The Wonder that Was India

I'm winding down on the book The Wonder That Was India, by A.L. Basham. The topic is one of my favorites, but the book failed to fully engage me. I'm not sure if I've just been too distracted in recent weeks, or if the book just wasn't well written.

Regardless, I am completely drawn to Indian culture and can't wait to experience it firsthand myself. India has contributed significantly to world culture, and has assimilated aspects of the outside world within its own.

Sanskrit, the most formal of its many languages, received much from Indo-European languages, a surprising fact for such a "foreign" culture. Alexander the Great and his successors also had much influence on India, a fact much reflected in extant Grecho-Bactrian art.

India's cultural exports are far more obvious. Buddhism was born in India, spreading throughout Southeast Asia via Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). The names Indo-nesia and Indo-China are only the most visible markers of Buddhism's trail. Buddhism also spread to the northwest of India through Central Asia where it grabbed hold of China, Japan and Korea.

Far reaching contributions to world culture also include nothing short of the invention of the decimal system. How different would the world be if Western development had to rely on the clunky Roman numerical system?

I really did enjoy the book's many quotations of ancient Indian literature. I was touched by The Jewelled Anklet, a Tamil story that lives on to this day through modern publication. The poems remind me that, even though these stories are from the remote past and a distant culture, these were real people with emotions, challenges, joys, friends, pets, worries, back-aches, bills, quirky family members, boredom, favorite foods and chores just like we do today.

I will close this entry as the book itself closed its final chapter. If only the rest of the book had been written so eloquently:

"... the world of the future will have a single culture with, it is to be hoped, many local differences and variations. India's contribution to the world's cultural stock has already been very large, and it will continue and grow as, in her new freedom, her prestige and influence increases. For this reason if for no other we must take account of her ancient heritage in its successes and its failures, for it is no longer the heritage of India alone, but of all mankind."

That quote seems incredibly prescient when you consider the book was published back in 1963, shortly after India's independence, but long before the beginning of it's economic ascent.