Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

Gupta classicism – land charters (sasanas) as a literary form – the Allahabad inscription – Sanskrit and Prakrit – the Astadhyayi – Panini’s Grammar – Kalidasa and Shakuntala – Hindu drama – Hindu iconography – the rock temples of Sanchi, Nalanda, Ellora and Orissa – Harsha Vardhana – Tantrism – the six schools of philosophy – Vedanta – Shankara – Advaita – Sulvasutras, Siddhantas and other forms of Hindu mathematics – Aryabhata and trigonometry – Brahmi characters – gelosia multiplication

14. China’s Scholar-Elite, Lixue and the Culture of the Brush

The Song renaissance – bone books – bamboo books – silk books – paper – ‘whirling books’ and ‘butterfly books’ – woodblock printing – movable type in Korea – the etymology of the Chinese language – writing with a brush – printing and ‘flying money’ – coal mining – saddle and stirrup – gunpowder – porcelain – sailing junks and rudders – the compass – the competitive written examination – Chinese Buddhism – translations of the Buddhist classics – Zen Buddhism – the Neo-Confucian revival and the revolt against Buddhism – Zhu Xi and the five philosophers – lixue and the Great Learning – the Painting Academy and the imperial university – designed gardens – forensic medicine – archaeology – critical history – the novel

PART THREE: THE GREAT HINGE OF HISTORY

European Acceleration

15. The Idea of Europe

Muslim views of European backwardness in the Middle Ages – theories as to why Europe drew ahead – Braudel (geography) – McCormick’s medieval Europe – Abu-Lughod (the plague, politics, the East dropped behind) – Needham (China’s class structure) – Western and Eastern Scholarship compared – North and Thomas (changes in agriculture, economics, market structure) – Southern (changes in Christianity) – Gratian’s changes in law – Grosseteste promotes the experimental approach – Aquinas imagines the secular – Morris (the discovery of the individual)

PART FOUR: AQUINAS TO JEFFERSON

The Attack on Authority, the Idea of the Secular and the Birth of Modern Individualism

16. ‘Halfway Between God and Man’: the Techniques of Papal Thought-Control