Historian William Dalrymple, speaking at the India Today Conclave, challenged the widely accepted belief that China dominated ancient global trade. He argued that India, not China, was the key trading hub, maintaining strong maritime trade links with the Roman Empire and the West. While the Silk Road has traditionally been viewed as the primary trade route between China and Europe, Dalrymple emphasised that significant trade occurred through sea routes, with India serving as a central player due to its strategically located ports along both its eastern and western coasts.
Dalrymple supported his claim by citing archaeological evidence, including Roman coin hoards found in India and Sri Lanka, which suggest strong commercial ties with Rome. He noted that Roman authors like Pliny the Elder and Strabo described India's wealth and active trade, with fleets of vessels sailing between Egypt and India annually. The historian also highlighted the role of monsoon winds in enabling efficient maritime trade, allowing ships to reach Roman Egypt from India's western ports in just two months. Similarly, India's eastern ports provided access to Southeast Asia, reinforcing its position as a global trade hub in ancient times.
Dalrymple supported his claim by citing archaeological evidence, including Roman coin hoards found in India and Sri Lanka, which suggest strong commercial ties with Rome. He noted that Roman authors like Pliny the Elder and Strabo described India's wealth and active trade, with fleets of vessels sailing between Egypt and India annually. The historian also highlighted the role of monsoon winds in enabling efficient maritime trade, allowing ships to reach Roman Egypt from India's western ports in just two months. Similarly, India's eastern ports provided access to Southeast Asia, reinforcing its position as a global trade hub in ancient times.
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00:00We like to think that we are proud Indians, but how much do we really know of India's history?
00:09We grew up on the idea that India was the golden bird, the sone ki chiriya.
00:17But I can bet that many of you sitting here would struggle to write five paragraphs to
00:22explain why India was the bleeding intellectual heart of the ancient world.
00:29For example, did you know that the year 664 of the Khamanira, which our next guest at
00:36the India Today Conclave argues, is the moment when the Indosphere reached the peak of its
00:42global influence.
00:45This was the time when Indian religion, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, maths
00:51and mythology blazed a trail across the world forming a golden road that stretched from
00:58the Red Sea to the Pacific.
01:01Like ancient Greece, ancient India came up with profound answers to the questions about
01:07what the world is, how it operates, why we are here and how we should live our lives.
01:14Today over half the world's population lives in regions where Indian religions and culture
01:20are or once were dominant.
01:23William Darrell Impel's new book, The Golden Road, reveals how in the millennium and a
01:29half from about 250 BC to 1200 AD, Indian ideas transformed the ancient world, crossing
01:37political borders to influence everything from the statues of ancient ascetics at the
01:42Roman seaports to Buddhism in China and the observatories of Baghdad to crucial mathematical
01:48concepts like the zero and even the numbers that we use today.
01:53We are delighted to be joined at the India Today Conclave by bestselling author, ace
01:59historian William Darrell Impel, who will argue and explain why India, that is Bharat,
02:06is one of the three great intellectual and philosophical superpowers of the ancient world.
02:13Mr. Darrell Impel, welcome, thank you so much.
02:15It is a delight to have you with us and I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
02:21To whoever has spoken to me all through the day, you'd know that I've said that this is
02:24the one session you really should watch out for.
02:28Will, I'm not a student of history but I've read some history and as I read your book
02:32and I want you to start by explaining that I wonder why this hasn't been done earlier.
02:40We've read Indian history in parts, Buddhism in parts, the south… the southern kingdoms
02:47in parts, trading with Rome in parts, but bringing it together and explain why you
02:52think that it's important for every single person sitting here to know that not because
02:58of mythological reasons but because of actual historical fact, you argue that India was
03:05the intellectual superpower of the world.
03:08Ladies and gentlemen, can we have a round of applause as I welcome and introduce William
03:12Darrell Impel, sir, over to you.
03:17So it has been done before but not for a bit.
03:20There's a very similar book written in 1954 which I'm sure everyone in this audience has
03:25read, The Wonder That Was India by A. L. Basham which whole generations were brought up on.
03:33But it's an odd thing that there isn't a book which has pulled this together and what inspired
03:37me to write it is I think there is such an urge at this moment to situate India's rise
03:45in its historical context because history shows very clearly that for most of history,
03:53India has been the richest region of the world.
03:58Occasionally China pips it to the post but up until the time of Vasco de Gama, up until
04:04the 15th century, the two areas which dominate the world economy and that's not even to start
04:10on philosophical ideas and ideas of maths and so on were India and China.
04:16The difference I think that has developed is that in the colonial period, the British
04:21and other European powers were very good at putting the case for Greece as the place which
04:28came up with basic mathematical and philosophical ideas that explain the big questions of humanity.
