Book Review: 'THE GOLDEN ROAD; HOW ANCIENT INDIA TRANSFORMED THE WORLD'

Written by: Azfar Khan
Posted on: September 17, 2026 |

From left to right: the silver Hellenistic Greek profile coin (Demetrius I); the gold coin showing a deity (Lord Shiva) and a bull (Kujula Kadphises); another gold coin; and the final gold coin featuring the standing figure of a moustachioed Buddha with the adapted Greek script 'BODDO' (Kanishka). Each coin is sharply detailed.

After the masterpiece The Company Quartet, multi-award-winning bestselling historian William Dalrymple has written another masterpiece, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, exploring the civilizational role of ancient India in the ancient and early medieval world. At 483 pages, the book offers a fascinating journey into ancient India, with an introduction and ten chapters, plus detailed notes, an extensive bibliography, and original portraits and paintings. The purpose of the book, as Dalrymple rightly posits, is to “highlight India’s often forgotten position as a crucial economic fulcrum and civilizational engine, at the heart of the ancient and early medieval worlds, and as one of the main motors of global trade and cultural transmission,” and that purpose is substantially and resourcefully achieved.

While most of the literature on the scientific and mathematical development of Europe starts with Muslim developments, which also learned from Greeks and India and then transmitted this knowledge to Europe, there is very little mention of how India developed many important scientific and mathematical concepts. Colonial literature and historiography mostly remained silent about ancient Indian contributions to contemporary civilizational developments in science, astronomy, and mathematics.

There would hardly be anyone in the modern world who knows the names of Brahmagupta and Aryabhata and the Muslim scholars who borrowed their ideas, which shaped the scientific advancement of the medieval city of Baghdad. And the truth, as it is said, reveals itself, and that is what happened when a Buddhist bust of Buddha from a stupa was found in Egypt. This has opened new ways for archaeologists and historians to reinterpret the history of ancient India, which shaped the world not only through trade and culture but also through ideas and religious beliefs. The messages of love, kindness, compassion, detachment, non-violence, and personal self-glory come from Buddha’s teachings, which are also foundations of modern human rights. Aryabhata, according to the author, gave the concept of the Earth’s motion long before Europe even came to know of planetary orbits. He argued that stars are seen moving because of the relative motion caused by the Earth’s rotation. Similarly, Brahmagupta expanded the concept of zero further by giving it proper shape and value. He described that when the same number is subtracted from itself, it gives zero, and he also gave the concept of positive and negative numbers, which brought a revolution in mathematics.

The discovery of zero made revolutionary strides in the history of mankind. The world still owes much to ancient Indian scholars, but modern generations barely acknowledge this due to the colonial duplication of knowledge. The genius of Indian scientists and mathematicians was introduced to the world by Arabs after the Muslim arrival in Sindh. The Barmakids, who had accepted Islam, brought their knowledge and skills to the court of Baghdad, which shaped the Muslim Golden Age. Al-Khwarizmi gave a detailed explanation of Indian mathematics in his work The Compendious Book of Calculating by Completion and Balancing according to Hindu Calculation. He taught, with simplicity and ease, the principles of mathematics and decimal notation.

The Indian manuscripts were translated into Arabic, which found their way into Europe through Hispania. Muslim works and commentaries were translated into Latin, which became a foundation for the European Renaissance. Thus, Indian sciences and astronomy found their way into Europe but still remain unacknowledged in Europe and the world at large. When Xuanzang travelled to India in the quest for knowledge, India was the hub of intellectual education; its architecture was far ahead of contemporary ages, and its scholars had no parallels. Xuanzang came to gain knowledge of Buddhism and Indian manuscripts related to philosophy, astronomy, and religion. He described the university as one of the most magnificent complexes, whose library was nine stories high and from which any manuscript could be accessed. After completing his training at Nalanda University, he returned with a huge caravan burdened with thousands of books.

According to Dalrymple, Indian universities at that time had elaborate classrooms where students would regularly listen to lectures by scholars, and probably modern methods and designs of universities developed from Indian universities. Such was the power of Indian ideas that Wu Zetian, the new woman emperor who usurped power in China, made Buddhism a state religion and regularly sought advice from Indian courtiers. Her rule was legitimised by a myth originating in India that portrayed the resurrection of Buddhism in the form of a female deity, thereby providing her with legitimacy to rule.

It was not only China; Indian religion, art, culture, and ideas travelled East and West, which find its way out of India also through seafarers. The regions of modern Cambodia and Malaysia have preserved more remnants of Indian Buddhist stupas. The biggest monasteries and temples, due to this influence, are not in India but in its neighbouring regions. Not only this, but the Roman Empire also had flourishing trade with Indian merchants, and they would regularly travel to Indian capitals. Most Roman coins have been found in India, not on the way to China. The author also debunks the claim of the ancient Silk Roads and argues that it is a modern invention. It was India that was the centre of the ancient world, which acted as the Golden Road. The Cholas of South India furthered Indian rule to Sumatra and Thailand. Rajendra, the famous king of the Cholas, attacked the capital of the Srivijaya Empire in the Malay Peninsula, which brought Hindu culture and ideas to the region. The merchant routes were taxed, and vessels from China and Southeast Asia reached the ports of India, where they could carry out commerce in spices. From Indian ports, hundreds of ships daily left for the Red Sea, where Roman merchants would trade Roman gold for Indian spices and pepper. In fact, the historian William Dalrymple argues that pepper was more in demand than silk in Roman cities, as there was barely a culture of wearing silk clothing in the Roman Empire.

Therefore, William Dalrymple argues that it was India, not China, as is often misperceived, that was the centre of the ancient world. Its ideas shaped the neighbouring empires, and its ports were the most flourishing trade corridors for the merchants of the ancient and medieval world. The routes to and from India were the central trading routes of the ancient and medieval world, which he names the Golden Road of the ancient world. The book is highly resourceful, as more than one-third of the book is filled with descriptions of reference sources, giving so much leverage to ambitious historians and archaeologists to explore more about ancient India.