How ancient India changed the world

India was far more influential and richer than we previously thought

Excerpt: "The idea of the “Silk Road” is embedded in our historical imagination. The trail of Eurasian oasis cities and overland trade routes that linked China to the bazaars and markets of the Arab world and Europe has become a synonym for the deep connections bridging East and West.

In more recent years, Beijing has invoked the history of the Silk Road as ideological ballast for China’s 21st-century geopolitics, casting its network of major global infrastructure investments and projects, dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative, as the inheritor of an ancient legacy.

But what about the links far deeper and older than the Silk Road? One of the big contentions of popular historian William Dalrymple’s latest book “The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World,” which came out in the United States a few weeks ago, is that the Indian subcontinent’s connections to the West, especially via the Roman Empire, were far richer than those of China.

Once the might of Rome reached Egypt and the maritime routes of the Red Sea, it brought the customers of the Mediterranean to India’s doorstep. It also saw Indian philosophy and mathematics travel west and east."