I picked up this book thinking that it would be about India. And, the interesting thing is that it is about India, but it’s also not. The work is certainly one of those 2010s “X in World History” sort of books. However, the territory that we call “India” really doesn’t figure all that prominently in the book. Instead, The Golden Road is really about the imprint that India left on the rest of the world.

Dalrymple begins his text in northeastern India with a sheltered lord who had an intense Saturn return (he was 29). Dalrymple goes on to trace outward, looking at the contacts that Alexander the Great’s armies in India had with Buddhism, and what they brought back with them to the rest of the Hellenistic world. Dalrymple continues to examine trade between the Roman Empire and South Asia, the spread of Buddhism to central Asia and China, and then shifts eastward to Hinduism and its place in Southeast Asia. The last few chapters are about the spread of Indian art forms and intellectual life to the Middle East through the Barmakids, and their continuous spread across the Mediterranean, profoundly affecting Latin Christendom.

In spite of the lack of emphasis on India as territory, the book is remarkably good. I think he overstates his case at times–India was important and we can very much think of an “Indosphere,” especially in southeast and central Asia, and there is a compelling case that Indian culture was remarkably influential as far west as the Euphrates and into China.

However, an “Indosphere” is a very different concept than “heavy Indian influence” and “weak Indian influence” and “general diffusion of ideas like numbers and zero.” I feel that he overstates his case a fair amount.

His argument about the end of the Indosphere is an interesting one. Hindu Nationalists tend to point to the invasion of Muslims from central Asia. Dalrymple pushes heavily against that and argues instead that the transition to Islam occurred a bit differently. Although the Mongols never invaded India, they hit Persia remarkably heavily, producing a refugee crisis. As a result of this, Persian Muslims were widespread in medieval India, especially in Delhi and its environs. This makes a lot of sense to me, and I actually never thought about it that way before.

In conclusion, Dalrymple’s book is certainly worth the read, but it won’t be the comprehensive book on the subject.