Sam Dalrymple and the Quiet Recolonisation of Indian History

There is a particular kind of confidence that only Western historians seem to possess: the confidence to speculate wildly about non-Western civilizations while remaining institutionally untouchable. Sam Dalrymple’s recent essay is a textbook case.

In a long, elegant meditation on Santa Claus, Lycia, and Greco-Persian syncretism, Dalrymple slips in a claim so extraordinary that it almost passes unnoticed: that Indian rock-cut architecture may ultimately derive from Lycian tombs, transmitted eastward in the wake of Alexander’s invasions. Let us be very clear about what is being suggested.

That one of the foundational traditions of Indian architecture, among the oldest, most internally continuous architectural traditions on Earth, was not indigenous, but borrowed. That India, a civilization with documented urbanism going back over 5,000 years, somehow waited for Mediterranean inspiration to learn how to carve stone. This is not bold scholarship. It is civilizational condescension.

Precision Matters; Except When It’s India

Dalrymple begins by calling the Lycians “Greeks.” They were not. Lycians spoke Luwic Indo-European languages, closer to Hittite than to Greek. Their funerary customs predate Hellenization. Their political structures were local. Yet they are repeatedly folded into a Greek frame because “Greek” is the civilizational currency Western historiography recognizes. This is the first sleight of hand. Rename the local as Greek. Then let Greece do the civilizing. Once that move is made, the rest follows effortlessly.

The Barabar Caves and the Audacity of Speculation

Dalrymple notes that Lycian rock-cut tombs predate India’s Barabar caves by roughly two centuries and suggests, without evidence beyond visual resemblance, that the Indian tradition may have been inspired by Lycia.

This is an astonishing claim to make casually.There is:

• No material transmission chain

• No artisan migration record

• No textual corroboration

• No technological discontinuity in India requiring explanation

Instead, we are given a familiar formula: Earlier + Western-adjacent + superficially similar = origin

By this logic, all monumental architecture everywhere could be traced back to whoever carved stone first. That is not history. It is narrative entitlement.

India Does Not Need a Mediterranean Origin Story

Long before Alexander:

• The subcontinent had sophisticated woodworking traditions later translated into stone

• Monumental ritual architecture existed across multiple regions

• Imperial-scale organization under the Mauryas enabled mass stone construction

• Indigenous cosmologies already demanded permanence, symmetry, and monumentality

Stone did not appear in India because someone from Lycia showed up with a chisel. It appeared because India decided to monumentalize.

Persia as Corridor, India as Afterthought

The irony is striking.

Dalrymple rightly emphasizes Lycia’s deep integration into the Achaemenid Persian world. Yet when Persia enters the story, India, also an Achaemenid domain, vanishes. Persia is treated as a transmitter. India is treated as a receiver. This asymmetry is not accidental. It reflects a deeper Western habit: Asia can be connected, but never central.

A Family Tradition of Authority

It is impossible to ignore the lineage here. Sam Dalrymple writes from within a British historiographical caste; one that has long assumed custodianship over Indian history. This is not about individual intent. It is about inherited authority. Colonial historiography was not dismantled; it was domesticated. The accent softened. The violence disappeared. The hierarchy remained. When the son speculates where the father once pronounced, the structure is unchanged: Britain explains India to itself. This is caste by another name.

Why This Matters Now

This is not a harmless aside in a charming essay. Speculation of this kind shapes public understanding. It circulates through podcasts, newsletters, and book clubs. It becomes “interesting,” then “plausible,” then “accepted.” And always, the conclusion points one way: India did not originate. India absorbed. Brown people are invited to marvel at their inheritance; while being quietly told it is not fully theirs.

Gatekeeping Is Necessary

There is a reason postcolonial societies insist on controlling their own historical narratives. It is not insecurity. It is experience. For five centuries, Western scholarship has treated non-Western civilizations as quarries: raw material to be shaped into Western stories of diffusion, influence, and inheritance. Enough. Indian history does not require Greek validation. Indian architecture does not need a Lycian ancestor. And Indian civilization does not need permission to be ancient, original, or autonomous. If we do not gatekeep our past, others will continue to appropriate it; politely, elegantly, and with footnotes.

Appendix: On the Factual Weakness of the Lycian–Barabar Claim

It is important to separate what is genuinely known from what is merely suggested, because the speculative leap being made is not a small one. Sam Dalrymple’s insinuation that Indian rock-cut architecture, specifically the Barabar caves, may originate in Lycian funerary models collapses under basic scrutiny.

Barabar caves are not tombs

To begin with, the Barabar caves are not tombs. This is not a matter of interpretation but of inscriptional and archaeological fact. The caves were commissioned under Ashoka and his successors and explicitly dedicated to Ajivika ascetics. They are monastic or ascetic spaces, not funerary ones. Referring to them as “rock-cut tombs” is simply incorrect. When the foundational premise of a comparison is wrong, the comparison itself is compromised from the outset.

Barabar caves are not “almost exact replicas”

Second, the claim that Barabar caves are “almost exact replicas” of Lycian rock-cut tombs is an overstatement that is not supported by the scholarly literature. Visual similarity is not proof of derivation. Rock-cut architecture, by its nature, converges on certain structural solutions: smooth interiors, barrel-vaulted ceilings, rectilinear façades. Similar problems often produce similar forms independently. Serious architectural history requires evidence of transmission—artisans, workshops, tools, intermediate forms, or contemporaneous texts. None of these are demonstrated here.

No proposed method of transmission

Third, the proposed mechanism of transmission is effectively absent. The argument relies on the fact that Lycian soldiers were present in Alexander’s army and that Alexander reached northwestern India. From this, a causal chain is implied that stretches across geography, time, and political transformation, culminating two centuries later in Mauryan Bihar. This is not how historical causation is established. No evidence is presented that Lycian craftsmen traveled east, that their techniques were adopted by Indian patrons, or that Mauryan stoneworkers lacked indigenous precedents requiring such instruction.

It is Persia rather than Greece or Lycia

Fourth, where Western Asian influence on early Indian imperial art is actually discussed seriously in scholarship, it is usually framed in relation to Achaemenid Persia, not Lycia. Even there, the claims are limited and specific: certain courtly motifs, administrative aesthetics, or stone-polishing techniques. These discussions do not assert that Indian architecture “originated” elsewhere, but that large empires interacting across Asia sometimes shared techniques. Dalrymple’s claim is qualitatively different. It does not propose influence at the margins; it gestures at origin.

The Lycias were not Greeks

Finally, even correcting Dalrymple’s loose labeling of Lycians as “Greeks” does not rescue the argument. Yes, Lycians were not Greek in origin and spoke an Anatolian Indo-European language. But this correction only highlights a deeper problem: precision is applied selectively. Labels are blurred when doing so makes the story cleaner and more flattering to Western genealogies of influence. In short, the Lycian–Barabar speculation, as presented, does not meet the evidentiary standard required for such a sweeping implication. It contains at least one clear factual error, inflates analogy into derivation, and relies on an unproven transmission narrative. At best, it is an interesting visual comparison. At worst, it perpetuates a familiar diffusionist reflex: when in doubt, move the origin westward. That reflex is not neutral. It is inherited. And it is precisely why such claims deserve not polite acceptance, but firm resistance.