Michael Wood's video series The Story of India (BBC) is beginning to take me in completely. I tremendously enjoyed the third chapter, which you will find below. As I explained before, the series goes chronologically through the history of India and this chapter covers, roughly the first centuries CE. What is added, again, is a theme and the theme is trade. Trade made foreigners come to India since forever. The examples that receive much attention in part 3 are for one the Romans and the Greeks, who figure out how to use the monsoon winds to cross the Indian ocean and the Kushan, a people from Central Asia that controlled the silk road and planted an empire that stretched from north east China until the Deccan plains, from Bengal to Afghanistan.
This series I compare with Vinay Lal's lecture series at UCLA. The advice is to take the BBC before UCLA - although I got them in the reverse order. The story of the Kushan did not stick so well after I had heard Lal. Now, after seeing Wood, I feel like trying again. However, Lal has just started a new series, a podcast lecture course on the History of British India. (feed)
More Story of India:
The power of ideas - A Story of India (2),
The earliest history - A Story of India (1).
More Vinay Lal's History of India:
History of India - the search goes on,
8 podcasts I listened to,
History of India or Europe?
History of India.
No comments:
Post a Comment