The gripping story of how, for more than a millennium starting in 250 B.C., the Indian sub-continent influenced a huge swathe of the globe through the spread of its ideas and goods. This talk charts the journey of Hinduism and Buddhism with their epics and fables, mathematical concepts, and commodities such as pepper and indigo, westwards and eastwards from India via sea routes. Find out how the world's largest Hindu temple ended up in Cambodia and the largest Buddhist one in Indonesia, and how the concept of zero travelled from the subcontinent via Arabia to the West.