Interview: "The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World" with William Dalrymple

The Hellenistic Age Podcast

History

4.7 • 558 Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Historian and broadcaster William Dalrymple (“The Company Quartet“, “Empire“) joins the podcast to discuss his latest book “The Golden Road“. A survey covering from antiquity to the early medieval period, the book seeks to address India’s far-reaching (and often forgotten) influence across the entirety of Eurasia, from tracking the spread of religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, investigating the growing evidence of Indo-Roman trade, and even down to the invention of “Arabic” numerals based on Indian scripts and mathematics. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2025/06/15/interview-the-golden-road-how-ancient-india-transformed-the-world-with-william-dalrymple/) William Dalrymple: https://williamdalrymple.com/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/golden-road-9781639734146/ https://x.com/DalrympleWill Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Patreon (https://patreon.com/TheHellenisticAgePodcast) Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, you're listening to the Hellenistic Age podcast.
0:12.6	Interview episode, The Golden Road, How Ancient India Transform the World with William Dalrymple.
0:27.3	Hello everyone.
0:33.4	Joining us on the podcast is historian, author, and broadcaster William Dalrymple.
0:38.5	An award-winning writer, specializing in the history of India and its surrounding regions,
0:44.6	he has published over a dozen books, his most recent and prominent being the Company Quartet,
0:50.1	chronicling the dramatic decline of the Mughal Empire and the rise of the East India Company.
1:00.5	Many listeners may also recognize him from his podcast, Empire, where he collaborates with co-host Anita Anand to examine the history of imperial projects across the millennia.
1:12.9	Today, William is joining the show to discuss his most recent book, The Golden Road, how ancient India transformed the world, a survey of antiquity to the medieval period, focusing on the legacy of India's contributions, from religion and art to mathematics and astronomy.
1:18.9	So, William, would you care to tell us a bit more about your background and what led you
1:22.9	to becoming so fascinated with the history of India?
1:25.7	I've lived in India now for 40 years.
1:29.3	I went on my sort of gap here between school and university, and frankly, never left.
1:33.3	I mean, I did get a university, but I kind of came back straight away after I'd finished Cambridge.
1:38.3	As a kid, I was always fascinated by archaeology.
1:41.3	I spent my summer holidays on various archaeological digs across Britain.
1:46.2	And slightly to my surprise, I spent my 30s and 40s writing not about ancient history,
1:51.6	but writing about colonialism and the mogul and East India Company periods in Indian history,
1:56.8	the 18th and 19th centuries. After 20 years' work, I completed a quartet of books on the East India Company,
2:02.6	and that was a sort of good moment to get back, in sense, to my first love, to ancient history and early India.
2:08.6	And this book, The Golden Road, is a return to my first love.
2:11.6	It's all the wonderful early sites in India that I have always loved visiting like a Janta, Elora, Sanchi, the Kushan period
	...

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