The Golden Road
Guys, just completed this book. I read this after reading 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan. Frankly speaking, had I read this book before 'Silk Roads' I would have enjoyed it. But Peter Frankopan sets the bar too high. In this book, 'The Golden Road', William Dalrymple has done a good work to bring forth the contribution of ancient India as a knowledge provider to Middle East, China and South East Asia. But he stretches the topic too far at times forcefully linking things to the Indian subcontinent. Case in point is where he likens the early European universities to have been modelled on the lines of madrassas which he claims were designed based on Buddhist Viharas. In the next line he refutes the claim too. Similarly, he oversimplifies the transfer of Indian numerals right down till Fibonacci, not making any mention on the major contributions by the Arabs and early European scholars. Dalrymple tries to prove that the volume of trade between ancient India and Rome was more than that could have been obtained on the silk route by simply stating that the sea routes had more capacity. However, no comparison or irrefutable proof is provided for this claim. I do not by any means deny the contribution of India as a major player in the ancient trade scenario, but the author, it seems could have made it more exhaustive rather than simply stating the facts as a compilation. There are two major things where the author hits the nail on its head and I will quote them.
"During the days of the Nehruvian rule in the 1950s and early 1960s, Indian school textbooks and most academic histories were written by left leaning, Congress-supporting figures. These historians tended to underplay the violence and iconoclasm that came with the Turkish invasions, partially in the interest of what they saw as 'nation building' following the terrible inter-religious violence that had taken place during partition. Today, under the current right wing BJP government, the reverse is true and the destruction of Hindu temples is almost all that many in India seem to know of the complex but fascinating medieval period of Indo-Islamic history.""This poses a question, unthinkable in 1947 at Independence from Britan: could they do so again ?" (A reference to how the Indosphere spread not by sword but by sheer power of idea.)
My recommendation - A good read but read it before other better works.
Guys, just completed this book. I read this after reading 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan. Frankly speaking, had I read this book before 'Silk Roads' I would have enjoyed it. But Peter Frankopan sets the bar too high. In this book, 'The Golden Road', William Dalrymple has done a good work to bring forth the contribution of ancient India as a knowledge provider to Middle East, China and South East Asia. But he stretches the topic too far at times forcefully linking things to the Indian subcontinent. Case in point is where he likens the early European universities to have been modelled on the lines of madrassas which he claims were designed based on Buddhist Viharas. In the next line he refutes the claim too. Similarly, he oversimplifies the transfer of Indian numerals right down till Fibonacci, not making any mention on the major contributions by the Arabs and early European scholars. Dalrymple tries to prove that the volume of trade between ancient India and Rome was more than that could have been obtained on the silk route by simply stating that the sea routes had more capacity. However, no comparison or irrefutable proof is provided for this claim. I do not by any means deny the contribution of India as a major player in the ancient trade scenario, but the author, it seems could have made it more exhaustive rather than simply stating the facts as a compilation. There are two major things where the author hits the nail on its head and I will quote them.
"During the days of the Nehruvian rule in the 1950s and early 1960s, Indian school textbooks and most academic histories were written by left leaning, Congress-supporting figures. These historians tended to underplay the violence and iconoclasm that came with the Turkish invasions, partially in the interest of what they saw as 'nation building' following the terrible inter-religious violence that had taken place during partition. Today, under the current right wing BJP government, the reverse is true and the destruction of Hindu temples is almost all that many in India seem to know of the complex but fascinating medieval period of Indo-Islamic history.""This poses a question, unthinkable in 1947 at Independence from Britan: could they do so again ?" (A reference to how the Indosphere spread not by sword but by sheer power of idea.)
My recommendation - A good read but read it before other better works.