I have never heard of William Dalrymple before, and so the reason why I opened the pages of THE GOLDEN ROAD is because someone told me that the book was about how India was responsible for the numerals we use today.
This was news to me, as I’d believed it to be the Arabs of ninth-century Spain who were responsible.
But this book turned out to be so much more.
For example, did you know that India engaged in a vigorous trade with the Roman Empire, worth millions, no, make that billions, of gold coins? How do we know? Because in the past twenty or so years archealogists have been digging at sites around the ancient port cities of India, and have discovered piles and piles of Roman gold coins.
To say that I was surprised is an understatement. I had no idea that India had any trade with the Roman Empire whatsoever. But what made this fact so arresting, was the jaw-dropping amounts of money that were involved. I’d assumed that it was only people in this day and age who engaged in million, billion, trillion dollar economies. Not the Ancient World. For some reason, it never occurred to me that such a powerful entity as the Roman Empire could have had so much money!
Then there is the origin of the numerals we use today. They were the work of a brilliant Indian mathematician, whose name I can’t remember, but I believe he was flourishing around 400 CE. If I’m correct, this means that just as the Roman Empire was collapsing in Western Europe, the powerful Indian nation was making huge strides in Number Theory. For not only did this mathematician usher in these new numerals, but he, or someone else equally brilliant, invented (or discovered) the zero. Not only that but someone wrote a treatise on the special properties of zero (for example, if you multiply it with any number, the result is zero.)
But that wasn’t all. Alongside the introduction of the nine numerals we use, plus zero, someone also brought in the innovation of decimal notation with its positional placement of ones, tens, hundreds, thousands and so on. All of this meant that calculations suddenly became much faster. Way faster than Roman notation (which is just a labeling system without a measurement scale.) And even faster than an Abacus. And all of this transpired by about 600 CE!
With the collapse of the Roman Empire, trade north and west to the Mediterranean shut down for several centuries. And so, India turned east towards China. Both of these nations were two power houses of economic wealth and ideas. While Europe slumbered during its dark ages, Indian mathematicians were visiting the Emperor (and Empress) of China, giving seminars on all these exciting ideas. One of these monarchs was the only regnal Empress of China, Wu Zetian. For some reason that I do not understand, this lady was interested in Buddhism. Which is another arresting fact, for she was not the kindest of people, having murdered anyone who stood in her way. Perhaps her interest had something to do with all the guilty feelings that flooded into her as she got older? Of course, we don’t know.
Sooo, if you have nothing better to do on these cold wiinter evenings, you could do worse than curl up with William Dalrymple’s THE GOLDEN ROAD.
