On the Indosphere

September 12, 2024 timothywstanley@me.com

But Dalrymple does give full measure to the last and greatest achievement of the Indosphere: the spread of much of culture that we recognise as distinctively modern... No less crucial in the formation of ‘the West’ as we know it was the evolution of the university system from the early Buddhist monasteries in Northern India into the madrasas and thence into Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. The lineage of those secluded quads with their communities of dedicated scholars is clear. There was no greater example than the university of Nalanda in Bihar, with its endless courtyards and temples and its ten thousand monks and scholars. Dalrymple describes in alluring detail the three thousand-mile pilgrimage in 629 ad of the Buddhist monk Xuanzang from the Chinese capital to visit this amazing place. No freshman from the sticks can ever have had his mind more thoroughly blown by the uni experience. This is perhaps the most brilliant example of the traffic running predominantly one way from China to India. It was India that was so often the destination and the hub.

Ferdinand Mount, “One-way Traffic” - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n17/ferdinand-mount/one-way-traffic. Interesting review of The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple. I uncovered this ancient connection between Hellenistic and South Asian cultures while writing a chapter on the early eighth-century thinker Shankara for my forthcoming book on Religion through the Eyes of Others. His birthplace in Kerala was part of the trade network Dalrymple outlines in The Golden Road. It is also thought that he adopted the Buddhist model of monastic training, noted here as the inspiration for later Islamic madrasas and European universities. It’s a forgotten legacy and one that disrupts any strict binary between East and West. Nonetheless, Shankara is a unique thinker who takes significant time and consideration to understand as just one voice amongst many in the Indosphere.