India: The Ancient Past

"It’s absolutely enormous in scope. It’s a fantastic introduction to everything you might need to know about ancient India. India is such a complex place, and its history is so complex that it is very easy to get lost in it or obsess about a particular part of it and ignore everything else. There’s so much going on. And although we may think of India as a single culture, that’s ludicrous—there are so many cultures and so many different languages, even now. It is a beautiful tapestry of history and innovation and artistic and religious movements. Burjor Avari’s book is a brilliant introduction because it talks you through all of the main points, the key eras, the dominant ideas or religions or philosophical or political movements going on. It also brings in snippets of the evidence itself, so he’s not just telling a story. He’ll say, ‘Have a look at this image or have a look at this excerpt to understand what I’m talking about.’ I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to get started on ancient India. It’s my go-to book, unquestionably. Taxila, which is in what we now think of as Pakistan. This book gave me so much of the context around what was going on. Taxila comes into European history because of Alexander the Great and his invasion of what is predominantly Pakistan now. Alexander didn’t have to invade Taxila because the rulers joined him and it came under Macedonian control. It then became part of one of the successor kingdoms. It is always through that Greek lens that it’s talked about. But Taxila has a history earlier than that. It has an interesting position in Buddhist history as a center of learning. There’s been a movement the last 10-15 years of talking about the interchange between Greece and India, but usually from the perspective of the Greeks: giving knowledge and sculpture and artistic trends to India. I wanted to get a good understanding of the role of Taxila in Indian history from an Indian perspective and say, ‘Hold on, if things are coming east, surely things must also have been going west?’"