Dharmic Contributions to Global Knowledge

“The Hindus are, after all, one of the great merchant civilizations of the world…”

“Nearly every kind of manufacture or product known to the civilized world—nearly every kind of creation of man’s brain and hand, existing anywhere, and prized either for its utility or beauty—had long been produced in India. India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or any other in Asia. Her textile goods—the fine products of her looms, in cotton, wool, linen and silk—were famous over the civilized world; so were her exquisite jewellery and her precious stones cut in every lovely form; so were her pottery, porcelains, ceramics of every kind, quality, color and beautiful shape; so were her fine works in metal—iron, steel, silver and gold. She had great architecture — equal in beauty to any in the world. She had great engineering works. She had great merchants, great businessmen, great bankers and financiers. Not only was she the greatest shipbuilding nation, but she had great commerce and trade by land and sea which extended to all known civilized countries. Such was the India which the British found when they came.”

In the most ancient times, Dharmic peoples generally produced and consumed goods locally. However, since before 7,000 BCE, known human migration routes in Ancient India served as corridors for sharing tools and knowledge. There is strong evidence that trade within Ancient India goes all the way back to stone tools in the Neolithic period. Trade between Ancient India and peoples beyond this region is documented from at least 7,000 BCE in the sense of exchange of tools and commodities. This developed and became more sophisticated as the world’s earliest civilizations grew. Among them all, the Indus Valley Civilization was a crucial trading partner.

Indic artifacts and goods outside of Ancient India are found in the archaeological record from the Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, Ancient Persia, Ancient Bactria, Ancient Egypt, the Hittites, Mittani Kingdom, Byzantine Empire, the Caliphates, as well as Ancient Russia, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan, the Southeast Asian Nations, Madagascar, the Indian Ocean Islands, Arabian Sea Islands, Arabia, and West Asia.

The Indus Valley Civilization developed new techniques in metallurgy with copper, bronze, lead, and tin, and created the first known bronze statuary. They also produced and exported intricate handicrafts using carnelian, lapis lazuli, and finished ivory, including very fine drilling, and ornamental shellworking. By c. 2500 BCE, Indian teak, red marble, and ivory were already being traded throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf region.

Ancient India had a strong shipbuilding industry, with sturdy ocean-going vessels being constructed from at least as early as the 100s BCE, with two rudders and three square-rigged masts, each large enough to carry a thousand passengers or three thousand cargo containers, and could easily sail between India, the Red Sea, or the South China Sea and back. Indian ships could, for example, sail either way between India and Roman Egypt in a mere six weeks.

Arabian, Turkic, Mongol, Egyptian, and European colonizers arrived in India first as traders. That led to an interest to raid India and take its treasures back home, or to an increased political interest in first controlling Indian trade, and then in fully controlling the regions and networks, which led to full-scale colonization. After the colonizers’ arrivals, many Indian goods and textiles were overproduced for export across other lands they occupied. Just as in ancient, pre-colonial times, Indian goods joined the global market and created interesting fusions. Food, clothes, jewelry, and weaponry all saw valuable collaborations with Indian raw and processed goods and the cultures into which they were taken. Indigenous examples include: smelted iron, metal goods made from lost-wax casting, crucible steel (wootz steel for Damascus steel swords), diamonds and diamond drill bits, rubies, amethysts, onyx, banded black chalcedony, crimson sardonyx, ebony, teak, sandalwood, bloodred coral, ivory, saddles, drugs, incense, zinc (first smelted in India), stoneware (predecessor of porcelain), tumble polishers for gems, indigo dye, tanned leather, buttons (2000 BCE), jute, silks, cottons, and sugar. Trade from these empires to other cultures meant that there were ancient Indian textiles found in Viking kingdoms, for example, as well as large finds of Indian gems, pearls, woven mats and baskets, teak, cotton weave, rice, lentils, coconuts, coriander, tamarind, and black pepper in Egypt, while ancient Romans were heavy importers of Indian spices (pepper, nutmeg, cloves), aromatic nard and malabathrum (used in perfume manufacturing), tortoiseshell, and cotton. Indeed India was the primary trading partner of the Roman Empire, and the very stones of Egypt’s pyramids were cut using Indian diamonds.

The steel developed in India around the 5th century BCE was known as the finest steel in the world, used for swords and other tools. Roman and Arabian trade indicates that in these Empires, it was widely known that the best swords and other weapons were made from Indian steel. Indeed, Indian swords remained far superior to European ones well into the 1700s CE.

Incidentally, although the use of coins for transactions was a global import into the Indosphere, the earliest use of banker’s checks was found in the Maurya Empire in Ancient India (321-185 BCE). Additionally, standardization of measurements and weights was common in the Indus Valley Civilization from the 5th millennium BCE.

Indic technical influence was present in Myanmar from at least as early as the 100s BCE, with hydraulic and irrigation systems, iron smelting, and standardized brick sizes. Indic writing systems followed by the 200s CE.

During the Chola period, South India exported vast quantities of textiles, spices, medicinal and recreational drugs, jewels, ivory, horn, ebony, and camphor both to China and to the west; to Siraf in Iraq they sent large cargoes of aloe wood, perfumes, sandalwood, and condiments.