The Golden Road : How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple

BookBar says: For a millennium anda  half, Indian culture, art, thought and technology blazed a trail across the world. William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India's position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. Perfect for the history buffs in your life.
 
India is the forgotten heart of the ancient world For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religions, technology, astronomy, music, dance, literature, mathematics and mythology blazed a trail across the world, along a Golden Road that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. William Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India’s oft­forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia.
For the first time, he gives a name to this spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today (including zero).