Daenism and the Bidar

Talk and plan things about the game with other players.

Daenism and the Bidar

Postby jamescfm » Fri Apr 02, 2021 12:37 am

While I have been in Aldegar, I have talking to Wu Han about the situation of Daenism (in-game equivalent of Buddhism) and the Bidar (in-game equivalent of the Buddha). Particularly in comparison to Hosianism, there has been relatively little development of the background and history of Daenism. Part of the reason for this is that there are actually relatively few in-game countries in which the religion is a major factor (primarily Dankuk, Seko and Gao-Soto).

The history that has been established holds that the Bidar was born in Aldegar in the first century CE and that Daenism emerged from Yazdism (in-game equivalent of Zoroastrianism). Although this proposed history has been around for some time there has been relatively little role-play associated with it. For example if you search the word "Bidar" on the forum there are nineteen results, over half of which are Wu Han himself.

Daenism having emerged from Yazdism is complicating for a number of reasons because Buddhism in real life is deeply connected to the various other Indian religions like Hinduism and Jainism that emerged from the same traditions with many shared concepts (dharma and karma, for example). Zoroastrianism does probably have some similarities with those religions but actually it is much closer to the Abrahamic religions in terms of monotheism, a "founding prophet" and so on (at least in my opinion).

For this reason, we have discussed the idea of adapting this history and abandoning the relationship between Aldegar, Yazdism, the Bidar and Daenism. While it is understandable that we would want to differentiate between real-life religions and their in-game equivalents, this seems to be a little unnecessarily convoluted. Rather than have the Bidar being born in Aldegar, we would propose having him born in either Vascania or somewhere in southwest Dovani (Hanzen or Kimlien, for example) amid the context of the historic Vedic traditions.

The purpose of this thread is really just to see what other players think and hear from others about whether this is something we should pursue. Players who have engaged with Daenism to any extent would be particularly encouraged to share their views obviously. In broader terms, it would also be interesting to know to what extent this is something that Moderation actually regulates and what the process would be for changing something like this.
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Re: Daenism and the Bidar

Postby Drax » Fri Apr 02, 2021 3:54 am

In Badara there are about 1% of its population who are Terra version of Chinese (Channese) and 2% of population who are in an unspecified (not Hosian or Ahmadi) religion. So on one occasion I had a Daenist Sharji Lama start a movement to give food, clothing and money to Hosians being oppressed by a Malivian government. Hosians and Ahmadi leaders joined in with blessing of Badaran government. That is only time tried to do anything with Daenists but thought a small community was justified.
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Re: Daenism and the Bidar

Postby Zongxian » Fri Apr 02, 2021 4:08 am

The reasoning makes sense to me and I would not be opposed to having Bidar's birthplace moved to southwest Dovani if it were allowed. Hanzen and Kimlien in particular are good candidates; personally I lean towards Hanzen. Overall, placing the home of Daenism in Dovani aligns way better with where all the Daenists actually are.

I also don't know that there is a very strong story on how Daenism spread from Aldegar to Dovani. The wiki briefly says followers spread it to Dovani after Bidar's death but there's not much to the story. Point there is, retconning the origins might not disrupt much pre-existing history. I'm not aware of whether Daenism has ever had a major role in Aldegar and the current CP states they're 13% Daenist. I thought maybe the Mu-Tze of Seleya had some relationship with Daenism but checking the wiki that's not the case; while they are related to the Gao-Showa, religion-wise they were shamanistic or Yazdi. I think it's easier to explain the spread of Daenist populations from Dovani to Seleya as minorities then it is, as in current circumstances, to explain the spread from Seleya to Dovani as majorities.

All in all, I think it'd be a good move to retcon Daenism's origins and based on the info I'm able to gather, it could be minimally disruptive to pre-existing history and RP.
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Re: Daenism and the Bidar

Postby jamescfm » Tue Apr 06, 2021 6:42 pm

In the case of Aldegar, it is worth noting too that I increased the Daenist populaton in the last cultural protocol update in part to try and make sense of the development of the religion there. The only real problem that I think we might face is the existing names of denominations and some terms. As I understand it these were derived from Persian to reflect the development of the religion in Aldegar. Whether we chose to change them is a matter of discussion, I would personally not mind just keeping them but can understand if others might object.
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Re: Daenism and the Bidar

Postby Polites » Wed Jan 25, 2023 4:00 pm

Necroing this thread to point out that I have changed the Yazdism pages slightly to make it clear that it is not necessarily a monotheistic religion, and that is rather a modern (mis)understanding in the face of competition with monotheistic faiths. Ancient Yazdism is meant to be very similar to the Vedic religion, especially with the deva/daeva vs. asura/ahura dichotomy. The concepts of karma and rebirth don't really fit in with this, but they are also absent from the oldest Vedic texts. I think it can be argued that they are theological innovations introduced by Zamanism and that the Bidar adopted for his own religious movement. IRL it is not known whether these concepts originate from the native non-Aryan traditions of India or whether they represent a natural evolution of Vedic religion, and the concept of metempsychosis appeared independently in various RL religions. For these reasons I don't think it's necessary to move the Bidar somewhere else.
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