Originality and influence are distinct concepts. The ancient Indians have first claim to many inventions and discoveries covering a wide range of disciplines i

Originality and influence are distinct concepts. The ancient Indians have first claim to many inventions and discoveries covering a wide range of disciplines including math, science, statecraft, philosophy, governance, technology. But unfortunately India has had remarkably little influence on the outside world considering. Indians may (or may not) have invented the zero but it was the Arabs that took it the world. There are many possible reasons for this. I could speculate that it might be due to :- 1. These things happened so long ago. India was way ahead in many of these things, and perhaps the rest of the world was not ready to understand them at the time. 2. India was too inward looking. Of course What we call India today never existed under the rule of a single entity until the British came. Until then the various kingdoms were preoccupied with affairs within the subcontinent instead of looking elsewhere. In the concise history of the modern world, William Woodruff says that (until 500 years ago) either India or China could have both conquered the world, except that they never seemed to have the motivation to do so. By comparison, arabs, persians, europeans travelled, traded with and conquered lands far from their origins, and hence they have had much more influence on the modern world. 3. There was also deep stratification of Indian society along caste/race lines. The higher and elite classes of the time were obsessed with protecting their knowledge (which was part of their power) from other sections of society. By contrast, the Arabs, Romans, Europeans, translated, copied and disseminated their literature widely.