The Golden Road by William Dalrymple – creativity of the Indosphere. Dalrymple spins a grandiose story of how India exercised its global influence in the medieval world. It created an Indosphere through missionary work and being creative with its trade. This is an expansive book, at times dense, but never less than fascinating.
Dalrymple begins with a story about the Pallava dynasty from 600AD in the huge seaport of Mamallapuram. This was where hundred ton ships traded goods around South-East Asia. They also carried hundreds of passengers exporting Buddhism and Hinduism, their Sanskrit language and their art and architecture.
Buddhism was a key part of early India and its growth. Buddhism disdained material pleasures – dharma, the moral path to the cessation of both moral desire and suffering. Dalrymple specifically discusses Ajanta – an early form of Buddhism – and how it was spread around the world, with the paradox of ascetism working alongside wealthy merchants engaged in trade.
With their strong links to trading guilds the Buddhist monasteries benefited from the growing trade networks across Asia. The monasteries were built on the trade routes at that time. Dalrymple argues that the Buddha saw wealth as a necessary evil until when nirvana was reached. Wealth became a sign of good karma. Merchants used Buddhism to protect them on their journeys. This is in stark contrast to evolving Hinduism of the Brahmins. The Brahmins were forbidden from travelling by sea or mixing with foreigners – with the risk of punishment by loss of caste.
One of the more fascinating aspects of this book is the story of the shipping trade between India and Rome. It grew as Merchants raised huge profits. The scale was immense – sometimes up to hundred times the price in the Roman Empire at the time. Even Rome noticed as it complained about the drain of Gold to India in exchange for only pepper and gemstones. That trade between Rome and India included many Roman products that made their way via India to China.
India, Dalrymple argues, not China, was Rome’s greatest trading partner. He points out that the ships carried much larger cargoes than camels on land and were able to sail around wars, blockades and ambushes. But China comes in to this story in how Buddhism became a part of it He documents the long and dangerous journey by Xuanzang as he was passed through Buddhist communities in Central Asia. At the same time Hinduism was on the rise in India with Buddhism turning into a minority religion. He traces Xuanzang observing Buddhist pilgrimage sites taken over by Hindus.
Empress Wu in China, a former concubine but now in power, became the champion of Buddhism in China. She turned China into a new centre of the Buddhist world. Here, we had Indian Buddhist monks moving to China where they were warmly received. The Chinese embraced many of the Indian scientific advances by astronomers that also made their way West. This included the “Nine Planets” which accurately predicted eclipses, and using a dot for zero.
Indian Buddhist universities were established at the heart of Empress Wu’s Buddhist ‘Pure Land.” Poetry, painting, furniture, were all influenced by Indian artists. Dalrymple calls this a high water mark of Indian influence in China that has never been repeated.
A key`part of Dalrymple’s story is the Indosphere which spanned both sides of the Bay of Bengal. The trade and missionary routes stretched to China, Thailand and Indonesia. The point about the Indosphere is how it was achieved without the need for military action. With the ascendency of Hinduism, it was becoming mixed with Buddhism. Small figurines were being manufactured on a large scale in the Mekong delta. They were also reflective of the region – Cambodian figurines with a Khmer physiology. At ports along the Mekong Delta, statues and temples face the water as they did at Mamallapuram
This was followed up by the building of the largest and most impressive Hindu temple in the world with Angkor Wat, at 500 acres for the temple alone. It reputedly had a population of a million whilst London was still only at 20,000. The architectural form was pioneered in India. It’s solar and lunar imagery also giving it a cosmological feel with an exact constellation of the planets.
Indian ascendancy in mathematics was shown with Brahmagupta’s pioneering work on the number zero, and other mathematical ideas. Underpinning this is the early madrassas that were the precursor to the Western universities.
The story ends in the 11th century with Said al-Andalusi, the Chief Justice of Toledo writing a global study of the history of science focusing on the debt the Arabs owed to the power of Indian ideas. Dalrymple calls this thousand years an era of openness to its neighbours, absorbing them and taking them forward in a creative way. India’s influence was spread by the power of ideas.
India’s power and influence was ended by large armies that broke up the Indosphere. Islam had ended the Western trade routes with the help of the Mongols stopping the trade to the North and East; and the Mughals took over North India. What is missing is the story of this demise.
There are two key propositions to Dalrymple’s book. The first one is that the Golden Road is the sea lanes not the Silk Road (a nineteenth century myth) and his research goes some way to vindicate that. Indian influence was spread by merchants and sea captains, but also by monks.
The second is the power and influence of religion, trade and science in what was probably India’s most golden era. Again the relics found from the Mediterranean to the Mekong Delta to much justice to this. At times the density of the stories is academic more than entertaining but disruptive in how we will look back on this era all the same. There is no doubting the creativity of the Indosphere at the time – Dalrymple wonders if we will see it again.
