Discovering China and India

China and India , two nations that are at the same time continents inhabited by dozens of peoples , who speak different languages. These two continent states together bring together a third of the world's population and for many observers they are destined to determine the destiny of our planet in the next century. China is already doing this in part, increasingly placing itself as a possible alternative to American hegemony. India follows at a distance, still weighed down by the lack of development of its vast rural areas.

Despite a growing economic and political importance, in Italy - but a little throughout the West - little is known about the civilization and history of these two Asian giants . School textbooks are limited to a few pages and many - too many - observers who discuss Asian and global geopolitics report stereotypes or third or fourth hand news about the Indian and Chinese world.

This is why the release of two Bompiani books dedicated to the discovery of the roots and historical events of these two great nations is good news: "History of India" (2022, pp. 704) by the American historian Stanley Wolpert and " A brief history of China ” (2022, pp. 304, also e-book) by the Australian sinologist Linda Jaivin.

We are naturally faced with two texts that are different from each other , even in mass of pages, and it could not be otherwise given the distance between the Chinese world and the Indian world. What they have in common, however, is the idea that China and India are now two realities with which we all have to confront and it is impossible to understand today's reality if we do not know their history, traditions, culture and problems, contingent and atavistic. In fact, the first thing we need to realize when we go beyond our strictly Eurocentric or excessively crushed perspective on the West is that Indian and Chinese primates are nothing new today. They don't suddenly come out of nowhere. The Indus valley, the cradle of Indian civilization, has been home to agricultural societies since at least 6,500 BC. In the third millennium BC, then, saw the development of merchant cities, marked by the oldest urban planning ever known: layouts of roads designed in a checkerboard pattern, systems of sewers, city walls. The first significant set of Chinese writings dates back to 1600 BC and its author lived in a territory between the Yellow River and the Yangze River, which is the same geographical, ethnic and cultural heart of China today. This circumstance testifies to a continuity - unique in the world - between that distant era and the China of our time. Not the continuity of a state, but of a single civilization, which recognizes itself as such and has its roots in an ancient past of three and a half millennia. To be clear: at what point were we in our Prehistory, "we", 3,500 years ago? Rome was not yet born, even ancient Greece, so to speak.

This is enough to make us understand how many of our historical and cultural convictions are to be reviewed in the light of the treatises by Stanley Wolpert and Linda Jaivin in two volumes full of charm and information .

Wolpert's India is the Ganges and the washing of the soul, it is the order of caste, it is the sari, it is Delhi and Calcutta, it is the Vedas, the Koran and Buddhism. It is the Indian diaspora, its peculiar economy, but it is also the battleground of traditions and conflicts. The contrasts between regions and between religions draw a meeting of roots that clashes with the wounds of poverty and marginalization .

Linda Jaivin testifies to us how sprawling and gloriously chaotic Chinese history is. The People's Republic of China is among the superpowers of the 21st century the one that seems most solid, ambitious and destined for an inexorable rise. Internationally it represents an icon of modernity, a model of development for other countries but also a state that thrives on its celebration and its dominance. It is impossible to recount its cultural splendors without highlighting its censor and propaganda impulses : the prevailing trait seems to be a highly contradictory soul. Linda Jaivin reconstructs the plots of this very dense story, recalling among other things the role of women in this sumptuous painting. And then he underlines China's contributions to cooking, commerce, military strategy as well as aesthetics and philosophy. In short, two volumes that are a compelling distillate and that contain everything you need to know about the two giants of Asia.