestablish buddhism as their primary orthodox religion? If im not mistaken they'd have to retranslate it from translated Chinese back to Indian which would be pretty strange.

good job on bringing on the history and yes, buddha is indian. its just that religion has been spread so far on the far east, haha

wrong.........

Siddhartha Gautamas was born in Lumbini. Lumbini is Nepal. He is not indian and not chinese. He is Nepali.

The basic reason why many people believe Siddhartha Gautamas is India is cuz India dominate Nepal... and so forth.

Cheers
Justephan

@ figgiepooh, as far as i know, there are not much gene flow between indian and chinese throughout history. There is Himalaya mountain in between these two countries and it basically stop any sort of meaningful gene flow between them. Yes, there might be interracial mixing between the two, but the number would be very very very few and far between. Not enough to bind the two into a closely related race.



@ihorizonz, strangely, with all these wars, political turmoils, and invasions, Hinduism survived and flourished but Buddhism just disappear?

I agree with ihorizonz on his explanation. And to the possible answer as to why Hinduism flourished, and Buddhism didn't is because of which religion was there first. Hinduism was the main religion to the Indian people before Buddhism or any of the religions brought during invasions and colonizations. It's much harder to erase a religion that has been around for generations, and then have Buddhism that's still relatively new to the people.

I'm pretty sure there are a few Buddhist temples that were rebuild after being destroyed obviously not enough to spread in India. And if I remember correctly, though I don't remember the name, there are caves with Buddhist states build within a cave within India somewhere to preserve them during the wars, and politics and what not.

And I think why Tibet is one of the most religious Buddhas out there was because the the Himalaya mountains. Say that someone who was fleeing execution for being a Buddhist monk (I'm sure there were lots actually) had stumbled through the Himalaya Mountains somehow (It must have definitely been a feet) and stumbled upon the people of Tibet. Virtually with no other contact to the outside world could be there reason why Buddhism was able to flourish within the country without any other competing forces other than the religion that was there.

Besides, there are different forms of Buddha religions. China have their version, Tibet has their own version, Japan has their own version, India has their own version, each was made to adopt the culture that it was being ingrained with.

But it's not like Siddhartha Gautamas was forgotten about in India. He's even been brought into the Hindu religion saying that he was the 9th incarnation of one of the Triple Gods; Vishnu.

Though Justephan makes a good point too (^-^)a

Which brings to another point, what if Siddhartha Gautamas was like Justephan said. There's most likely that there are other different ethnic groups that we had no idea existed and just grouped them with the main ethnic group of the country? And then over the years they the ethnic groups became intermixed causing the ethnic group, in a sense, wipe out so that we don't know of it today?




These are all just my thoughts though, now that I'm interested I'm going to ask my professor about it. She's an expert in this type of area.

with all due respect, prelude 4, the point i am trying to make is that geographically they border eachother...i also do not believe "chinese" is a RACE...nor is INDIAN...they are both are on the continent of ASIA (and that includes NEPAL,Russia etc...and ASIA is connected to EUROPE...next to Africa and so on and so forth) all people and places in the world are connected, even if it's what you want to believe, in a small way. I also do believe that race is a social construction...ethnicity may be another story. But i do believe the spreading of a religion or philosophy is an example of humans being connected (or connecting). If people don't want to see what's right in front of their faces, I can't force them...it's so obvious to me. The world is a puzzle. Ok enough ranting. goodnight

yes race is a social construct. but unfortunately we both live in the US and race is being use here and everybody see people in terms of race whether you like it or not. I see what you are getting at. that we are all people of the world. if thats that case, this site shouldnt exist, it's a site for "non-asian" girls and "asian" guys. its kinda narrow minded to dedicate a site to a specific group of people. why don't we just call it a site for everyone?

i have no doubt that humans are connected. that nations are also social construct. but i don't like being lie to. i don't like someone stealing credits for things that they didn't invented. i just like to find out the truth. maybe im naive but thats me.

@justephan, i like your answer, but it would be better if we can find out the ethnicity of Siddhartha Gautamas. Too bad we didnt have camera at his time. Or DNA evidence.

我没进错版吧? 英文没那么好...写中文好了

佛应该是一个很精神的概念. 所以信的人是那里的.佛应该就是那里的..如果有个德国人信佛. 俺觉得他/她的佛就是德国的. 而且象信仰这样的东西. 应该是不分国界的...所谓哪里的. 不过是更多的带有某个地区的思维方式而已.