By India is yet to claim rightful credit for its historical role as the epicentre of knowledge and world trade while other countries like China and Greece had established narratives to highlight their contribution to the mankind, said renowned author William Dalrymple while speaking at the concluding day of the Huddle Global at Kovalam.
Referring to India’s rise as an IT powerhouse, Dalrymple said it was not the first time that Indian knowledge is contributing to the development of mankind. “India was a part of the world which very early on answered the big questions of mankind like why are we here, how to lead a moral life what is the relation of the earth to the heaven and the size of the earth,” he said.
But the influence of Indian soft power remains hidden. “It is worth asking why everyone in the West had heard about Archimedes and Pythagoras but no one known’s the names of Brahmagupta whose works led to the concept of zero and the earth’s position in the solar system,” the eminent author whose recent book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World illustrates the historical role of India in trade, science and religion that influenced the world.
Aryabhata proposed that the Earth is not the center of the universe centuries before Galileo, but the latter received recognition for the discovery. He said that the knowledge developed in India later became weapons in the hands of European colonizers who used it to establish dominance and reap commercial benefits.
He said visiting Chinese scholars were amazed by the Takshashila University which was a flourishing education centre at that time and the physical structure of that university has influenced universities across the world since then, with learning centres placed around large courtyards. But India is yet to excavate 90 percent of the Nalanda University remnants in today’s Bihar to present its case.
Dalrymple also pointed out that India’s ancient maritime trade routes were culturally and commercially busier than China’s Silk Road. The connections between Indian ports, especially Muziris on India’s western coast, and regions like Rome and Egypt, were of immense significance. Ancient India had greater integration with Mediterranean, Persian and Greek influences than widely believed, with reciprocal impacts on art and scholarship.
