India in the Ancient World

The cultures of India and China are among the world’s oldest. In many important aspects, geographical distance had prevented classical Europe from knowing those cultures until much later in history. However, ignorance regarding India and China not only prevented but in fact encouraged images, fantasies, legends, and prejudices in the classical European world. The active cultural imaginations of ancient Greece, Rome, and early Christian Europe established “the East” as a symbol of exoticism, otherness, and dissimilarity.

In this course, we will become acquainted with the early European images of India and China. We will attempt two things: First, to examine to what extent, if at all, those images corresponded with historical events in the ancient civilizations of India and China. Second, to examine the degree to which those ancient images formed the basis for modern views of “the East,” and the ways in which they are felt in our present consciousness.