Writer William Dalrymple has criticised a display at the British Museum that includes more than 300 items from the Silk Bridges from CE 500 to CE 1000 for excluding India.
Given that India was the “biggest buying companion where East-West deal took place” during this time, Dalrymple told Pas from London following his visit that he was shocked that India was excluded.
The show” Silk Roads,” which opened last year, says to” challenge the widely accepted notion of the Silk Road as a single trade path, rather showing how the Velvet Roads were made up of overlapping sites.”
The author claimed that India was the largest trading mate of the Roman empire, and that it “hangs from the sky in a single corridor are different place names — it covers almost all of Asia, except India, and it seems but odd.”
It’s odd when you try to present the trade routes of the ancient world and all the minor sites of international trade, especially when you start the exhibition with a Swat Buddha and end up with a purse full of Rajasthani garnets, he said.
There is no display for India, which should be at the center of the show, despite these garnets. It ends up being a bizarre omission, almost inexplicable, to anyone that knows the centrality of India to ancient trade networks”, he added, pointing out not one Roman coin horde has ever been found in China, yet Roman coin hordes are found in India every year.
China and Rome only had the slightest inkling of one another’s existence, Dalrymple claimed, while India and Rome were the greatest trading partners of the classical world.
This is a theme of his book,” The Golden Road”, in which he argues this notion of an East-West overland route linking China with the Mediterranean, the so-called Silk Road, is a myth which grew out of a Sino-centric reframing of history. Pepper from India was not even the biggest product imported from the East, he said.
” India has a haunting presence throughout the exhibition”, Dalrymple said.
Buddhism is a central feature, even if the exhibition misses out the home of Buddhism, India.
” Nalanda does n’t feature at all”, he said. However, this was the time when Buddhist monks traveled from Japan and China to Nalanda.
A spokesperson for the British Museum said:” We do n’t recognise the characterisation made by Dalrymple. Beyond the narrow definition of the Silk Road from the 19th century, the exhibition explores the Silk Roads’ more expansive, complex narrative as overlapping networks.
The maps in the exhibition and the accompanying book also mention historical sites in India. A map showing the likely location of the 9th-century ship that sank off Indonesia’s coast, close to the island of Belitung, for instance, points out that the ship most likely stopped at ports along the Indian subcontinent, the spokesperson said, adding that “objects featured throughout the exhibition point to the significance of India in the movement of goods and the transmission of knowledge”.
The world’s oldest group of chess pieces, which are made of elephant ivory, are regarded as an invention in India, probably around 500 CE, according to the spokesperson.
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Dalrymple criticises British Musuem exhibition ‘Silk Roads’ for ‘excluding’ India
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