Elite and state adoption as a diffusion mechanism

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The recurring pattern in which a ruler or ruling class adopts a tradition and the tradition then acquires resources it could not otherwise obtain: law, taxation, land grants, building programmes, schools, diplomacy, and a reason for subjects and trading partners to align. Cases in this Journey include Ashoka's Mauryan sponsorship, Trdat III in Armenia, Ezana in Aksum, Constantine and Licinius in the Roman world, Tang imperial tolerance of the Church of the East, and the Malaccan ruling house. The mechanism is not one thing: motives attributed by scholars include conviction, dynastic legitimation, diplomatic alignment, and commercial advantage, and these are usually impossible to separate from the surviving evidence. Adoption at court also does not establish how far or how fast belief changed among the population, which is a separate and much harder question.

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