Well, you have to wonder about the Pythagoreans who were in Egypt during this period. A bunch of mystics who believed in reincarnation and were vegeterians? Hrm.
Perish the thought that such things couldn't independently arise.
Greco-Buddhism wasn't a thing outside of Wikipedia. We know this because there are no Greek Buddhists texts even int eh region. Some manuscripts written in the Greek alphabet, yes. But no Greek works themselves.
Hellenistic influence didn't die when a few Greeks states fell. Greek remained in use on coins and in in art for centuries.
The idea of Mahayana Buddhism as more hopeful has some merit, but it's a bit glib to paint Theraveda Buddhists as dour people who were convinced they'd suffer.
That said, while I want to give Greco-Buddhism crap and burn that page, the fact that there's a Buddhist Work entitled Questions of King Menander is pretty damn telling about the Greek influence in the area.
Call it Gandharan Buddhism, which is the proper name.
Kind of snarkishly pedantic, no?
Let's see. The only people using the term, "Greco-Buddhist" on this thread is the link to Wiki. Don't shoot the messenger... Perhaps you should try to contributing to Wikipaedia...
I have in other articles.
Hellenistic influence lasted situationally and spottily in parts of greater India, true. Sometimes those influences (that we know of) were pretty superficial, indeed. Coins and certain aesthetic contributions, yes. There was obviously some Buddhist derived influence on certain Greek lines of thinking. It doesn't make the relevant Greeks, Buddhists, but indicates that cultural influences moved both ways. The Greco-Indians eventually were absorbed into the local cultural fabric. Poof... The later commercial traffic which involved Greeks and Romans in the Romo-Indian trade seemed to have left no impression upon Indian culture beyond Roman coin collections found later.
It was Mahayana Buddhism that was carried into China and Central Asia by those great diffusers of Buddhism, the Kushan. Nothing against Theraveda. Dour? No. More conservative? Yes. Some of my best friends practice Theraveda Buddhism.
Christianity also had a huge leg up becaus unlike the monotheistic Buddhists, it could incorporate local deities into its cosmology. Hrm. Sorry, something about this seems off.
I think of Tibetan Buddhism which incorporated many aspects of the older Bon religion including many of its deities...
"Hrm"? Are you "Rorschach" from "Watchmen" , or something?