Manu Joseph: How could a startup religion succeed in ancient times?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. In his latest book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, William Dalrymple argues that India influenced the world immensely, even more than what some Indians in search of cultural pride have been saying all along. But what exactly was this influence? It was chiefly science and Buddhism, though Dalrymple’s enjoyable book cites other contributions too.

Of these two influences, it is easier to understand how Indian science could have influenced the rest of the world. There is a universality to scientific logic. For instance, when Arab mathematicians, and the more backward Europeans, were grappling with an unwieldy way of writing numbers, it would have taken them just one glance at the decimal system to recognize its genius.

It is more difficult to get how Buddhism, which began in India, spread across most of Asia and across eras when the hold of entrenched religions was so strong. I believe that in ancient times, a new religion could survive its infancy because it wasn’t perceived as a faith as such, but as something mystical. Religious and caste identities were so branded into the souls of people that they weren’t threatened at all by a new philosophical idea.

In fact, they barely noticed the religion of foreigners. Dalrymple points out that when Muslim merchants first arrived in India, they were almost never referred to by their religion, instead they were described by their languages and appearance, as though they were more significant markers. Their alien faith was not their defining characteristic.