04:35Why are we here?
04:36What is this world that we occupy?
04:40Since then, the Chinese have been spectacularly good at placing themselves at the centre of
04:47this idea, the Silk Road.
04:49Most of us I think have grown up imagining that the Silk Road is an idea which has always
04:54been there, which is a geopolitical reality not a theory.
05:00In reality, the Silk Road was an invention of a German geographer in 1877, Baron von
05:04Richthofen.
05:06He came up with this idea which he called the Seidenstrasse.
05:09He was designing a railway from Berlin to Beijing.
05:13And it's only in the 1930s that this idea enters the English language with a German
05:18Nazi sympathising explorer called Sven Hedin who writes a book called The Silk Road.
05:24And then in the 80s, it becomes a popular idea.
05:28You come across, you know, carpet shops calling themselves Silk Road carpets or hotels in
05:34Tashkent.
05:35And there's three big exhibitions, one in the National Gallery of Arts in Washington,
05:40which launched this idea of the Silk Road.
05:42And the Chinese since then have been very good at building the whole Belt and Road initiative
05:48on top of that.
05:49And the impression is given that India was peripheral.
05:53I mean, let me show you a map.
05:56This is the basic map of the Silk Road that you see reproduced.
06:01It goes from the Mediterranean Sea in a straight line across the middle of Asia, across the
06:06top of Persia, Samarkand, and Tashkent, and the Stans, and across the whole width of China.
06:15But if you look at that map, you almost don't notice that India is entirely marginalised
06:19by this concept, that India is a place on this map at least which doesn't have cities,
06:24which doesn't have ports.
06:25Even the maritime route goes round it without stopping at any named port.
06:31And this has been the effect, whether deliberate or otherwise, that India has ceased to be
06:37seen as the centre of world trade, as the centre of ideas.
06:43But I'd like you to just memorise in your heads, guys, this map for a second and compare
06:48it to this map.
06:49This is a map designed by the Oxford Archaeological Department last year.
06:54And what it shows is Roman coin hoards.
06:59Now, every place there's an orange dot, a Roman coin hoard has been found.
07:04Now, you'll notice that this map has absolutely no resemblance to the first map.
07:10As you'd expect, most of the Roman coins in the world have been found in Europe, in Italy,
07:14in Greece, in southern Britain, in France, and in Germany.
07:19There's another rim of orange around the Mediterranean and going down the Nile.
07:25But where the Silk Road is, virtually nothing.
07:28There's one or two dots in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
07:32But instead, look at where Roman gold is actually found, India and Sri Lanka, major centres
07:40of world trade.
07:42And that is there in the classical sources.
07:44If you look in Pliny, he says that India is the drain of all the precious metals in
07:51the world.
07:52His contemporary Strabo, another geographer based in Egypt, talks about fleets of 250
07:58vessels leaving the Red Sea coast and sailing in just two months to India.
08:03So it's time that we recovered this lost centrality of India, India as the principal trading partner
08:12of the Roman Empire.
08:13Because there is no evidence at all that Rome and China had the slightest conception of
08:21each other's existence.
08:23We do not know one single trade mission that left China for Rome, a single diplomatic mission
08:28that left Rome for China.
08:30But every year, fleets of hundreds of vessels were leaving the Egyptian coast, going down
08:36the Red Sea, and arriving in India.
08:40And your ancestors, the Indians of the classical period, were like the Saudis today.
08:47They barely had to get out of bed because the things that they were selling, cotton,
08:51pepper, ivory, wild beasts for the circuses, were the mega luxury goods of the time.
08:58They were the most expensive items.
09:00And gold, as you can see on the right-hand corner, bottom right-hand corner of that map,
09:05was pouring out of the Roman world into Indian pockets throughout the classical period.
09:11And my theory is that the Silk Road didn't actually exist until the Mongols smashed a
09:16hole through the middle of Asia in the 13th century, connecting the Mediterranean to the
09:20South China Sea.
09:21And at that point, Marco Polo can go across the Silk Road in the 13th century.
09:24But in the classical period, which is the period I'm writing about, India is the center
09:29of world trade.
09:31And the reason it's the center is the monsoon winds.
09:33India has this great gift that the winds blow very fast in one direction for six months,
09:42and then they reverse back again.
09:44Now, if you're an ancient sailor and you can learn to surf those winds, you can move from
09:51the west coast of India, from Goa or Kerala or Sindh or Gujarat, and find yourself in
09:57Roman Egypt in just two months.
