| # | Polity | Coded Value | Tags | Year(s) | Edit | Desc |
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‘‘‘ The following quotes suggests the peaceful coexistence of different religions in Chenla, though Hinduism enjoyed a higher status. “Hinduism as an all-encompassing religion may have absorbed local deities into the Hindu pantheon, binding the two belief systems into one. Buddhism’s flexibility in allowing most types of worship to suffice as methods toward enlightenment would make this religion easy to ensconce in Southeast Asia as well. Thus, during the Chenla period, non-elites were careful to make their public and required offerings to the Hindu city temples and attend public ceremonies and rituals; in their own villages and homes, however, it appears that traditional worship of age-old deities, and lineage ancestors, was alive and well. [...] [K]ings continued to allow their subjects to practice local religions, although this liberal religious policy came to a halt with the establishment of the Khmer Empire in the early ninth century.”
[1]
[1]: Steadman, S. R. (2016). Chapter 14: From Hunter-Gatherer to Empire. p.234-235. Archaeology of religion: cultures and their beliefs in worldwide context. Routledge. Seshat URL: Zotero link: VIRUTCPJ |
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“Many scholars have felt impelled to emphasise the toleration of different sects and denominations evinced by Indian rulers. [...] It seems fairly clear that, traditionally in India, people readily transferred or distributed their allegiance between different sects, seeing no logical inconsistency in approaching different gods for different purposes, and that this apparently syncretic style of religious behaviour encouraged a relaxed attitude to what others did as well; evidently, too, rulers generally extended their acceptance of this practice."
[1]
NB, however: “religious animosities among the followers of Saivism, Vaishnavism and Jainism, also seem to have greatly weakened the unity of the Chalukya empire.”
[2]
[1]: (Copland, Mabbett, Roy, Brittlebank and Bowles 2012: 74-77) Seshat URL: Zotero link: ATSZ6QBU [2]: (Raychaudhuri 1948: 283) Raychaudhuri Golapachandra, 1948. The history of the western chalukyas (political and administrative) University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (United Kingdom). Seshat URL: Zotero link: NU7WQ5CD |
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“Many scholars have felt impelled to emphasise the toleration of different sects and denominations evinced by Indian rulers. [...] It seems fairly clear that, traditionally in India, people readily transferred or distributed their allegiance between different sects, seeing no logical inconsistency in approaching different gods for different purposes, and that this apparently syncretic style of religious behaviour encouraged a relaxed attitude to what others did as well; evidently, too, rulers generally extended their acceptance of this practice."
[1]
NB even if the following quote specifically mentions the conversion of the king, it also generally refers to what it seems a favourable rather than hostile attitude towards conversion. “And so Saivism, ever an accommodating faith, claimed many converts from among Jaina families; since Jainism had never insisted on the abandoning of caste, and had always availed itself of Hindu imagery and language, the change was easy and smooth, and a conversion on the part even of a king seemed hardly a revolution of importance, except, of course, to the unfortunate gurus of the sect then abandoned.”
[2]
[1]: (Copland, Mabbett, Roy, Brittlebank and Bowles 2012: 74-77) Seshat URL: Zotero link: ATSZ6QBU [2]: (Derrett 1949: 99) Derrett, J. D. M. 1949. The dynastic history of the Hoysala kings, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (United Kingdom), Ann Arbor, 1949. Seshat URL: Zotero link: TRAQQP6R |
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“Many scholars have felt impelled to emphasise the toleration of different sects and denominations evinced by Indian rulers. [...] It seems fairly clear that, traditionally in India, people readily transferred or distributed their allegiance between different sects, seeing no logical inconsistency in approaching different gods for different purposes, and that this apparently syncretic style of religious behaviour encouraged a relaxed attitude to what others did as well; evidently, too, rulers generally extended their acceptance of this practice."
