The First Spring The Golden Age of India

by Abraham Eraly

The history of classical India is a huge and complex maze with many snares to entrap the explorer. Much of it is so thickly encrusted with myths that it is often difficult to separate facts from fables. Undaunted by this prospect Abraham Eraly unfolds, in First Spring, a profoundly illuminating panorama of an age that flowered luxuriantly before its inevitable decay. The vast landscape of Eraly s narrative covers more than a thousand years, from around the middle of the first millennium bce, to around the middle of the first millennium ce, when India was a prosperous and marvellously creative civilization, making many seminal contributions in multifarious fields of culture. From its ascent to the rarefied heights of the golden age to its descent into the swamp of the dark ages, from the daring intellectual adventurism of the first spring to the winter of corruption and cultural hibernation, this book tells the story of the classical Indian civilization in a manner that is both lucid and thoroughly engaging.

Genres: History, India

952 pages, Hardcover

First published July 16, 2011

About the author

Abraham Eraly is an Indian writer. He has written many acclaimed books on Indian history.

Reviews

[Lavanya · Rating 1 out of 5]

When you buy a hard cover book at full price, read it and because you threw good money after it, can't bring yourself to burn it..

[Phool Chand Jangir · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book written with prejudice towards Hindus and Brahmins. Lopsided and unjust.
Shame on Abraham Early.

[Ashwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

When someone spends 9 years reading and researching, its difficult to give such an exhaustive work only 3 stars.

History in India is a politically and tribally fraught endeavor. The source you use, read, forget, or choose to ignore, inform the publisher, the reviewers, and the readers which "side" you're on because no one can agree on facts. And the paucity of Indian sources, either because of cultural neglect or invasion, don't make the situation easier. However, it does leave a lot of room open to the historian who more often than not veers into storytelling to fill in the gaps.

If any Indian author were really honest, there would be more "I don't knows" than statements of fact. I'm sure the editor would love that.

Despite the exhaustive references that give us a glimpse into India as it was, the reader can very clearly tell where the author is editorializing. Unlike Western historians who try to take themselves out, Eraly is clearly the narrator here. When he makes sweeping statements about the Golden Age of India such as "Classical Indian civilization was essentially a Buddhist civilization and not a Hindu one", there is not one source to be found nor any examples or anecdotes to back them up. (Nor does the rest of the book seem to support this odd statement)

In fact, while there is a scant bibliography (at least for a work this size), there are no references at all for the curious reader to continue digging on a particular subject.

And while Eraly attempts to give us a "people's history" by collating North and South and reconstructing the lives of commoners, it is not easy to navigate. An entire section devoted to the arts, for example, has only section breaks with no marks on what's in the book.

Eraly the narrator also belongs to a previous educated generation with British influence who talk of India with a certain distance, as if education has elevated them far above it. Of course, this is mostly preference, but when historians generally bat for their subject matter, the tone and tenor are odd.

Overall, this is a nice jumping point for Indian history from which to delve deeper yourself. Hopefully as modern research continues, the story of India will be less fiction and more fact.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

What happens when you breathe deeply into the soil of a civilization older than most empires and try to listen not just to its triumphs, but to its long silences? That is the question Abraham Eraly poses in The First Spring, a sweeping and ambitious voyage into what he calls the “golden age” of India: the centuries when classical Indian civilization flourished with astonishing creativity, philosophical audacity, culture, trade, and spiritual daring. He dares not just to narrate events but to attempt something quieter: to feel the heartbeat of a world in motion, and then to track its fading.

Eraly opens the narrative not with the flash of conquest or the clang of swords, but with the whisper of seeds sprouting. We are in the first millennium BCE and the early centuries of the Common Era — a period of expansive trade, of intellectual ferment, of cities rising like chandeliers of human imagination. Here, the Greeks and Persians touch Indian shores; Buddhist monks carry alms bowls; poets compose in Prakrit and Sanskrit; artisans carve temples; astronomers chart stars; mathematicians invent zero. This is the “first spring” of India — not only in nature but in culture, thought, and possibility.

Eraly’s aim is vast — he covers politics, society, family life, economy, religion, arts, science. The panoramic scope is dizzying: from Mauryan bureaucracy to Gupta court, from trade routes to temple sculpture, from village economy to urban delights. The subtitle, The Golden Age of India, sets the tone: a civilization at its creative height, before what we conventionally label its decline. He wants to rescue this age from obscurity, to show us that the “classical” India of miracle and myth was once ordinary, alive, human.