10:00Likewise, if you're on the east coast, you're in Nagapattinam or Mahabalipuram, Pondicherry
10:04or Tamrlipati, that was the ancient Calcutta, you can find your way to the Malacca Straits
10:12and beyond to Cambodia and the Mekong Delta in just two months.
10:16And then you can come back.
10:17No other nation has that.
10:18So India was...
10:20The two things we've got to realize is that it's India, not China, and it's the sea routes
10:26not the overland routes.
10:27So let's spend some time talking about the trade and cultural ties between ancient India
10:33and Rome, and explain that.
10:36That's where we'll start from as we build and go across the entire region.
10:41And the significance of Indian exports to Rome, and I also wonder why Rome was so fascinated
10:47with pepper.
10:48Pepper was a big deal, yes, I mean, we take it for granted now, but I just want to wind
10:53forward and...
10:54Here we are.
10:55So this is a map based on the kind of lonely planet, or the rough guide of the first century
11:02AD.
11:03It's called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.
11:06And as you can see from this map, written by a Roman sailor, Roman sailors were not
11:10just occasionally setting foot on the west coast of India, they intimately knew every
11:17single port.
11:18And this book tells sailors where they can sell, so for example, where's the market for
11:25cotton, where they can buy silk.
11:27The fact that the King of Gujarat has a taste for Roman singing boys, and was paid top dollar
11:32if you bring them in your boat.
11:33These details are known to every sailor on this route.
11:37And as you can see the little red lines going across, it's very short distance to Aden,
11:42then up the Red Sea, and you're in the Roman Empire.
11:44If you remember, Andy Cleopatra, go back to your literature classes, Cleopatra and Anthony
11:50commit suicide, Octavius absorbs Egypt into the Roman Empire.
11:54So from that point, the Battle of Actium, suddenly India and Egypt have, if you like,
12:02a portal to each other.
12:04Rome and India are in direct connection.
12:07And this has a dramatic effect.
12:09And what are they selling, you ask?
12:11Well, here's the answer.
12:12We have an extraordinary new document that was discovered by archaeologists 20 years
12:17ago, called the Mosiris Papyrus, and it's a shipping invoice from the first century.
12:22You know, the sort of thing that's made out in the Bombay shipping company every day of
12:27the year today.
12:28And it gives a detailed breakdown of one container.
12:32What's in that container?
12:34So we have a Roman mosaic in Sicily that illustrates this.
12:39There's this yakshi at the center.
12:41She's a representation of India for a Roman audience.
12:45And look, she's holding in her arm, in the crook of her arm, an outsized elephant tusk.
12:50So ivory.
12:52Under her are strings of pepper.
12:54So pepper.
12:56Wild animals for the circuses, elephants and tigers.
12:59And over her limbs, there is silk.
13:02And the periplus says if you want to buy silk, it doesn't know about China.
13:05It says you go to Gujarat.
13:07So if China and Rome ever did meet, it was in the ports of Roman India.
13:13This is all music to our ears, because...
13:15And it's recorded as fact and history, not as mythology, which makes it even more fascinating.
13:21You know, we can't give you the whole book.
13:23You'll have to read the book for that.
13:25But we can breeze through it.
13:26And from Rome, I now want to switch to China.
13:29And what is fascinating about William's book is the way he's explained how ancient India,
13:37not for a few years, but for decades, influenced Chinese empresses who were listening to Indian
13:45astronomers, Indian monks, who and Buddhism exported out of India was the principal religion
13:53of China at the time.
13:54So explain that to us.
13:55So I should actually maybe go back and show this extraordinary map of the influence of
14:00Buddhism because there are so few Buddhists in India today.
14:04We don't get to see this map as prominently as perhaps we should.
14:10So here at the center of the Gangetic Plain, you have the origins of Buddhism in places
14:15like Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, in Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon.
14:21In a matter of 200 or 300 years, it goes up to Pakistan, Gandhara, Afghanistan, Bhaktia,
14:28which is now Central Asia or Uzbekistan.
14:31It goes through China to Mongolia, through China to Korea and Japan, and then down from
14:37China into Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines.
14:43This is the golden age of Indian soft power.
14:46And remember, it's not just religion which is moving, it's not just the philosophical
14:50ideas of Buddhism.
14:52It's Indian languages like Sanskrit and Prakrit, and with those languages comes Indian texts
14:58about mathematics, about physics, about astronomy, about learning.
15:02So this is the moment when India has the most influence in world history.
15:09And it is not a passing phase of influence.
15:12It's something which completely transforms the rest of Asia until today.
15:17The reason when you go to Cambodia today or go to Thailand today or go to Sri Lanka today
15:23that Buddhism is the national religion is because of what happened at this period.
