The great empires and civilizations of bygone era, in a sense, are still with us.

Not only had the British Empire shaped much of today’s world but it continues to do so and even the influence of the Roman Empire is very much in evidence although it is long since its patricians had walked about in their graceful togas and its legionnaires had marched in their splendid accoutrements.

The British empire persists through the English tongue, now regarded as the closest we have to a universal language, British legal, parliamentary and administrative procedures and apparel too, at least that of the male, and now does it through its successor on the world stage, the US, which could be described as the empire’s surrogate, sharing as it does Britain’s language literature and history.

While Saville Row of London had once dictated the style for formal men’s attire and British boots were the model, today American-designed jeans and walking shoes hold sway even if often they are poor imitations of the originals. However, of late it is Italy that has become the standard-setter for suits and footwear.

The Roman Empire too can be said to be with us as represented by the Roman alphabet and the Roman law adopted in many countries, sometimes filtered, if not entirely metamorphosed by the Napoleonic Code, a relic of another imperium, the French. There is also the mile, currently in use in the USA, which was, originally, a thousand paces of the soldiers of Rome.

Modified forms of the Roman script are widely used even when not official. Whenever we write A, B and C, we are using the script in which Julius Caesar penned his commentaries, Cicero’s great speeches and letters, Vigil and Horace, their poems and other beautiful works and Tacitus, his histories.

Having been first introduced to the Roman alphabet, albeit in its modified English version, and intellectually reared on it as it were, I regard the script as much mine as that of the personages just mentioned.

Such continuity of influence, though not in all cases strictly imperial, applies to other civilizations and cultures such as the Chinese, the Arab and the Iranian (or Persian) and those of South-East Asia and other regions.

The origins of not just crockery but even modem sanitary-ware can be traced to the Chinese who invented porcelain. Carpets and perfumery are contributions of the Perso-Arab civilization, while quite a few spices  can be traced to Indonesia while some come from the Indian Sub-continent.

The common Arabic numerals, based on the ancient Indian or Hindu figures, as is the decimal system and the concept of zero, are known the world over. Actually, the Arabs had called them Hindu figures.

However, as the European numerals happen to be closer to the Arabic in form than to the Hindu, we may stick to describing them as ‘Arabic’.

Rudyard Kipling had said that one day the British Empire may be “one with Niniveh and Tyre” but the colour purple on fabric should remind us of Tyrian purple, the making of which was for long a secret of the Phonecians, one of whose cities was Tyre.

The Assyrians are said to have been an extremely war-like people. They were, however, the first to place  a value on pieces of metal and thus introduce the concept of money, while trade had before that been conducted chiefly through barter.

Later, around the 7th century BCE, the Lydians in the Anatolian region (now Turkey) are thought to have minted the first regular coinage, giving currency a firmer basis. Thus originated money which makes our economies spin — at times a little too wildly; money which inflates and deflates and is somehow made to ‘float’.

But then, as everyone knows, all coins have two sides and so have paper notes, the invention of which we owe to China.

The empires of the New World had also left many a mark by way of chocolates and rubber, a game played by the Aztecs and perhaps the Mayas with a ball made from the latter having led to today’s football.

Then there is tobacco which is a dubious, maybe even negative, inheritance from them. Within India, the Mauryan and Mughal empires, besides others, have contributed to the way things are today.

All the scripts of the country are considered to have their origins in the Brahmi letters of the Mauryans while many administrative terms still current go back to the Mughals.

It may not be altogether irrelevant to reflect that a mere 60 or so years ago it was almost obligatory for anyone with a university or even a high school education in Western Europe to have at least a smattering of Latin.

Quite a few in the higher reaches of academia were even conversant with ancient Greek and were as familiar with Alpha, Beta and Gama as we are with A, B and C. So much so that many scholars used sprinkle their works with words or even whole phrases in the Greek script, the historian, Arnold Toynbee, being one of them.

As it happen this acquaintance with Latin or French had not applied even in the pre-Independence days to the products of Indian universities although they got to know some phrases in these languages.

Sanskrit held the same place in India, at least among the brahmans, the ruling families, to some extent the kshatriyas and, less commonly, the vaisyas. Today, I believe, Latin is no longer compulsory in the British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.