Harsha

Where are you going with all this? The topic was about Harsha, not about the supremacy of India in world history... Anyway, here are some responses to your points.

Yes, India had some contributions to offer the world, I'm not disputing that. But most of the basis for the Western and Middle-Eastern civilizations was laid in Sumer and Egypt. Mesopotamian and Syriac civilization goes very very far back, as much as 9000 years in some cases.
 

In a word: money. India had a lot of trade goods, especially spices and cloth which were highly prized in the rest of the world. Culture didn't have much to do with it.
 

Yes, the part about Buddhism is true. The part about "their sources of knowledge" is however false. The Yellow River valley gave rise to an indigenous civilization which is almost as old as the Indus Valley civilization. By the time the Chinese made contact with India, they were the heirs of a civilization which was already 2 millenia old.
 

Materials - through trade maybe. Men - some slaves, but not on a large scale. What's your point?
 

No, Greeks came first as warlords and adventurers, the same way they did all over Western Asia and Northern Africa: from Egypt, to Syria, to Mesopotamia to Iran to Bactria. And when this happened, in the 3rd century BC, the greatest Greek philosophers had come and gone. Also, if you study Greek philosophy, you'll see that it is very different from Indian ideas.
 

So? He also wanted to conquer the rest of the world.
 

Arabs wanted first and foremost to convert as many people as possible to Islam, and a close second was the acquisition of booty. Learning came much later, as an added bonus.
 

Yes, as I said before, they wanted to trade to make money.
 

Money Money Money Money! No one will dispute that India was a rich country, and lots of money could be made by trading with her. And she did have her own advanced civilizations, that were on the level of the rest of the world.

On the other hand, India was not some beacon of civilization in the world, which drew everybody there to learn from it. It was merely one area amongst equals.

Again, I am by no means arguing that India did not have an advanced culture. But from there to argue that it was the most advanced civilization in the world is a stretch. The wheel for instance was invented in Sumer, from where it was passed on to other population such as the Aryans. By the way, Mittani people were originally Aryans; but nowhere has it been proven that they actually came from India; rather it is thought that they were a different branch of the people who migrated to India. To assign their accomplishments to India is like assigning French accomplishments to the Spanish because they came from the same stock.

I've said that quoting Jones in this case fits certain Hindu nationalists, because they do selective quoting, just like you have done yourself (I'm not necessarily accusing you of being a Hindu nationalist btw). You first quoted him to show just how "advanced" Sanskrit was compared to other languages. When I pointed out that he praised Sanskrit to elevate interest in that language in the West, you brought up his flaws in reasoning, thus discrediting him. But you were the first one to actually quote him: this is what I mean by selective quoting.

Anyway, talking about historians... A certain amount of bias is natural for any historian. They all have a background, they can all read only a certain number of languages, hence their research will be limited to reading only a certain number of works. Archeological evidence is usually limited and several interpretations are usually possible. Historians, because of their background, will usually choose interpretations that benefit the image of their own country. We just have to be careful. I would give an unrelated example: in the Balkans there were some archeological discoveries dating to the 6th and 5th millenium BC, that contain pottery with certain repetitive symbols. Balkan historians have taken this to be evidence of the oldest writing system in the world. Most other historians point out that the available evidence is not conclusive enough to determine whether the symbols are an actual alphabet or simply that: symbols. Now, it may turn out that the Balkan historians are right, but we can't make that call yet. Along the same vein, I seem to recall that one of the arguments for the supposed advanced mathematical knowledge of the Indus Valley civilization is the standard size of the bricks. That could imply mathematics or simply basic arithmetic: it's just hard to make that call based on the available evidence, but certain historians will read into it what they want.

Now Newton doubts the chronology including China, how DECEBAL would reconcile?