15:29But the thing that I think Indians are not fully aware of is the influence of Buddhism
15:36and Indian thought on China.
15:38Today, often China and India are made up to be rival poles of influence.
15:43But there was never any Chinese religion which came and took over India.
15:47But Buddhism is an Indian religion which briefly became the state religion of China.
15:54And you see the run up to this over several hundred years.
15:57On the left here, you've got a Matra Bodhisattva, Matra just to the south of here on the way
16:02to Agra, wonderful museum, this extraordinary Bodhisattva with the folds of his cloth coming
16:09over his tummy, the little belly button.
16:13And here on the right, you have a crude Chinese copy of it from several centuries later.
16:18But the big thing that most influenced China was the monastery university of Nalanda, which
16:25was the Harvard, the Oxbridge, the NASA of its day.
16:29And the guy on the right, Xuanzang, in the oldest textbooks, he's called Huanzang.
16:35He comes on foot from China with this backpack full of scrolls because he knows that in the
16:41monastery of Nalanda in Bihar is the greatest center of learning in the world.
16:47And one of the things that you see when you look at Nalanda is the very first plan of
16:54a university quad.
16:56When you go to Oxford or Cambridge today, think of those lovely grassy squares with
17:00Gothic buildings on either side of the walkway and then scholars' rooms.
17:04This is the same plan.
17:05You've got the square quad in the middle, you've got the walkway, and then scholars'
17:09rooms over two angles.
17:12And that passes through the Islamic world with the Madrasa, which also had that plan,
17:17and arrives in Europe in the 12th century, first in Bologna, Spain, and Salerno, then
17:22in Oxford and Cambridge.
17:23So this idea of a university built in quadrangles or courts with the scholars' rooms around
17:32the edge, this is an Indian idea.
17:35And this is the main thing that Xuanzang is coming to India for.
17:39This is the great nine-story library of Nalanda.
17:44He says that you can study there Vedas, logic, grammar, philosophy, medicine, metaphysics,
17:50divination, mathematics, Sanskrit, astronomy, literature, and magic.
17:57He says that there are three divisions of the library, the Ratna-sagra, the ocean of
18:01jewels, the Ratna-dadi, the sea of jewels, and the Ratna-ranjika, the jewel adorned.
18:06And Xuanzang gives this impression of this incredibly scholarly place.
18:11He says the students studied diligently without wasting a moment.
18:17There are a hundred different lecture halls.
18:19The atmosphere of the monastery university was solemn and dignified.
18:23And he takes these ideals back with him, but it isn't just China.
18:27On the left, we've got this copper plate, which is the king of Indonesia, Srivijaya,
18:33founds an expatriate college for monks from Southeast Asia in Nalanda.
18:39And it isn't just Southeast Asia or China.
18:41It's also Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, Korea.
18:45Xuanzang takes these ideas back to the Chinese court.
18:50And in the book, the character I found most fascinating, and I want William to tell us
18:55a bit about her, is this Chinese empress, Wuxian, who almost sounds like an Indian agent
19:02of sorts.
19:03You've got at the imperial crown in China, a woman who, in every way, from astronomy
19:11to religion to spirituality, is deeply influenced by India, which I don't know whether people
19:16sitting here know, but is actually very fascinating.
19:18Yeah.
19:19So this is her.
19:20This is Wu Zetian.
19:22She's this young woman.
19:23She enters the harem of the great Taizong, the great Tang emperor.
19:30Here is Taizong on the left.
19:32At some point, as the old man is dying, she manages to form a relationship with his son
19:38on the right, Gaizong.
19:40She looks a bit of an old boot in this picture, but you can see, if you look at the Chinese
19:43soap opera around it, you can see what's going on.
19:46She was a mega hottie.
19:48And this woman uses her allure to make Buddhism a state religion.
19:54She becomes the only reigning emperor who is a woman in 3,000 years of Chinese history.
20:01How does she do it?
20:02She founds what we today would call a think tank, the scholars of the Northern Gate.
20:09And when Gaizong, her husband, dies, she seizes power with the help of this think tank.
20:15And she imposes an Indian religion, Buddhism, on China, becomes the premier religion of
20:23the court, and she uses Nalanda-trained monks, and some of them ethnic Indians with names
20:31like Gautama Siddhartha, others ethnic Chinese, who have studied in India.
20:37And for one reign, it's only a brief period, it's one reign, but for 50 years, she introduces
20:44Indian ideas into the heart of Chinese court and society.
20:49And that's the high watermark, if you like.
20:52But it is the moment when India has, in all of history, when India has most influence
20:58on China.
20:59You know, after she dies, the Daos want to come back, and it leads to several complications
21:05of the Buddhist monks, but for that, you need to read the book.
