Pisces Jee, that was just a background, here is the real answer of your question: When Buddha started to teach Dhamma, it was not a religion. It was a pure science of mind; a pragmatic technique to eradicate the suffering of life. Of course, there were/are different types of sufferings in the world; however, all the sufferings are rooted to mind. Once you cut the roots, the whole body of suffering will die out. We can compare his teaching with science. No matter who discovers the scientific laws the entire human race applies them. Most of the scientific discoverers are westerners; it doesn't mean that you have to get westernized to apply the science. Arabians, Asians, American, Europeans, African anyone can apply these discoveries and take advantage of it. For that you don't have to change your culture, tradition, living style, language etc. This happened with Buddha's teaching too. It went to all over the Asia; people embraced it because it was result giving scientific technique to eradicated the misery of life. Those, who took the teaching from Indian subcontinent, most of them were monks. Monks doesn't have any culture except meditating day and night. Buddha's teaching is not a culture, it is a science; science of mental purification. People of different countries of Asia accepted it as a science not as a religion. Religion goes with culture but science doesn't. This is the reason why different Buddhist countries have their own traditions and cultures. There is almost nothing common between Chinese Buddhist and Srilankan Buddhist. Buddha's teaching didn't interfere the existing cultures and traditions. Mongolians were cow eaters; they embraced Buddha's teaching keeping their cow eating tradition alive. Buddha didn't interfere the existing culture himself. He taught his monks not to harm any living being. That's why Monks are not supposed to kill even plants. However, Buddha himself used to eat anything dead given to him, even meat. Once Monk Devadatta proposed Buddha some proposals; one of them were the monks wouldn't eat meat. Buddha discarded his proposal because he didn't want to interfere the existing culture. Not to kill is the first of the five moral precepts of his teaching. However, he didn't stop people to kill