Yet this is no textbook in austere dress. Eraly writes with the exuberance of a storyteller, the curiosity of a wanderer, the melancholy of a witness looking back. His sentences breathe: “The poets of the age heard the river laugh, and they carved verses to hold the sound.” He invites you into the marketplace of ancient Pataliputra as casually as if you were standing on a rickety platform sipping tea; he lets you roam the temple stones and listen to the silence after the hymn ends. He aspires to something not just intellectual but emotional: to resurrect the wonder of that age and to mourn its passing.

From page one, one senses the ambition: Eraly isn’t content with a mere chronology of kingdoms and kings. He wants to explore the texture of everyday life — the lived reality behind the silk robes of the elite, the rhythm of villages, the hum of workshops, the glare of festivals. In doing so he invites us to a kind of empathy: with women, merchants, scribes, monks, artisans — not always named, but present. He is particularly fascinated by the tensions within the society: the rise of Buddhism and Jainism, the consolidation of Brahmanical ritual, the evolution of caste, the intersection of trade and culture. He treats these not as abstractions but as forces that shaped lives, bodies, habits.

He writes: “In that spring the world was open. Ships sailed west. Ideas walked east. And everywhere men and women felt the air lighten.” The metaphor of spring recurs — for creativity, for renewal, for expansion. However, he also knows this spring will not last. The book carries within it the seeds of winter: economic decline, invasions, religious rigidity, fragmentation. We sense the author watching the bloom fade even while celebrating it.

This tension — between celebration and elegy — gives the book its emotional core. It’s not triumphalist. It is elegiac. Eraly loves the age he describes; he also mourns its passing. He watches structures of freedom give way to structures of constraint. He examines how the caste division deepened; how temples turned into instruments of power; how the village replaced the tribe; how trade shrank; how the horizon narrowed. The “golden age” becomes not only a past but an idea — fragile, luminous, gone.

One of the greatest strengths of The First Spring is its ability to make the distant past feel alive. Eraly doesn’t overload the reader with dry lists—he weaves anecdotes, names, inscriptions, monuments into the narrative. He describes how the decimal numeral appeared, how the concept of zero danced into calculation, how Sanskrit grammar took flight, how women in some regions had agency, how cities like Ujjain and Pataliputra bustled with merchants from the Mediterranean and artisans from beyond the seas.

The scenes matter: artisans mixing metal to cast Buddha images; merchants bargaining with Roman glass; Buddhist monks debating emptiness in monastic halls. Through these details he recovers the sense of a civilization in kinetic motion.

He also brings a comparative eye: noting how India in this era was not isolated but deeply connected — trade routes stretching to Persia, Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia; ideas flowing like rivers. He describes how Buddhism travelled, how Indian script influenced Southeast Asian writing, how trade carried spices, textiles, and ideas. The golden age was not inward but outward-looking.

Another admirable facet is his willingness to tackle the decline side of the narrative. He does not pretend the golden age lasted forever; he maps the slow contraction: trade deficits, invasions of the Hunas, stagnation of cities, crystallization of caste, decline of heterodox religions, shift to village economies. This balancing act — documenting the ascent and descent — gives the book integrity. He doesn’t mythologize the past; he both elevates and interrogates it.

However, the very ambition that makes the book compelling also invites critique. Some historians have pointed out that Eraly’s narrative occasionally leans into sweeping generalisations, or depends on older frameworks of “classical India” that modern scholarship has revised. One review, for instance, challenges his assertion that classical Indian civilisation was “essentially a Buddhist civilisation” and locates his attention somewhat unevenly across the subcontinent.

Another issue is the sheer breadth: covering over a thousand years across multiple regional cultures, political regimes, economic systems and religious movements means that at times the narrative can feel sprawling or even fragmented. Some readers may find transitions between polity, economy, culture, family life jarring. (One Goodreads reviewer notes the book is structured thematically rather than purely chronologically, which can affect flow for some readers.)

Eraly’s tone — enthusiastic, eloquent — may occasionally verge on rhetorical flourish. While this gives the work its poetic power, it may make the reader occasionally question where scholarship ends and storytelling begins. This is not to say the work is unserious; on the contrary, his scholarship is impressive. But for those seeking strictly academic depth and exhaustive referencing, the book may leave gaps, or rely on older schools of thought.