21:08I'm just kind of pitching your book every once in a way.
21:10But one of the most fascinating things, and I think everybody has a general idea about
21:15it, is that the biggest Hindu temples are actually not in India, they're in Cambodia,
21:23Laos, Bali, Java, that whole Southeast Asia, so deeply connected with India, not through
21:32the barrel of the gun, not through the power of the military or the navy, but through the
21:37power of Indian intellectual ideas.
21:39So tell us about that, India's export to Southeast Asia of intellectual ideas.
21:45So this is happening exactly the same time that Wu Zetian is converting China to Buddhism.
21:51Exactly the same time, you have images like this, wonderful statues of Lord Vishnu being
21:56carved in Cambodia.
21:58And what has happened is that with the fall of the Roman Empire, the old trade routes
22:03which faced westwards towards Rome realigned themselves, and the Tamil trade guild, who
22:09are a bit like the East India Company, there's a guild called the 500, who are a bit like
22:14the Iron Bank in Game of Thrones, they've got their own core of assassins, they're quite
22:18badass these guys, they're serious guys, and they swing and pivot eastwards.
22:24And what are they doing?
22:25They're looking for new sources of gold.
22:27The Roman gold is no longer turning up.
22:29For 500 years, India's just been receiving tons of gold from Rome in exchange for the
22:35ivory and the pepper and the silks and the cotton.
22:38Now Rome has fallen, and there's a major economic crisis in India, and the answer is to pivot,
22:44to look to Suvarnabhumi, still the name of the airport in Bangkok, but in that period,
22:50in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, it's the name for the lands of gold.
22:54And Suvarna Dvipa, the island of gold, is Borneo.
22:58So all these places on the map, Palembang, Keling, Kutai, Okeo, these are major sources
23:04of gold from India from the 5th century.
23:06And so you suddenly find boats like this, these sown early boats, heading on the monsoon
23:13winds no longer westwards, now facing eastwards to Southeast Asia.
23:21And from the 5th and 6th century, you see, this is pictures I took recently in Malaysia
23:25in the Bujang Valley, so you see Buddhist monks in bronze, you see lingams and yonis
23:32in stone and in bronze, and images of Lord Shiva.
23:36And most dramatically, you see, if you go to the Mekong Delta, Indic cities, with expatriate
23:45Indians, giving the model of Indian town planning and architectural ideas, but also
23:52religious ideas.
23:54And on the edge of the Mekong Delta, you find the very first Hindu temple in Southeast Asia,
23:59very small initially, Ashram Maha Rose Angkor Bore.
24:04Inside that temple, you get these extraordinary images of Lord Rama and Lord Vishnu from the
24:095th and 6th century.
24:11Being very, actually very Cambodian, you wouldn't mistake them for an Indian sculpture,
24:16but these are obviously Hindu gods who originate in India.
24:20But from the beginning, Southeast Asia slightly transforms what's happening.
24:24At the top right, you've got Jayavarman II, the founder of Angkor Wat.
24:29He depicts himself as Lord Vishnu, if you see on the top right, he's holding a discus
24:35and a conch.
24:36Now, you never have that in India, you never have a king showing himself as Lord Vishnu
24:41or Lord Shiva.
24:42You have, for example, Raja Raja Chola showing himself with Lord Shiva, but not as Lord Shiva.
24:49So as these ideas develop, they are transformed in passage.
24:54And so the courts begin to fill with Brahmins, you have local kings changing their names
24:58from like this guy, Kodunga, becomes Mahendravarman.
25:03They Sanskritize their names.
25:05The whole landscape begins to have Sanskrit names.
25:08And the Indian script from Kanchipuram, Palavagranta script is introduced.
25:12And to this day, every single script in Southeast Asia is the development of that script, which
25:18is why, if you are a Tamil or a Malayalam speaker, you can actually read the beginnings
25:24of Thai and Mon and Khmer.
25:28And these early scripts are very similar to the Tamil and Kerala scripts.
25:34And the landscapes are transformed.
25:36The river Mekong gets its name.
25:38Mekong is just the Khmer pronunciation of Ma Ganga, Mekong.
25:45The rivers have yonis and lingams carved in them to sacralize them.
25:49A new Ajanta appears in Thailand, a new Kurukshetra appears in Laos.
25:54And soon you're getting these extraordinary temples.
25:56On the left, you've got the Shore Temple in Mahabalipuram.
25:59On the right, less familiar, Gadong Songo in Java.
26:04Very similar plan, but slightly different.
26:07And by the 9th century, as you said, the temples are becoming larger.
