A Review of William Dalrymple's "The Golden Road"

September 12, 2024

One-Way Traffictitle of dalrymple book

Vol. 46 No. 17 · 12 September 2024

The sun​ still sparkles on the sapphire sea at Mamallapuram. The shoppers and sightseers still dawdle along the harbour front, gawping at the astonishing sculptures carved on the rocks behind: the gods and goddesses, bare-breasted and smiling; the lions, water buffalo, cobras and, of course, elephants. Nothing much has changed since the seventh-century poet Dandin, the greatest Sanskrit storyteller, sauntered along the prom ‘with eyes blossoming wide in wonder’. Nothing, except that there are no ships riding out at anchor any more.

In the heyday of the Pallava dynasty, from around 600-900 ad, Mamallapuram was probably the greatest seaport in India. On the monsoon winds, great ninety-foot long, three hundred-ton, lash-lugged vessels carried Indian textiles, steel swords and brass buddhas to the furthest corners of south-east Asia – Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia – bringing back on the north-easterly monsoon pepper, spices, camphor, resin and, above all, gold from the newly discovered mines of Sumatra and Sarawak. They carried with them hundreds of passengers exporting every variety of Buddhism and Hinduism, their Sanskrit language and their art and architecture. At ports along the Mekong Delta, statues and temples face the water as they do at Mamallapuram. At Angkor Wat and Borobudur in the Eastern highlands of Java, the local merchants and potentates built Buddhist temples in the Indian style, only ten times the size. Just as the greatest surviving Greek temples lie mostly in her colonies across the sea, at Paestum, Segesta and Agrigento, so the greatest monuments of Indic civilisation lie at its furthest Eastern reaches. The reproductions of St Martin-in-the-Fields that adorn many New England townships are only a modest parallel to the startling impact of Indian architecture on the whole of South-East Asia.

But the Western seas around India were alive too, and had been for centuries earlier. The wealth of India had been a legend in the Mediterranean since the fourth century bc, enhanced by Alexander the Great’s forays. India, not China, was Rome’s greatest trading partner. The sea was, after all, the fastest and most economic mode of travel in the pre-modern world. As William Dalrymple points out in The Golden Road, ships could carry much larger cargoes than camels and sail around wars, blockades and ambushes.

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London Review of Books