The more I read, the more I feel convinced that in losing the Indian civilization to colonization (not just British, but even before that), we lost something quite wonderful. Everything we know now, almost a 1000 years after the end of many of those great civilizations, we seem to have known then and known much better. It was a civilization that was highly evolved. There was a very well structured language, the teaching of which was spread through many lands to improve communication (much like English, except that the English is complete chaos when compared to the elegant beauty of Sanskrit's grammatical and semantical structure), trade between different countries was of prime importance and in fact, geographical routes were created to help increase trade (thus showing an understanding of 'comparative advantage'), the benefits of division of labour and specialization were realized (hence, the varna system), schooling (both gurukul and other forms of apprenticeship) was mandatory for children and was tailored to ensure the greatest amount of skill-development, literature and arts were cultivated, so was science and technology. Philosophy, medicine, maths, music, astronomy, physics, economics, political science, warcraft, history, among others were separate specialized bodies of systemic study, much like they are today, but I believe, in a much more advanced stage. And then, civilizations that were less evolved, except in military prowess, decided they wanted more land. The rulers, looking at a civilization much more evolved, failed to understand its significance and went about slowly destroying these wonderful innovations and discoveries. Humankind was pushed back by 1000s of years, and had to start over.
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