A Civilizational Approach
Srikanth Kondapalli
INDIA'S INTERACTION WITH CHINA, CENTRAL ASIA AND WEST ASIA by A. Rahman 1750, 2008, 533 pp., 533
March 2008, volume 32, No 3

On a visit a decade ago to Nanniwan, a remote village in north-western Shaanxi Province in China, the reviewer was surprised to find a spinning wheel, charkha (much like the Gandhian model) in the museum there. Nanniwan, adjacent to the more well-known Yanan, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party after the Long March in 1935 till 1945, shot into fame for its self-sufficiency model of economic activity. The reviewer was also surprised recently to see coins of the Kushana period at the refurbished Shanghai Museum. Further, on a visit to Quanzhou in Fujian Province, the reviewer noted not only the extensive trade contacts between this coastal town with India in ancient times but also a Hindu temple with several statues of Hindu gods and goddesses and a functioning Islamic mosque. All these have something in common—that the interactions between India and far away places like even remote areas of China not only thrived but expanded to other areas in Central and West Asian regions.

The book under review is a tribute to such wider interactions, captured in detail and in the words of the editor A.Rahman, analysing these ‘Asian traditions, without the European framework and its projections.’ (p.9). Indeed, the volume under review treads into paths uncovered in the past—that of interactions among peoples in ideas related to science, technology,

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