From medicine to mathematics, philosophy to astronomy, literature to music, Buddhism to Bollywood, over five millennia, India has played a prominent role in the Asian region and around the world. At the same time, India had the ability to adopt and assimilate foreign ideas, which Jawaharlal Nehru compared to palimpsest - an ancient manuscript that was rewritten many times without removing the previous layer completely. The book of a prominent specialist in South Asia, John Zubrzycki, briefly and succinctly summarizes the complex and dissimilar stages of Indian history." India is the oldest civilization in the world and the largest democracy. This is the center of the connection of East and West Asia, as well as the confident guardian of the Indian Ocean... Unlike the history of China, which can be clearly divided into periods of rule by dynasties such as Yuan, Ming or Qing, India's past is replete with many centers of power that fought desperately among themselves. Even during the empire's highest heyday, none of the three great Indian empires - the Mauryas, the Guptas, and the Mughals - controlled the entire subcontinent. And even Britain could not make a similar statement until the defeat of the Marathas in 1818. But even then, the principality states, which accounted for a third of the population, retained some nominal independence... It's not so easy to collect 5,000 years of Indian history in a couple of hundred pages, trying to reflect all the subtleties, but I will risk it." (John Zubrzycki)