Society
Of The Divine Word

From circa 250 BC to 1200 AD, that is over one millennium and a half, Indian art, religion, technology, astronomy, music and dance, as well as literature, mythology and mathematics, left indelible cultural marks in the world – the historical phenomenon that William Dalrymple terms “the golden road” that started in the Indian Peninsula and covered the vast area stretching from the Red Sea to the Pacific.  Dalrymple, drawing on his years-long research and scholarship, highlights India’s once strong political, economic and cultural position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. He provides a fascinating insight into the long process of spreading Indian ideas that shaped to a considerable degree not only the culture and technology of the ancient world but also the world as we know it today.

One example here is the Sanskrit, the sacred tongue of India in the course of at least a millennium before the Common Era (BC), that eventually became the political and literary language in the area extending from Afghanistan to Java. Furthermore, out of India came not just pioneering merchants, astronomers and physicians, but also the holy men – monks and missionaries of several distinct strands of Indic sacred ways: Vedic, Shaiva and Vaishnava “Hinduism”, or Santana Dharma, as some prefer to name it, as well as Theravada, Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism.

In short, Indian learning, religious insights and “ways of doing things” are among the crucial foundations of our world. What Greece was first to Rome, then to the rest of the Mediterranean and European world, so in the period from 250 BC to 1200 AD India was to South-East and Central Asia, and even to China, radiating and diffusing its philosophies, political and religious ideas, as well as architectural forms out over the entire region, not by conquest but instead by sheer cultural allure and sophistication. Moreover, in matters of science, astronomy and mathematics, India was to be a teacher of the Arab world, and hence Mediterranean Europe too.