Nakul Ahuja
India, the birthplace of the game of chess, the concept of zero, and the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, has long been the source of some of humanity's most revolutionary ideas.
Yet, as historian William Dalrymple argues in his new book 'The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World', the country's pivotal role in shaping global civilisation has been overlooked for centuries. Far from being a passive corner of the ancient world, Dalrymple paints India as its beating heart, a crossroads of trade, intellect, and spirituality whose influence stretched from Rome to China.
Speaking to Fareed Zakaria on CNN's GPS, Dalrymple said his book seeks to recover the "enormous Indian influence throughout Asia," describing ancient India as "the cultural superpower of Asia". He explained that over half the world today lives in countries that were once shaped by Indian religions or philosophies such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
"Buddhism not only conquered Southeast Asia - Thailand, Laos, Cambodia - but also China itself", he said, adding that India spread its ideas "through culture and trade, not conquest".
Calling it an "empire of the spirit", Dalrymple pointed to how Hindu and Buddhist imagery still endures far beyond India's borders, from Indonesia's national airline, Garuda (named after Vishnu's mount), to Cambodia's grand Angkor Wat temple and the Buddhist monument of Borobudur in Java.
He noted that between 200 BCE and 1200 AD, Sanskrit played the same role across Asia that Latin did in mediaeval Europe. "If you were a scholar or ambassador in 10th-century Java or 7th-century Afghanistan, you would be speaking Sanskrit," Dalrymple said.
The great Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, were retold and revered across continents, their stories appearing on temple walls in Thailand and Sumatra.
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