William Dalrymple’s ‘The Golden Road’: Ideas that created the Indian world
In India, we are used to exploring the pasts of well-defined, bounded entities. Even 150 years ago, people shifted from one area to another without any difficulty. It is the modern nation-states that have created well-defined boundaries that are very difficult to cross. Many scholars seem to believe that boundaries of the nation-states existed in the past too. All nations write their own histories. And as Ernest Renan pointed out, all nationalisms are based on a necessary misreading of the past. A creative way of avoiding such pitfalls is to document interactions beyond modern boundaries.
William Dalrymple’s ‘The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World’, is a delightful odyssey into the interaction of four worlds, i.e. the Chinese, the Indian, the Islamic and the European. The author locates himself in the Indian world and surveys the rest of humanity as distinct peripheries. The Indian world, or Indosphere, is defined as a hub of trade, as the axis of the Buddhist-Brahmanical traditions, as the exporter of the language of the gods (Sanskrit) and the Brahmi script, a large number of stories, and of a variety of art and architectural traditions along with the big idea of the zero and decimal system.
Historians have talked about the creation of world systems in a variety of contexts. If such a system can be said to have centred around Europe during the 19th century and USA from the mid-20th, in the pre-modern world, it was the emergence of networks connecting vast swathes of the globe without a well-defined centre. The challenge to historians is to capture the imperceptible flows and silent movements of people, goods and ideas, far from the din and bustle of conquering kings and noisy preachers. How does one excavate the pasts of a craftsperson sitting in his village retreat, or recreate passages to India in nameless boats across the oceans? Dalrymple has used the testimony of archaeology, historicised monuments, located reports on ships sunk thousands of years ago, and mined the evidence of forgotten cities like Berenike. The master storyteller that he is, he is able to fit together pieces of a vast puzzle and create a wonderful narrative.
The great historian Braudel said, “Land divides and water unites.” In the pre-modern world, carrying goods over roads that were primarily dirt tracks was an impossibly difficult job. Waters, on the other hand, smoothed passages to India. So, Golden Roads were created not on land but on the waves of oceans. With pepper, spices, cotton, sandalwood and semi-precious stones travelled adventurers, philosophers, monks, sculptors, painters and a whole world of evanescent ideas that created the Indosphere.
Dalrymple’s narrative begins with the exciting discovery of the Ajanta caves by a group of British hunters in 1819. Ajanta’s colours of compassion — the Buddha’s smile of reason, a face absorbed in the exploration of the inner world, alongside depictions of day-to-day life — evoke wonder. Gods, demons, happy maithuna couples, lions and elephants, cobras and monkeys — in short, a symphony of creation — welcomes you to Ajanta or Ellora. This leads Dalrymple to discuss Buddhism, a tradition suffused with values of non-violence, compassion and tolerance that touched and transformed many nations. The narrative leads to the great Ashoka, perhaps the only king in world history who, upon victory in Kalinga, mourns the loss of life and suffering caused by war. There have been many kings who won wars and described them as the victory of good over evil. Ashoka looked at war through the eyes of the defeated. He speaks to us in a language that connects even today. The other hero for the author is Xuanzang, who spent 17 years crossing various boundaries to create the Buddhist world.
Meanwhile, a parallel story of sea trade was emerging. The Indic world with its vast trade networks has existed at least from the time of Harappa. A better understanding of the monsoon winds in the early centuries created the Golden Road connecting Rome and India. From the 4th century onwards, trade with Rome declined but trade with Southeast Asia increased. Perhaps, the period from the 2nd century BCE to the 6th-7th century CE was the golden period for this Golden Road. Dalrymple envisages the collapse of the Indosphere around the 12th century, which coincides with the emergence of a new ruling class. It requires deeper enquiry because trade flourished in this period too and the subcontinent exported Islam to countries like Indonesia.
In the concluding chapter, ‘Fruits of the Science of Numbers’, the scholar brings to the table his enviable knowledge of European civilisation at the end of the first millennium. He describes in graphic detail the exciting world of Toledo, where many Arabic texts were translated into European languages. These processes brought, among other things, Indian numerals and the game of chess to Europe. What is clear is the ability of Europeans to learn from India, the Arab world, China and, of course, Greece. This fervent desire to learn seems to have been missing in India if we are to believe the testimony of the great 11th century polymath Al Biruni, who said, “The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no king like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.” Does that give us some idea about understanding India today?
When Dalrymple talks about the Indosphere, he has already chosen a centre. What happened in China or Southeast Asia had a lot to do with the local genius that interpreted the influences coming from India in its own way. We need to be wary of the shrinkage of the Indic sphere, one which defined the destiny of multi-centred cultural, social, linguistical and political formations, into the cow belt. If the Indosphere were to be visualised as an equal partnership of many nations, it will mark a new beginning in the writing of Indian history. Perhaps ‘The Thousand Nights and One’, representing the co-mingling of the Indic, Persian and Arab traditions, creates a better trope of togetherness of different cultures than the ones we historians practice today.
