01-10-2004, 04:06 AM
Emperors of the Sangoku,
the "Three Kingdoms,"
of India, China, & Japan
India and China are the sources of the greatest civilizations in Eastern and Southern Asia. Their rulers saw themselves as universal monarchs, thereby matching the pretentions of the Roman Emperors in the West. <span style='color:red'>The only drawbacks to their priority are that India suffered a setback, when the Indus Valley Civilization collapsed (for disputed reasons), and China got started later than the Middle Eastern civilizations. By the time India recovered, it was a contemporary of Greece, rather than Sumeria, with many parallel cultural developments, like philosophy. And, curiously, China reached a philosophical stage of development in the same era, the "axial age," 800 to 400 BC. Later, when the West, India, and China, all had contact with each other, it was at first India that had the most influence on China, through the introduction of Buddhism. Indian influence on the West, though likely through the skepticism of Pyrrho, and possibly evident in the halos of Christian saints (borrowed from Buddhist iconography), did not extend to anything more substantial. While China then made Buddhism its own, India later endured the advent of Islâm, which introduced deep cultural and then political divisions into the Subcontinent. The only comparable development in China was the application of Marxism by the Communist government that came to power in 1949. </span>
the "Three Kingdoms,"
of India, China, & Japan
India and China are the sources of the greatest civilizations in Eastern and Southern Asia. Their rulers saw themselves as universal monarchs, thereby matching the pretentions of the Roman Emperors in the West. <span style='color:red'>The only drawbacks to their priority are that India suffered a setback, when the Indus Valley Civilization collapsed (for disputed reasons), and China got started later than the Middle Eastern civilizations. By the time India recovered, it was a contemporary of Greece, rather than Sumeria, with many parallel cultural developments, like philosophy. And, curiously, China reached a philosophical stage of development in the same era, the "axial age," 800 to 400 BC. Later, when the West, India, and China, all had contact with each other, it was at first India that had the most influence on China, through the introduction of Buddhism. Indian influence on the West, though likely through the skepticism of Pyrrho, and possibly evident in the halos of Christian saints (borrowed from Buddhist iconography), did not extend to anything more substantial. While China then made Buddhism its own, India later endured the advent of Islâm, which introduced deep cultural and then political divisions into the Subcontinent. The only comparable development in China was the application of Marxism by the Communist government that came to power in 1949. </span>