Thiruvananthapuram: India is yet to claim rightful credit for its historical role as the epicentre of knowledge and world trade while other countries like China and Greece have established narratives to highlight their contribution to mankind, said renowned author William Dalrymple, here on Saturday.

He said this at the concluding day of the three-day Huddle Global event here.

Referring to India’s rise as an IT powerhouse, Dalrymple said it was not the first time that Indian knowledge has contributed to the development of mankind.

“India was a part of the world which very early on answered the big questions of mankind like why are we here, how to lead a moral life what is the relation of the earth to the heaven and the size of the earth,” he said.

“It is worth asking why everyone in the West had heard about Archimedes and Pythagoras, but no one knows the names of Brahmagupta whose works led to the concept of zero and the earth’s position in the solar system,” said the eminent author, whose recent book The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, illustrates the historical role of India in trade, science and religion that influenced the world.

Aryabhata proposed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe centuries before Galileo, but the latter received recognition for the discovery. He said that the knowledge developed in India later became weapons in the hands of European colonisers who used it to establish dominance and reap commercial benefits.

He said visiting Chinese scholars were amazed by Takshashila University, which was a flourishing education centre at that time. The university’s physical structure, with learning centres placed around large courtyards, has influenced universities across the world since then. But India has yet to excavate 90 percent of the Nalanda University remnants in today’s Bihar to present its case.

Dalrymple also pointed out that India’s ancient maritime trade routes were culturally and commercially busier than China’s Silk Road. The connections between Indian ports, especially Muziris on India’s western coast and regions like Rome and Egypt, were of immense significance. Ancient India had greater integration with Mediterranean, Persian and Greek influences than widely believed, with reciprocal impacts on art and scholarship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–IANS