26:11The largest Buddhist temple in the world is Borobudur, this extraordinary step pyramid
26:16built in a mandala shape using Indian ideas, probably planned by a Pallava prince from
26:23Kanchipuram.
26:24He's this extraordinary kind of Merlin character from the Pallava court.
26:32But finally, Angkor Wat.
26:34And Angkor is not only the largest Hindu temple in the world.
26:38You can probably argue that the Khmer Empire actually is the largest Hindu empire ever.
26:45It has not only the whole of Cambodia and Thailand, but Laos, Burma, Thailand, it's the whole
26:51area which is absorbed into this.
26:54Angkor is the center.
26:55It's got 1.2 million inhabitants at a time when London has only 20,000.
27:02So this whole world, but what is fascinating is that if you go to it, while it's very clearly
27:10based on Indian ideas, it's somehow different.
27:14So when Tagore goes there, he says, everywhere I could see India, yet I could not recognize
27:20her.
27:21This is an important point because the fact is that one of the reasons why the ties between
27:27India and Southeast Asia, which are so deep, are not celebrated and cherished the way that
27:33they should is because in the past, Indian historians have been guilty of trying to portray
27:40the people of the Southeast Asian nations as barbarians, as savages, who were civilized
27:48by the presence of Indian navies and merchants.
27:52And the fact is that's not true because they haven't won those areas militarily.
27:57They've absorbed the ideas as the power of the Indian intellect that actually changed
28:02Southeast Asia, not the might of the Indian army.
28:06Correct.
28:07And this is very important because the world is full of empires of the sword, but empires
28:12of the spirit, where intellectual ideas conquer other nations by their sheer power and sophistication.
28:19That is much more rare in history, and that is what India achieved in Southeast Asia in
28:24the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th centuries.
28:27And what you find is that this whole region now uses Sanskrit as its courtly language.
28:35Stories dreamt up here in the area of the Doab and the Gangetic Plain, stories like
28:40the Mahabharata, the War of Lanka, the Ramayana, these are sculpted in the Mekong Delta, 10,000
28:49miles east of here, in a completely different part of the world, in a local idiom, but very
28:55much telling these Indian stories.
28:57So the Indian ability to alter people's mind with storytelling, with mythology, with religion,
29:04with philosophy, this is soft power at its most striking.
29:08So we've had soft power going back millennia.
29:13Now, many of you would know that the numeral zero comes from India.
29:19But the fact is that the Romans used to use Latin numbers, and even from one to nine,
29:25the numbers actually come from India, not directly from India to Rome, but via Arabia
29:31and the Arab world.
29:32So do you want to talk to us about how the numbers that all of us use today, and arguably
29:39the only universal language in the world, is actually an Indian export?
29:44So when India tries to project its soft power around the world, often the idea of yoga is
29:49referenced as something which has influenced everywhere.
29:52But you can make a much stronger case for Indian numbers for zero, for the decimal system,
29:58all ideas dreamt up in India, being this foundational beginning, and as you say, the nearest thing
30:05the human race has to universal language.
30:08Surprisingly, very few people know this outside India, because at some point in the 18th and
30:1419th centuries, the Indian number system, which was always known, when the ideas are
30:19traveling, it's always called the Hindu system of number, or the modus and dorum in Europe,
30:24suddenly becomes Arabic numbers.
30:26And it's true that Europe gets them from the Arabs, but the Arabs get them from India.
30:31And what we have in front of us now is the oldest zero that is dated in the world, and
30:37it's in Gwalior.
30:38You can see in the middle row, 270.
30:41Those are numbers that we can read today.
30:42That's the oldest zero there?
30:43That's the oldest zero.
30:44It's in Gwalior, just two hours on a train from Delhi.
30:49Now here is a map that should be in every school textbook in the world.
30:54But again, people don't know this.
30:56Brahmi is the original number system used in Ashoka's inscriptions, in the Ashoka pillars.
31:02That Gwalior inscription comes next, and again, you can see the twos, the threes, the
31:08fours, and the sevens are very familiar.
31:11And then it goes in three different directions.
31:13You have the Indian number system continuing in Devanagari in this country.
31:18In the heartlands of Arabia, you have the East Arabic numbers.
31:24And then, crucially, in Morocco and Islamic Spain, you get what are called the West Arabic
31:30numbers developing out of this Gwalior system.
31:33By the 15th century, it's looking a bit more recognizable.
31:36By the 16th century, it sets.
31:38And the numbers on every mobile phone, on every laptop, everywhere around the world
31:44become set as, but they are, they come from India originally.
31:50And one of the extraordinary things when I've been touring this book around Europe and so
31:54on is that people all around America, in Britain, in Africa, in Australia, in Canada,
32:03they all know the stories of the Greek mathematicians.
