When India’s Empire of Ideas Bridged the Ancient World

William Dalrymple’s The Golden Road is a luminous tapestry that dazzles the intellect and the imagination alike. With his trademark eloquence and meticulous scholarship, Dalrymple takes readers on an odyssey through what he terms “the Indosphere” - an intricate web of cultural, political and artistic exchanges spanning from the gilded halls of Rome to the scholarly courts of Central Asia, the vibrant cities of Southeast Asia, and beyond. India, he argues, was not merely a contributor but a lodestar in shaping the ancient world’s intellectual and artistic currents, its ideas and innovations spreading like wildfire through the twin forces of trade and conquest, both cultural and martial.

Dalrymple begins his narrative by describing how Buddhism—in his words “the ideas of an obscure ascetic”—began its extraordinary journey around the world. From the fifth to the third century BCE (which comprises the first 200 years of the faith), there is no archaeological record of Buddhism. There are no inscriptions, only some indications of occupation in certain monasteries (such as the one in Rajgir) located in the small area of the plain of north-east India and Nepal bordering the banks of the Ganges where the Buddha had lived and preached. Also discovered were a pair of small early stupas, one at Vaisali—capital of the powerful Licchavi clan and the other at Lumbini—Buddha’s birthplace.

The individual who was primarily responsible for the extraction of the Buddha’s relics and for leaving as an invaluable legacy, texts written in stone in any identifiable Indian script was emperor Ashoka. He helped in launching Buddhism (which was initially a small, local cult) into one of the world’s greatest religions.

From the point of view of trade, the author also reiterates and underlines how it was India and not China that was the primary trading partner of the Roman empire. The stupa at Amaravati, located in a resplendent Buddhist site in the south-east coast of India reveals that Buddhist monks were recipients of the patronage of merchants from many countries arriving at the prosperous port of Dharanikota—a major centre of cotton exports. Also, ideas and philosophies travelled via the merchants, their gold and their goods.

The author describes how Buddhist cave architecture spread over the Himalayas to Afghanistan, China and Japan, or by sea to Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and the rest of South-east Asia. Under the patronage of the Kushans, the Buddha first began to be depicted on a gigantic scale in human form (such as the sculptures in the region of Gandhara). Before this, the Buddha was never depicted directly, but in aniconic form through clearly understood symbols of his presence such as an empty throne, a tree, a turban, a flaming pillar or a pair of footprints.

The author proceeds to describe not only the great library of Nalanda which in the seventh century CE contained, amongst other precious collections, the fullest and most complete collections of the texts of the tradition known as Yogacara (‘Practice of Yoga’). This, and other texts were copied and brought back to China by the great Chinese monk Xuanzang.

Also narrated is the way the only Chinese empress Wu Zetian, catapulted herself to power after entering the Chinese court as a “concubine of the fifth grade.” This monarch used Buddhist monks to have herself recognized as a semi-divine Bodhisattva incarnate—in short a Buddhist deity—who was “beyond all earthly criticism and whose will was an expression of heavenly law.”

The book concludes with a captivating account of how Indian innovations—such as numerical symbols, the decimal system, algebra, trigonometry, and astronomical discoveries—reached Abbasid Baghdad in the late eighth century. An Indian delegation from Sindh in 733 also brought the Sindhind text and Ayurvedic expertise, with one doctor famously curing the Caliph’s digestive ailment when local physicians failed, as noted by historian al-Tabari.

Beyond his celebrated travelogues, Dalrymple has gifted us a string of unforgettable historical works: The Last Mughal, Return of a King, The Anarchy - each a triumph of storytelling and scholarship. With The Golden Road, he surpasses even his own lofty standards, delivering a monumental work that is as significant for its historical revelations as for its literary artistry. Rarely does a work of history resonate so deeply, lingering in the mind as both an intellectual feast and a timeless treasure.

(The author is an independent researcher based in Mumbai.)