The Golden Road with William Dalrymple

This event took place on 30 September 2024. The information below is correct as of the publication date.

For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation - creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific.

William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India’s position as the heart of ancient Eurasia and for the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of Japan, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero), India transformed the culture and technology of its ancient world – and the world today as we know it.

William Dalrymple is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and read historians and the bestselling author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals; The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapuscinski Prize-winning Return of a King. A frequent broadcaster, he has written and presented three television series, one of which won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Series at BAFTA. He has also won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award, the Foreign Correspondent of the Year at the FPA Media Awards and been awarded five honorary doctorates. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh and has held visiting fellowships at Princeton and Brown. He was presented with the President’s Medal by the British Academy and was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers for 2020 by Prospect Magazine. He is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

[pardeepparkash]

Dalrylmple brings history alive. His enthusiasm is infectious.

[Classic_MusicForever]

Every Indian should watch William Dalrymple speak if they truely wish to know how lucky you are to be born in INDIA. It is because of people like William Dalrymple that the whole world will realise what India was and how it could well be the cradle of civilisation and the central point of the mystical gods!! We know it. Its time the whole world knows it.

[vps_tunali]

I am reading the book. ❤
All Indians must have this book.
Hope we translate this to all our local languages and Govt give the books in discount. This is next to Ramayana and Mahabharata.

[jashasandhu]

The significance of India to the history of our world can be gauzed from the fact that India is the only country in the world with One of the Five oceans naned after her .

[kzmOP]

*MOST UNDERRATED CIVILIZATION - HINDUS*

[hugor]

Lots of fascinating connections. Much to ponder and very worthwhile. Many thanks.

[mishalthampy]

Back when India was under colonial rule, its understandable that the English purposely followed the narration that India is a land of ilitrates, it was purely geo politics. But now that there is no colonialism anymore, there is no need to follow that false narration anymore. I'm glad the new generation is doing the right thing by telling the correct story and putting out the facts based on hard refutable evidence.

[douglasmcbride]

Ive never heard much if this before. A delightful man and able to be engaging. Thank you 🥸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[gerhardheydrich]

William Dalrymple is incorrect about this Buddha head being the 'westernmost Buddha ever discovered'. Famously, a small bronze statue of the Buddha was found in an excavation of a Viking grave on the Swedish island of Helgo.

[Trichambaram]

25:05 "When Rome goes down, India has an economic crisis and has to look further east..."! Globalization is not a recent phenomenon. It's at least 2000 years old!

[sunilshegdeable]

Wah... that was enlightenment. Social media has made us uncover facts rather than reading history through the conqueres...

[johnjacob]

A must hear sermon.
Sermon on the muziris.
Muziris is a place 50 km west of Kochi International airport.
The state of Kerala is the place where the concept of Zero originated and the game of chess an ordinary game.
It goes to show that in those days the people were highly intellectually advanced in their thought process.
It is this thought process and the study of history which should come back to the classrooms world over.
Enjoyed the session and very well presented.SUPERB👌

[greatbalance]

You'll always have that one Tamil guy in the audience who is hellbent on emphasizing non-existent separatism of Tamil culture. Still the poison of Dravidianist ideology doesn't leave him wherever he goes. What culture did the Tamil Cholas and merchants spread to southeast Asia, if not Vedic culture? There is no hatred for Vedic culture or separatism in the ancient Tamil literature. The ancient Tamils considered their culture as Vedic.

[avi]

I read In Search of Xanadu, his book along the Silk Road, first. Been hooked to WD's style of storytelling since! What a researcher! Lucky to have seen him in person in Delhi too...

[kmanoham]

What an interesting, informative lecture! I am so glad I stumbled into it. Thank you, William Dalrymple, for sparking my thirst for this subject.

[AmitBasuri]

William Dalrymple presents a fascinating narrative on India's cultural influence, yet his historical methodology raises several critical questions.

Where is the Archaeological Evidence for an Early Vedic Civilization?
If Vedic culture was dominant before Buddhism, why do inscriptions, stupas, and material evidence overwhelmingly date to the Buddhist period (3rd century BCE onward)? Why is there no clear archaeological record of early Vedic temples, Sanskrit inscriptions, or caste-based social structures from the same era?

Does He Take Mythology as History Without Verifying Its Origins?
Dalrymple seamlessly blends mythology with history, often treating later Hindu epics as factual records. But when were these myths written? What is the earliest evidence of them? He does not apply the same historical scrutiny to Hinduism that he does to Buddhism. If he acknowledges Buddhist history through inscriptions, coins, and excavated sites, why does he not demand similar material evidence for the early existence of Vedic texts and traditions?

Modern Places Were Renamed to Fit Mythology—Why Doesn’t He Address This?
He refers to locations based on current names that were assigned only in the last century to fit mythological narratives. For example, Sri Lanka was officially named as such only in the 20th century, yet he discusses it as if it were always connected to the Ramayana. If ancient names are retroactively applied, doesn't that create a misleading historical continuity?

Did Hinduism Borrow More from Buddhism than He Acknowledges?
Dalrymple discusses Hinduism’s spread but avoids how Buddhist sites and deities may have been reinterpreted into Hindu traditions. Could the Avalokiteshvara Buddha have influenced later forms of Shiva and Vishnu? Were sites like Badrinath and Kedarnath originally Buddhist before their Hindu transformation?

Does His Reliance on Later Sanskrit Texts Create a Bias?
If we prioritize early inscriptions over later epics and Puranas, does history look different? Why do Ashoka’s 3rd-century BCE edicts mention no Vedic rituals, caste, or Sanskrit, yet later Hindu texts claim them as foundational to ancient India? How can we treat the Mahabharata or Ramayana as historical sources when their dating is so uncertain?

[Pindi]

Totally fascinating talk by WD, many thanks.

[singularsink]

As the Indian minister of parliament Dr. Sudhansu Trivai said -- if u dig enough u will find everybody's father was Sham Lal (common Hindu man) :)

[tapasbandyopadhyay]

I listened to your engrossing presentation at the Coal India Kolkata Literary Meet where Dalrymple said twice that we would have known more had we more Buddhists in India. My question is, what led to the wiping out of Buddhism from the country of its origin. Would be lovely if Dalrymple could someday throw some light on that.

[arunanand]

The last line in this book;Could they do so again ?
We already are.We already are.
See the number of Indian CEO IN American companies.And that William is the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks for an excellent book.I was sad when it ended.