32:06So everyone can tell you about Archimedes in his bath shouting Eureka.
32:11Kids of seven know this story.
32:13Everyone knows about Pythagoras.
32:17Everyone knows about Pi.
32:19But no one outside India knows about Aryabhata or Brahmagupta, who were mathematicians of
32:26absolutely equal stature with Pythagoras and Archimedes, arguably more so, because they
32:32basically shepherded this number system that the whole world uses.
32:35In just nine figures plus zero, you can express any number.
32:41And the ease with which you can do multiplication with these numbers with just the nine symbols
32:47is so much easier.
32:48I mean, try doing long multiplication or division with MCVXV1, the Roman system.
32:54So how does it get to the Middle East?
32:55Just one second.
32:56Can you go back to that?
32:57I think that is seriously mind-bending stuff.
33:00And I wish I had you as my history professor.
33:02That would have been just phenomenal, because the manner in which you're able to bring these
33:05stories together just help them register much more.
33:08You're not telling us anything new, but it's the manner of the storytelling and bringing
33:12together.
33:13This is not controversial stuff.
33:14I mean, I don't think anyone challenges this.
33:15This is simple fact accepted by scholars everywhere.
33:19But it's not widely known.
33:21And it's extraordinary that we're here in the 21st century, and everyone in America
33:25and Europe thinks they're using Arabic numbers.
33:28And that is actually quite a recent name, because I say it's recent.
33:31In the Middle Ages, people, when these numbers were being introduced, always referred to
33:35them as the modus indorum, the Indian method.
33:39So how do they get to the Middle East?
33:40This is a quick gallop through the passage.
33:43So this character, who many of you will know from Aladdin, the Disney Aladdin, he's actually
33:48a historic character, Jafar.
33:50He's the vizier of Baghdad.
33:52And the viziers of Baghdad are Sanskrit literate Buddhist abbots from Afghanistan, a family
34:00called the Pramukhs.
34:02When they convert to Islam and move to Abbasid, Pramukh, the Sanskrit word Pramukh, becomes
34:07Barmak.
34:09And they call from, let's get the map up, they call from Sindh, on the right of the
34:19map, an embassy that arrives in Baghdad in 776.
34:24And they have with them, at the request of the Barmakids, the works of Aryabhata and
34:30Brahmagupta.
34:31Aryabhata, who comes up with the circumference of the earth and the distance of the earth
34:36from the sun in the 5th century during the Gupta period.
34:40Brahmagupta, his follower, who comes up with definitions of zero, the first man to define
34:45zero as an active number.
34:48These two crucial texts get taken to Baghdad and there they are translated by a guy called
34:57Al-Khwarizmi.
34:58Al-Khwarizmi writes a book with this incredibly long title, The Compendious Book of Calculating
35:04by Completion and Balancing According to Hindu Calculation.
35:08Now no one wants to use that, particularly in Arabic, that it sounds even longer.
35:13So it's known by a nickname and it's known as Al-Jabr, which is the basis of our word
35:19algebra.
35:20While Al-Khwarizmi, who does the translation and who adds a bit of Euclid and adds a bit
35:26of his own ideas, it's not just a translation, that's to do it injustice, but it is a, he
35:32unravels this complicated Sanskrit mathematics and incredibly simple Arabic prose.
35:38Al-Khwarizmi gives his name to algorithm.
35:42So algebra and algorithm, two names, numbers, I mean algorithm is obviously the word of
35:48the moment.
35:49Whenever we talk about Elon Musk or Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is, we talk about
35:54algorithms.
35:55It's at the heart of modern mathematics and computing.
35:58It comes from India.
35:59This is not controversial.
36:01This is a simple matter of fact.
36:02How does it get from the Arab world to Europe?
36:06That's the next stage.
36:07So you've got from Sindh to Baghdad, so from the right-hand corner of the map to the middle
36:13of the map.
36:14Al-Khwarizmi's translation, which is very simple, very clear prose in Arabic, travels
36:20through North Africa, from Egypt to Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and into Islamic Spain.
36:28And by the 10th century, Christian monks in Spain are beginning to use this system.
36:33But astonishingly, it remains the Latin numbers that are used in Northern Europe and Italy
36:41and France and Britain up until the 12th century.
36:45Now at that point, if you look at the top of Italy, you can see Pisa.
36:49Pisa sends a trade mission to Algeria, and the guy who leads that mission brings his
36:56son with him.
36:58The son goes to the local school.
37:00He learns Arabic.
37:01He learns the Arabic number system.
37:03And when he goes back home...
