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 Continue reading Sam Dalrymple and the Quiet Recolonisation of Indian History