[1]
[1]: (Copland, Mabbett, Roy, Brittlebank and Bowles 2012: 74-77) Seshat URL: Zotero link: ATSZ6QBU |
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As indicated in the following extracts, Kaplan argues that relationships between religious groups were likely cordial between the fourth and fifth centuries, and that there may have been an important shift in Jewish-Christian relations in the sixth, but not enough is known to determine the exact details of this shift, and indeed it may not have been accompanied by any kind of societal conversion pressures, especially given the polity’s reputation for religious tolerance in the seventh century. "It is difficult to know for how long the Judaized groups in the Aksumite population lived peacefully alongside their Christian and pagan neighbors. Fourth-century Aksum appears to have provided fertile ground for a variety of religious identities, none of which necessarily conformed to idealized notions of "normative" Judaism or Christianity. [...] The fortunes of the young Church took a dramatic turn for the better toward the end of the fifth century with the arrival of two groups of Syrian missionaries, one known as the Sadqan and the other as the Nine Saints. [...] In addition to their missionary activities, they were probably also responsible for major advances in the translation of the Bible and other religious books into Ge’ez. [...] As was indicated in the previous chapter, both the vocabulary and versions used by the translators reveal access to Hebrew and Aramaic sources. There is, therefore, every reason to assume that they were assisted in their work by Jews or those influenced by Judaism in Aksum. Consequently, this would appear to be further evidence for both a continued Jewish presence in Aksum and for cordial rather than hostile relations with the surrounding population. [...] On the basis of the information presented above, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the first quarter of the sixth century must have been an especially trying time for the most Judaized groups in the Aksumite kingdom. The extreme politicization of religious identity in South Arabia may well have made itself felt by a hardening of distinctions in Aksum as well. The hitherto vague differentiation between Judaized groups and the growing number of Old Testament oriented Christians may have become far sharper. Even if they were not subject to overt persecution (and it must be remembered that in the early seventh century Ethiopia enjoyed a reputation for religious tolerance), the position of the former could not have been an easy one."
[1]
[1]: (Kaplan 1992: 35) Seshat URL: Zotero link: PT9MJQBE |
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"With regard to the internal history of Ethiopia, the period from the seventh to twelfth century remains one of the most obscure and least understood. Hardly any contemporary sources have survived and those that have are frequently fragmentary and/or legendary in character. [...] The obscurity that characterizes much of Ethiopian history from the seventh century onward is only multiplied when we turn to the more specific question of Jews or Judaism during this period. Even the indirect sources of the kind used to make the tentative reconstructions suggested thus far in this book are, for the most part, lacking. We are forced, therefore, to rely on semi-legendary accounts of extremely limited historical value."
[1]
[1]: (Kaplan 1992: 42) Seshat URL: Zotero link: PT9MJQBE |
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In talking with expert Mariama Khan she mentioned that during this time there had already been missionary action by Portugues and Methodists. “By the time Kaabu collapsed in 1867, Europeans had already marked their presence in the upper Guinea coast and in the Senegambia region as a result of the slave trade, previous voyages of exploration and missionary work.”
[1]
The following quote discusses the Portuguese element in Gambia which also implies its Catholic influence within the region. “In 1446 the Portuguese explorer Nuno Tristao sailed into the Bijagos Archipelago and up some rivers, though he died on his return trip. It was not until ten years later that Diogo Gomes returned to Portugal to tell of the ‘Rivers of Guinea’. The estuaries facilitated trade, and the coastal market town of Cacheu was the commercial centre of the region from the later fifteenth to nineteenth century […] Portuguese and mesticos, or those of indigenous and European decent, traded alcohol, horses, manufactured goods, textiles, and weapons for copra (coconut flesh, containing the oil), gold, ivory, palm oil, and increasingly slaves. Kaabu and other chiefdoms and kingdoms had long been involved in the Arab trabs-Saharan slave trade and simply shifted some of this trade to the Portuguese on the coast.”
[2]
The following quote highlights the presence of Methodist missionaries in the Gambia. “Far from some how being ‘unchanging’ and ossified in a ‘primitive past’, West Africa religious beliefs and social structures transformed themselves in this era. They were new and as specific to the eighteenth century as, say, Christian Methodism and the Salafiya reform movement of Islam’ they were the West African response to modernity, just as Methodism and Salafism embodied Christian and Muslim responses.”
[3]
[1]: (Khan :2021) Khan, Mariama. 2021. Politics in the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau: Precolonial Influence on the Postcolonial State. London: Taylor and Francis. Seshat URL: Zotero link: G479EGSJ [2]: (Appiah and Gates 2010: 540) Appiah, Kwame and Gates Jr, Henry Louis. 2010. Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Seshat URL: Zotero link: FB5MQ9IS [3]: (Green: 2019) Green, Toby. 2019. A Fist Full of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution. Seshat URL: Zotero link: HRAMEJ9E |
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Suspected unknown due to the antiquity of this quasi-polity, the nature of the data, and the fact that this aspect of the quasi-polity’s culture is not mentioned in a recent and comprehensive cultural history of the Yoruba, Ogundiran 2020.
[1]
[1]: (Ogundiran 2020) Seshat URL: Zotero link: ADQMAKPW |
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