37:04Fibonacci.
37:05It's Fibonacci.
37:06Luckily for us, it's Fibonacci.
37:10Fibonacci brings the number system that he's learned in Algeria to Italy.
37:18It comes to the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor that he's written this book called
37:23the Liber Abachi, explaining the modus indorum, the Indian method.
37:28And he is called to the court in Castel del Monte, where the court astrologer, who I'm
37:35glad to say is a Scotsman called Michael Scott, gets him to make it more user-friendly.
37:42He says, you've got to include less theoretical.
37:44You've got to use weights and measures, usury, double accounting, all the basic methods of
37:53this Indian mathematical developments.
37:57And the second edition of Liber Abachi goes absolutely crazy.
38:02It's the reason that the Medici found the Medici Bank, and later it becomes into the
38:08hands of Piero della Francesca, my friend.
38:11Nick Booker is in the audience here somewhere, who gave me a lot of the...
38:14Here he is in the front.
38:16He has a particularly fond of a character called Luca Pacioli, who Piero della Francesca
38:22gives his mathematical text based on Fibonacci.
38:27Pacioli takes it to Milan, where he shares it with his flatmate.
38:31His flatmate is Leonardo da Vinci.
38:35So it's like a relay race, Leonardo da Vinci to Piero della Francesca, Piero della Francesca
38:41to Fibonacci, Fibonacci to Al-Khwarizmi in Baghdad, Al-Khwarizmi to Brahma Gupta sitting
38:49in Manabu in Rajasthan, from Brahma Gupta to Aryabhata sitting in Pataliputra in the
38:56fifth century.
38:57So this relay race of Indian ideas, and again, this is something that everyone should know.
39:03It's such basic and important stuff that I don't understand in the sense how we've got
39:09to this point where people outside India don't know this at all.
39:13So let's come to, because we're running out of time, I want to come to the politics of
39:16history.
39:18Chinese President Xi Jinping has run a massive multi-billion dollar campaign to export the
39:25idea of the Silk Route.
39:27What is your suggestion to Indian Prime Minister Modi and the Indian government and the Indian
39:33people about how to, with facts and conviction, win the global historical argument?
39:38Well, it's not for me to tell the government what to do, but it is a simple fact that India
39:43has a claim which is much greater and earlier and precedes the Silk Road, that the Golden
39:49Road is something which, I mean, it follows the route westwards of the Middle East economic
39:55corridor, which is an idea which is being developed.
39:57This is something which India can be proud of, which is absolutely sound historically.
40:04One of the frustrations I find is that often, I don't know whether you get this, but you
40:08have well-meaning patriotic nationalists who have these WhatsApp forwards and they
40:14say India in the Mahabharata period or the Vedic period had helicopters, nuclear weapons,
40:20plastic surgery, all the rest of it.
40:22And, you know, I want to scream at this point because there are so many things that India
40:27can be proud of that are historical and factual and 100% verified that to start banging on
40:32about nuclear weapons in the Mahabharata is just frustrating because it's not true.
40:38It's unprovable.
40:39And so what I've tried to do in this book is one third of the book is footnotes.
40:44Every single source for this, every reading that you could want to do is listed in this
40:49book and I hope it's just a stepping stone for other scholars to take this forward and
40:54for Indians to know better what their ancestors achieved.
40:58This has been the most fascinating 45 minutes and thanks to this session, I have had the
41:05absolute…
41:06I mean, I would have read it in any case but because of this I read it more carefully and
41:09I am that much more enriched because of that.
41:11For making the effort of bringing the story together, arguably, I think, do you think
41:15as well?
41:16Your greatest work?
41:17Well, it's certainly been the most popular here.
41:19It's been number one for six months.
41:21I have to say when I…
41:22I'm the youngest of four brothers and I always show my books to my elder brothers before
41:26I publish them for an honest opinion, which as you can imagine, as elder brothers, they're
41:30only too pleased to do.
41:32And they all said, oh, I don't think this one's going to make it.
41:36This one is a bit niche.
41:38But it absolutely is the most popular book in India I've ever written and I'm very,
41:44very flattered by the reception.
41:45I'm very pleased.
41:46And I'm very flattered by having read what you've written.
41:50So I just want to thank you for the effort that you made and for coming here and for
41:55captivating us with the depth of your research and for the manner in which you're able to
42:01tell this story.
42:02So much Game of Thrones, Shakespeare thrown in, which just brings the story alive.
42:08Ladies and gentlemen, if you enjoyed this session, can we have a very warm round of
42:12applause for William Darryl Impel.
42:15Thank you very much, sir.
42:17It's been an absolute pleasure.
42:18Thank you very much.