For most of its modern history India was fated to be on the receiving end of cultural
influence from other civilisations. But this isn't the complete story. A full millennium
earlier India's major cultural exports - religion art technology astronomy mathematics
medicine language and literature - were shaping civilisations traveling as far as Afghanistan
in the West and Japan in the East. Out of India came pioneering merchants astronomers and
astrologers scientists and mathematicians surgeons and sculptors as well as the holy men
monks and missionaries. In The Golden Road legendary historian William Dalrymple highlights
India's oft-forgotten position as a crucial economic and civilisational hub at the heart of the
ancient and early mediaeval history of Eurasia. From Angkor to Ayutthaya The Golden Road
traces the cultural flow of Indian religions languages artistic and architectural forms
throughout the world. In this ground-breaking tome Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of
scholarship to reinstate India as the great intellectual and philosophical superpower of
ancient Asia.
