All starts from India?

The Golden Road - How Ancient India Transformed the World (2024)

Author: William Dalrymple

The author is quite unapologetic that his book would sound like an episode from the famous British desi sitcom, 'Goodness Gracious Me'. In fact, Sanjay Bhaskar, the main character in the above sitcom, was the invited guest to launch Dalrymple's latest book on Indian history.

This book is a joy to read. Packed with information from cover to cover, extensive research must have been conducted into the world of the Indosphere before waves of invaders destroyed it and rewrote its history.

Its cultural influence spread beyond its borders. Indian advanced navigational skills, using the seasonal monsoon winds to bring goods, knowledge, and culture to adjacent regions, were assets for mankind. India was a big brother figure to the Southeast Asian region, as far as the present Indochina region and even to China.

As early as the first century CE, the trade imbalance was so great, favouring India. A third of India's business was with the Romans. They traded pearls, gold, spices, diamonds, incense, eunuch slaves, ivory, perfumes, and even exotic animals like elephants and tigers. Imagine the sheer size of Indian ships that could carry elephants. Proof of these was found in the drawings in the Ajunta Caves. The Buddhists, contrary to the austere life that Buddhists are assumed to be living, encouraged trade and mercantilism. A Roman Emperor in the 1st century was reported to be incensed with his subjects' fixation with Indian spices (which he found distasteful) and almost transparent Indian cloth (that left nothing to the imagination). The image of Buddha in the Kushan Era had Greeco-Roman features.

It is said that British hunters' discovery of the Ajuntha Caves led to the discovery of India's long-forgotten tryst with Buddhism. Ironically, Buddhist monks have been found as far as Libya (sent by Asoka) and Alexandria. The Buddhists, it is said, had an influence on the Christian monastic movements.

It is perplexing that India was looked upon even by the Chinese as a cultured region. Its scholars endured treacherous land journeys to acquire knowledge from renowned universities like Nalanda and Taxila to learn and translate Buddhist scriptures. Sanskrit was viewed as the language of the elite. Travelogues of Xuanzang's 16-year journey against the restrictions imposed by the Sui Dynasty returns tells about a well-developed India with high intellect and culture. Buddhism was no longer popular in India and had moved eastwards.

There was a well-coordinated shipping line from the Bay of Bengal throughout the Straits of Malacca to Indonesia and China. Indonesia was a Sanskrit centre where scholars stopped over to master the language before going off to India. Buddhism soon competed with Confucianism and Taoism as the state's official way of life. The first female Empress of China, Wu Zetian, was instrumental in building innumerable Buddhist shrines in Loyang, China, in the third century CE. This colourful figure ruled for over 50 years. Many sculptures, scholars and astronomers from India were invited to set up offices in China.

By the 7th century CE, the likes of Brahmagupta and Aryabatta brought mathematics and astronomy to a different level. India's competence in architecture and science and its Ayurveda made it the most advanced country in the world at that time. Ujjain, in central India, had a space observatory centre then. They had advanced ideas of keeping time, the meridian, and shipping. 

Sailing sailors from Southern India mastered shipbuilding and navigational techniques. Their seamen brought Indian culture, influence, and civilisation to faraway lands like Indonesia, Cambodia, and beyond. Testimonies of Indian expertise are seen in many mammoth temples there—Angkor Wat, Borobudur, etc.

Observatory in Ujjain,

built by Maharaja Jai Singh II, 1725

When the Muslim invaders started attacking the northern part of India, the wealth of knowledge found here also fascinated Muslim scholars. An influential Buddhist family from northern Afghanistan, the Barmakids, are credited with bringing Hindu knowledge to the Abbasid Empire. They converted to Islam and helped to build the city of Baghdad. The Barmakids' descendants became important advisors to the rulers, but one fell out of favour with Harun al Rashid, and their legacy ended there. 

After falling out of favour of things from India, the Abbasids had sourced knowledge from Greek scriptures. 

Andalusia was a vital region which showcased the golden age of Islamic civilisation. With its serene gardens irrigated with advanced water pumps, it was heaven on Earth. In 1085, the Christian King Alfonso VI conquered Toledo. King Alfonso's attack left the libraries undisturbed, unlike the Muslim and Mongol invaders who destroyed everything in sight. European scholars found the Indian knowledge there profound. The earlier translated Indian wisdom was translated again into Latin and made its way to Oxford. They were erroneously labelled Arabic numbers. Fibonacci, credited for the numbers (of his namesake), apparently learned it from these books. He picked up the wonder of numbers from Algeria. Of course, the discoverers of trigonometry, zero and negative numbers were Indians. 

The New India has woken to the awareness of its glorious past. After being a leading force for thousands of years, it is amazing how it had fallen off the pedestal. With new leaders who vow to return the nation to its past laurels, it is marching towards a new dawn.

(PS. When I was young, I was curious to see Roman coins being part of the ornaments adorning my Amma's thali chain. How did Roman symbols come to be part of Indian jewellery? When we learnt history in school, it was so fragmented and compartmentalized, and the two regions were different like night and day. Of course, there were huge trades between Tamil Nadu and the Roman Empire then. And possessing foreign goods must have been an item to flaunt around. Hence, the desire to thread it into the thali chain and inadvertently let it slip out  occasionally for full view of others to be jealous.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All kinds of everything...

Back in medical school, we had the honour of having the first-hand experience of listening to a learned man of stature croak cockamamie. The deputy director of Health then officiated some function. The gist of the speech that left an everlasting impression on me was his stand on allocations of funds for research.

From the podcast: Bigger than Bacon, Radiolab.

He lamented the idea of students complaining about the lack of grants for research. He insisted that of one is genuinely interested in doing research, he can even do it under the coconut tree! I am sure many findings can be cooked up under the tree - with the help of coconut oil, coconut milk and coconut toddy!

Somehow, this thought came to me when I was listening to a podcast recently. 

Apparently, the first thing they teach you in underwater surveillance studies is to identify a crackling sound which is not the noise of a advancing naval fleet but a particular type of shrimps. These single clawed crustaceans were correspondingly snapper shrimps. They actually mask the passage of a submarine or ocean liner in the World War! Nice to know but the scientists were not satisfied with just knowing that. What did they do? Using ultra fast speed photography and acoustic measurements with various state of the art equipment, they discovered that the snapping sounds were not due to physical contact of the claws in the some kind of territorial ritual but actually caused by the popping of a bubble. The scientists managed to show that sudden movement of the claw created a vacuum and release a vacuole of air bubble that pops giving the characteristic rustic crackling sound!

What does it matter? How is it useful for humankind? Believe it or not, this knowledge has helped passage of certain medicines through the blood brain barrier.

This was the same scenario before the smartphones came to the scene. Many of the technologies used in smartphones were invented by people who did not know the use of their invention. They just discovered it and patented it, waiting for someone like Steve Jobs to come along and assimilate it into his product.

So, who said research is a waste of resources? It paves the path others in the future to have a blueprint upon which they can improve and hopefully use it in a meaningful for the benefit of the human race as a whole.