How ancient India transformed the world

The sprawling “golden road,” linking India to the Red Sea and the Far East, became the lifeblood of trade and cultural exchange, shaping the economic and cultural landscapes of entire regions for centuries to come.

By Ajay Saini

info@thearabianstories.com

Thursday, January 23, 2025

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First, he was robbed of his possessions in Jammu. Then, while navigating the Ganges on a boat, his luck sank further—he fell into the hands of pirates. But these were no ordinary outlaws; they were fervent devotees of Goddess Durga. And when they laid eyes on the “grand” and “handsome” monk, they were utterly pleased. “The season of sacrifice [Durga Puja] is upon us … Isn’t it auspicious for us to kill him as a sacrifice?” the pirates said among themselves.

As they prepared the sacrificial altar, the monk calmly requested permission to offer his final prayers. Moments later, as legend has it, a fierce black wind howled from all directions, uprooting trees and whipping sand high into the air. Waves surged in the river, and boats were overturned. Panic-stricken, the pirates turned to the travelers and desperately demanded, “Where does this monk come from and what is his name?”

He was Xuanzang, the intrepid Chinese Buddhist monk who, in the autumn of 629 CE, left the capital city of Chang’an to embark on a daring 3,000-mile journey to India. His mission? To reach Nalanda—the legendary Buddhist university and monastery—where the era’s brightest minds gathered to unravel the mysteries of wisdom. Seventeen years and 6,000 miles later, Xuanzang returned to China, bringing back more than just memories of his extraordinary pilgrimage to India’s renowned centres of learning.

In “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World” William Dalrymple breathes life into a glorious era of the Indic world, one that was chronicled by the likes of Xuanzang and many others.

In writing the book, Dalrymple visited many of the places he describes, drew extensively from a wide range of sources, and consulted with numerous leading scholars. In the pages of The Golden Road, readers discover a forgotten India—an era when its knowledge, scholarship, arts, and commerce flourished. The book opens a window into an ancient civilisation that once stood as one of the greatest intellectual, spiritual, and economic powerhouses of its time, shaping and inspiring the world around it.

Between 250 BCE and 1200 CE, Dalrymple argues: “India was a confident exporter of its own diverse civilisation,” cultivating an expansive Indosphere where its cultural influence reigned supreme.

The term ‘Indosphere’ immediately captures readers’ attention. While Dalrymple credits British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore for the term’s “ingenious coinage,” and acknowledges borrowing it from him, the term was actually first coined by American linguist James Alan Matisoff. Nevertheless, with Dalrymple’s usage, it is poised to gain wider recognition and significance.

In the opening chapter of The Golden Road, Dalrymple whisks away readers to the mid-fifth century BCE—when Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, walked the earth. He traces the remarkable journey of the Buddha’s teachings, which began with the doctrine of a little-known ascetic but quickly spread across India and beyond after King Ashoka embraced them. Devoting himself to spreading the dharma to distant lands, Ashoka’s efforts paved the way for merchants engaged in global trade to carry Buddhism to the far corners of the world after his death.

The next nine chapters, skilfully crafted, intertwine multiple stories that come together like pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle. Each provides a captivating glimpse into a distinct facet of India’s rich history, highlighting its remarkable economic and cultural influence on the global stage.

By the first century BCE, Dalrymple argues, Europe and India were already closely connected through thriving trade routes across the Red Sea. Indian merchants met Europe’s insatiable demand with an array of goods—diamonds, rubies, silk and cotton textiles, sandalwood, spices like cloves and pepper, rare drugs, elephant tusks, tortoiseshell, and even exotic wild animals.

By the fourth century BCE, Dalrymple suggests, Indian merchants had also built a maritime network that spanned from India’s eastern shores across the Bay of Bengal to the thriving city states and ports of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, and the South China Sea. Dalrymple also vividly recounts how Indian innovations in mathematics—ranging from number symbols and algebra to the decimal system, trigonometry, and astronomical discoveries—paved the way for scientific progress worldwide, influencing everything from commerce to cosmology.

The sprawling “golden road,” linking India to the Red Sea and the Far East, became the lifeblood of trade and cultural exchange, shaping the economic and cultural landscapes of entire regions for centuries to come.

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