William Dalrymple goes further back

Indian readers have long known William Dalrymple as the chronicler nonpareil of India in the early years of the British raj. His latest book, The Golden Road, is a striking departure, since it takes him to a period from about the third century BC to the 12th-13th centuries CE.

- SHASHI THAROOR

“What Greece was first to Rome, then to the rest of the Mediterranean and European World,” argues Dalrymple, “so at this period India was to southeast and central Asia and even to China.” That this argument is not commonly associated with a foreign scholar—and has been assumed, wrongly, to be the sole domain of the vishwaguru school of hindutva history—makes it all the more compelling reading.

It is fair to say that conventional wisdom tends to focus on ancient India—the glories of the Vedas and the Puranas, the flourishing of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, and the triumphs of a handful of emperors, notably Chandragupta, Ashoka, Kanishka and Vikramaditya—from a fairly insular perspective, confining their impact to the subcontinent and largely omitting their influence on the rest of the world. It is also widely assumed that by the sixth or seventh century CE a national decline had set in, leaving India vulnerable to the Islamic conquests that began with the invasion of Sind by the youthful Arab general Mohammed bin Qasim in 712 CE.