For around a thousand years in the ancient period, India’s influence extended far beyond its borders.

One of the leading historians in the world, who also happens to be a best-selling author, turned the pages back on the lawns of the Agri-Horticultural Society of India in Alipore last week.

“This extraordinary period lasts from 250 BC to 1200 AD The whole world is looking at India, in terms of stories, language, math, science and astronomy. But the miracle of miracles is that this happens not through military force.... It happened through trade and sheer power and sophistication of the Indian civilisation,” William Dalrymple told the audience on the fifth day of the Coal India Kolkata Literary Meet 2025, in association with The Telegraph, on January 25.

“Empires of the sword are very common in history. Empires of the spirit are very rare. That is why I look on this as an extraordinary and thrilling moment in world civilisation,” he said.

Dalrymple’s new book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, highlights India’s often-forgotten role as an economic and civilisational hub.

At the literary meet, he discussed India’s global clout in the classical period, which he said never got due recognition in mainstream history.

He contrasted it with the much-famed Silk Route, a network of trade routes that connected East Asia to Europe from the 2nd century BC to the 14th century AD.

“Particularly, this idea of a Silk Route, which is not a very ancient idea. On this map and on many others like it, India is just an absence,” he said pointing to a map of the Silk Route.

“Maps like that, crude misrepresentations of ancient trade networks, are in regular circulation.... People outside India have come to accept this version of East-West trade. That version is not just a misrepresentation but actually a lie.... It is necessary to completely re-envisage our understanding,” said Dalrymple.

“The network of routes in the Silk Route were very important trade routes in the post-Mongol period but in the earlier period, the Classical period, there is no sign that the Romans had any idea of the Chinese or the Chinese had any idea of the Roman Empire.”

He showed a map that showed Roman coin hoards, pointing out that not a single Roman coin hoard has been found in China “because no Roman trade went to China”.

But there is a noticeable concentration of Roman gold coin hoards around the coasts of India, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. That, Dalrymple said, was because India was the “principal trading partner” of the Roman empire.

He cited Strabo, the ancient geographer based in Alexandria, who talks of “fleets of 250 Roman vessels leaving the Red Sea coast to pass through on the way to India and then back again every year”.

Upset at the way Roman gold was gushing out of the country into India, Pliny, the Roman admiral and scholar, called India the “sink of all the precious metals of the world”, Dalrymple said.

Following his talk, Dalrymple was in conversation with Inakshi Sobti, the CEO ofAsia Society India Centre, a global non-profit educational organisation.

“The book spans an incredible number of countries, languages and political realities. You travelled extensively through the research underlying this book. Was there a specific moment or encounter during your journey that deeply impacted your view of the region or of history itself,” she asked Dalrymple.

The historian talked of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the largest religious building in the world.

“The area within the moat is four times the size of the Vatican City. The city beyond had 1.2 million people at a time London was 20,000 people. It was an astonishing civilisation. There, on the walls are sculpted not stories of Southeast Asia or the Mekong, but Krishna and the gopis, the Ramayana, the battle of Lanka, Kurukshetra. Stories first written on the banks of the Yamuna or the Ganga are sculpted on the banks of Mekong 800 years later after these stories first spread.

“I think even today, many Indians are not aware ofthe degree to which their civilisation has moulded and helped create hybrid civilisations in southeast Asia,” said Dalrymple.