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Available for over a year

An omnibus edition of Professor Sunil Khilnani's audio portraits of figures who have shaped the arc of Indian history over two thousand years. He begins with a visit to a modern-day clinic which follows the practises set out by Charaka, a medical pioneer whose handbook is still widely in use. His text, known as the Charaka Samhita or 'Compendium of Charaka', is an encyclopaedic work covering different aspects of health and how to live a good life. He stays in the world of science and medicine with a look at Aryabhata, a mathematician and astronomer whose work, in the fifth or six century, predates some of the discoveries made in the West many years later. His next subject takes us to the land of the Tamils in the South East India. Rajaraja Chola was a cult-figure and self-styled king of kings who ordered the construction of one of India's most magnificent temples built around the 11th. Some see the period of his reign and that of his son Rajendra as the era when the centre of gravity of Indian history moved southwards. He ends on a poetic note with a portrait of Basavana, a religious guru whose words have inspired many writers today' Produced by Mark Savage.