From the International Herald Tribune, via A Glimpse of the World:
India As India and China emerge as global megaforces and sidle diplomatically closer, it is becoming fashionable to recall a long history of trans-Himalayan contact, suspended by 20th-century geopolitical quirks.
“The richness and variety of early intellectual relations between China and India have long been obscured,” Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate, wrote in a recent essay.
Sen cited evidence of India and China connections stretching back two and half millennia. Indians bought, and devised Sanskrit words for, Chinese silk, camphor, vermilion and leather, as well as pears and peaches. India exported Buddhism to China.
