I agree, it is very likely Providential that Hinduism and Buddhism survive to show us the best that paganism was capable of, and to offer alternative version of civilization to juxtapose with our own, not only for aesthetic interest, but as matter for reflection.
As far as one can tell,several areas of civilization developed with only minor commerce between them, more or less independently. The Chinese definitely dominated Korea and Japan, and penetrated further south; the Indians dominated an area from the Himalayas to Thailand, and shared a sphere of influence in Indochina. In the West, civilization grew from the Tigris- Euphrates and Nile valleys, became highly developed among the Greeks and Persians, and finally achieved political dominance of the Mediterranean basin and Western Europe under the Romans. Similar things, happened in the Americas under the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas.
These civilizations were impressive, and did, eventually, trade to some extent. We know that China contributed gunpowder and the rudimentary printing press to Europe, for example. As you say, the Indian sphere gave us tea and spices. However, it is difficult to trace the particulars of influence. For example, we know that Buddhism moved East, but there is no clear evidence it went west beyond Afghanistan, although there may be speculation.
Anyway, Indian and Chinese and even the Roman civilization, as exemplified in the Byzantine Empire, seem to have reached points of comparative stasis. Somehow, in Western Europe, there developed the cultural matrix which permitted the Renaissance and the rise of science and advanced technology and liberal democracy and so forth, all of those things which we consider the hallmarks of the modern world.
Somehow, in other words, Western civilization became inherently progressive.
In that sense, it is not a matter of "laying claim for all progress", since each civilization got on well enough by itself for centuries, and each contributed something of import to the others. But the fact is, somehow only the civilization that developed in Western Europe as an off- shoot of the Hellenistic/Roman civilization became inherently progressive in its patterns of thought and in its institutions, and the benchmark for progress in other countries has largely been how modern (i.e., like Western Europe) they can become, thus improving the material and moral lot of the common man, through economic development and the acknowledgment of human rights.
Although one important stimulus to this result was the fall of Byzantium and the emigration of scholars to Italy, it is idle to say that it was all a matter of the rediscovery of much of Plato et al. The Byzantines never made so much out of these treasures, nor did the Moslems, like Avicenna and Averroes. Somehow, the matrix was already formed to make the most of the stimulus.
I do not feel obliged to defend Catholic doctrines on sexuality........ |
