Woven in, too, are descriptions of the trade with Europe: with the Greeks, and with the Roman Empire, importing everything from “Indian ivory mirrors, boxes and carved furniture”, to wild animals, spices and pepper: expensive luxuries that drained (according to Pliny) the Empire of “at least fifty-five million sesterces” a year. India and its goods were all the crack in Rome and in the areas dotting the sea route between India and the Mediterranean.
With the collapse of the Roman Empire, this trade declined, but Dalrymple explains how, in the meantime, India’s links with South-East Asia strengthened, both through flourishing trade networks as well as through the dissemination of Hinduism. This, combined with the impact of Indian influences on art, language, architecture, etc. created an Indosphere that is palpable even to this day.
Among the most interesting, and far-reaching, effects of India on the world, however, is what Dalrymple ends the book with: the gift of mathematics, and of its related field of astronomy; how zero made its way West; how Indians were once acclaimed far and wide as the best mathematicians around; and how, in essence, India’s contribution to accountancy helped facilitate commerce in Europe.
Dalrymple, of course, is known not just as a historian but a storyteller par excellence, and both qualities are on display in The Golden Road. The research is mind-bogglingly wide-ranging, taking into its ambit not just India, but much of the Old World as well: through archaeological evidence, documents, and more.
While the author does an admirable job of collating the facts, his ability to put those facts together in a lucid manner is what makes this book so absorbing.
There are interesting bits of trivia here (Caligula’s consort Lollia Paulina, for example, wore forty million sesterces’ worth of Indian emeralds and pearls, and carried around the receipts to prove it). Of particular note is the way Dalrymple works into his text the lives of key individuals—Xuanzang, Wu Zetian, Mahendravarman Pallava, Khalid ibn Barmak, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II among them—who were instrumental in the spread of Indian knowledge.
At a time when there are many tall claims about India’s glorious past, this book is invaluable: because it shows, through solid historical research, what India’s actual contributions to the world were. And, what we should really be proud of.