A specific scholarly caveat: the book sometimes treats older categories (such as “Aryan” vs “non-Aryan”, or “varṇa” contained within “classical” societies) without always signalling how newer scholarship debates or complicates those categories. Eraly fundamentally takes most of the ideas put forth in the ‘smṛtis’ as historical fact, even though the texts themselves are romanticisms.

Yet these critiques do not diminish the book’s value — they highlight the tension inherent in writing grand, sweeping civilizational history. Eraly chooses story over narrow disquisition, but with generous marker pens of scholarship. For many readers the thrill will be not in footnotes but in the sense of wonder he restores.

What Impact Did the Book Have on Me?

As a teacher of English and lover of books, I found reading The First Spring to be a kind of pilgrimage. It appealed to the part of me that loves big ideas, epic sweep, but also quiet reflection. What surprised me was how relevant the golden age felt—even now.

In an India rapidly remade by technology, globalization, and cultural churn, reading about a time when Indian minds were creating mathematics, philosophy, and global trade makes you realize that innovation and excellence are not recent imports—they have roots deep in history.

Eraly’s narrative serves as a bridge: from the modern present back to the classical past. He invites the reader to consider that India was not simply a theatre of empire but a world-making site in its own right. His message whispers quietly: greatness need not arrive late; it has always been present. In an era of perpetual “catching up”, this is a reclamation.

At the same time, the depiction of decline is a caution. The golden age fades, societies contract, trade shrinks, ideas calcify. This is not only history but metaphor: every civilizational peak contains in it the seeds of its own moral and structural erosion. For a contemporary reader in a world of technological “summers” and supposed “singularities”, Eraly’s story reminds us that rhetoric of progress does not guarantee permanence.

The book also encouraged me to think differently about history. I appreciate histories that are not simply empired or colonial — histories that attend to human aspiration, art, philosophy, and daily life. As an English teacher who loves books, I found its narrative richness compelling, and its moral horizon inviting. It made me want to walk through temple halls, to examine inscriptions, to ask what the builders were thinking—questions of curiosity usually reserved for fiction.

Why Should You Read This Book Today?

In the panorama of books about India’s past, The First Spring stands as something of a cathedral: grand, ornate, luminous. It is one of those rare volumes that doesn't merely recount history—it invites you to live it, to inhale the dust of ancient cities, to feel the pulse of temples, and to catch a breath of that first, golden spring.

Its ambition is both its strength and its modest fault: by covering such vast ground, it sometimes rushes, sometimes generalises. But I forgive it this because of the gift it offers: wonder. Eraly reminds us that history is not simply what happened—it is what we feel, what we imagine, what we remember. He wants us to see that a “golden age” is not only a sequence of dates but a moment of possibility, of human invention, of open horizons.

So here’s my verdict: If you relish the sweep of history, if you believe that civilization is made of ideas as much as armies, if you want to re-discover the India that once dared everything and built temples with the certainty of stars—then this book is for you.

Read it, not as a mere reference, but as a journey. Let it change how you see the past, and in turn, how you see yourself.

And if you find yourself lingering over a sculpture described in one chapter, or pausing to reflect when Eraly mentions a merchant’s caravan bound for Java—then you are doing precisely what the author hoped for.

You are in the first spring too.

Final verdict: Inspiring, expansive, humanising—The First Spring is a must-read for anyone who wants to feel history, not just study it.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not as good as his Gem In The Lotus (c. 3000-200 BC), Abraham Eraly's book on India's classical golden age and early medieval decline (c. 200 BC - 1000 AD) is still solid. The main drawback is that the structure is thematic rather than a chronological synthesis as in Gem in the Lotus, so it feels rather fragmented. The upside to this is that, besides the introductory and political history sections, you can essentially read whatever sections interest you in whatever order. While I skipped the sections on the state, economy, and family because of their relative aridity, these will undoubtedly be highly valuable for anyone seriously studying the era. I devoured the sections on science, philosophy, religion, and culture. Eraly was a somewhat idiosyncratic historian, his tone often that of a grumpy old man prone to old fashioned academic practices and a tendency to repeat himself. But this doesn't detract from his sharp intellectual depth and breadth, passion for the subject, and willingness to ruthlessly critique sacred cows (pun intended). It's a real pity he died before he could finish his pre-modern India series with a book on the medieval era.