India: a History; Revised and Updated Edition, by John Keay. (2011)
Over the decades, I've studied a fair amount of history. There are still huge gaps in my knowledge of some areas of the world. The full history of India was one of those. And, as luck would have it, I purchased this book. The author, John Keay, is my kind of author. He is skeptical. He is data driven. And he is insistent on as complete a chronology as possible. He fills in blanks with multiple possible explanations—the key word being, "possible".
Like the Bible, the ancient literature of India was not committed to writing until about 600 BC. So its "historical" narratives are derived from events passed down orally for over a half-millennium, prior to being written. We know the legends, but not much of the actual history of India until about 800 AD. What has been reconstructed has been based on such scant evidence as coins, and occasional pangyrics engraved into rock faces.
But it was the ancient intellectual blossoming of South Asia that popularized the mathmatical use of zero, a base-10 number system with decimal places, standardized measurements, as well as a solution of Pi to 3 decimal places. And they came up with an accurate calendar.
Some earlier cultures in the Middle East had explored these math innovations as well, but these cultures were nearly all wiped out by the climate collapse around 1177 BC, which affected the Mediterrainean cultures as well. But South Asia did not collapse at that time.
As with any history, we see the universal human trait of the powerful mistreating the weak. With this history in particular, we see the full flowering of European imperialism, reaching well into the mid-twentieth century.
At just over 600 pages, this is a challenging book. Who would be interested in reading it?
- those interested specifically in the history of South Asia
- anyone interested in the workings of emperialism
- perhaps those interested in the vague origins of a wide array of distinct (and indistinct) religions
- folks who wish to see the financial motivations of many (?most?) political choices
- those curious about why aging leaders tend to squander their people's resources on building monuments
