Amartya Sen on the links between China and India

"The intellectual links between China and India, stretching over two thousand years, have had far-reaching effects on the history of both countries, yet they are hardly remembered today. What little notice they get tends to come from writers interested in religious history, particularly the history of Buddhism, which began its spread from India to China in the first century. In China Buddhism became a powerful force until it was largely displaced by Confucianism and Taoism approximately a thousand years later. But religion is only one part of the much bigger story of Sino-Indian connections during the first millennium. A broader understanding of these relations is greatly needed, not only for us to appreciate more fully the history of a third of the world's population, but also because the connections between the two countries are important for political and social issues today."

Read more here at The New York Review of Books

Via Abbas Raza at 3quarksdaily

Comments

[Shareen]

Amartya Sen draws interesting contrasts between India and China in "The Political Economy of Hunger". He observes that the culture of unsupressed journalism and democracy to explain why there are fewer instances of mass starvation as compared to China.

[Nigel]

India and China had ties in the past, that's for sure. But it is no different to the Middle East or South East Asia having ties with Ancient China in the past.

So what? It was all about trade, nothing more. I bet trade was how Buddhism spread to China in the first place. Non of this hoopla about how China use to revere ancient India.

If going by you're romanticized assumptions, then 200 years from now, people will say that China and Japan had "links" because they shared similar architecture and culture. Of course excluding all the wars between them and deeming them unnecessary.

To be honest the Chinese don't really like the Indians and the Indians probably don't like the Chinese.

I am speaking from my P.O.V BTW :D