William Dalrymple’s tour de force avoids all the pit-falls of superpower competition, identity politics, and over-simplification, but nonetheless places Indian cultural and economic achievements at the centre of the changing worlds of the West and Asia from c.250 bce to 1200 ce. The Golden Road: How Ancient India transformed the world explains how and why Indian influence in China reached a high-water mark ‘never to be reached again’ during the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (the Fifth Concubine), who died at the age of eighty-one in 705 ce, having ruled China for some fifty years.
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