A Touch of India

The Arab and Muslim worlds would have a great influence on India during the Middle Ages, but the influence went both ways. During the glory days of the Gupta Empire, Indian medicine had been the most advanced in the world, and in the early Middle Ages, numerous doctors from India were invited to work in Baghdad. A number of them served as chief physicians in hospitals, while others translated works of medicine, science, and philosophy from Sanskrit into Arabic.

Indians also shared their advances in the realm of mathematics. One of their greatest achievements was the numeral zero, and this made possible the decimal system and other benefits of the highly practical "base-10" system in use throughout the world today. Indeed, the numbers 0 through 9 are themselves a gift of Indian mathematicians, who taught their system to the Arabs. Europeans adopted it during the Crusades, replacing the hopelessly cumbersome Roman numeral system, but they incorrectly called the numerals "Arabic"—a name that stuck.

Not all Indian contributions to the Arab world were quite so serious in nature. The game of chess first originated in India, then spread to the Arab world, as did a number of stories that went into the Thousand and One Nights. Indian music also influenced its Arabic counterpart. Both use five-note scales: for Westerners accustomed to the eight-note octave scale, this gives Indian and Arabic music an exotic sound.

Scythians (SITH-ee-unz), a group from what is now Ukraine who entered India in about a. d. 100. The local Hindu princes considered them barbarians, but submitted to their leadership in a mysterious "fire ceremony" atop Mount Abu in northwestern India.

In the south, the Cholas (KOH-lahz), a Tamil dynasty, replaced the Pallavas as the dominant power in about 850. They conquered the Deccan Plateau and Ceylon, and engaged in trade with China. In the early 1000s, they would even extend their rule into the Ganges valley, becoming the first kingdom of southern India to expand so far northward. Though they maintained power until 1279, their impact was limited from the standpoint of world history.