Genius of the Ancient World

Ridiculously incorrect it portraying ideas of these great thinkers. Annoying clip style filming where the camera can't show something longer than 5 seconds.

Watched the episode on Buddha and found it thoroughly unenlightening. The Western mind is steeped in the notion of breakthrough conceptual thinking, so Buddha's story is presented in that framework, completely disregarding the various soteriological philosophies and paths of India that pre-date Buddhism and intimately informed and influenced its development. Brahminism is the usual villain, reduced to priests performing rituals, as if that's all to Hinduism, as if before Buddha there were no methods and teaching for liberation, as if the Upanishads, Brahma Sutras etc did not exist. It is clear the presenter neither understands Hinduism nor Buddhism, else she would have known that the paths of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism are similar to the extent of being almost same, differing only in the ultimate nature of Brahman/Nothingness. The multi-layered story of Buddhism is dumbed down to an extent that may have been forgiven for a movie maker, but not for a historian. Those who really want to learn about the history and development of Buddhism and comparative with Hinduism should go to serious scholars like Edward Conze, Anand Coomaraswamy, Ram Swarup etc rather than waste time with a bogus history and historian here.

The first episode is basically footage taken from a movie interspersed with a talking head visiting a few random historical sites and filler places

In the second episode the narrator tells us that we need to see Egypt from space in order to understand. You'd think we would see Egypt from space, right? Wrong. We see a talking head blabber on and then randomly jump to a conclusion. The story progression reminds me of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

This is hard to watch. It is Hollywood crap. Make a story overly complicated and unfocused and pass it off as grand. This series is nothing but filler

In trying to show buddhas journey,dint understand why they kept showing Indian poverty, found no connection of that with the story and that has not been done for Socrates or Confucius.

If wanting to show the country, show the good and bad, India is only shown in bad light.If wanting to show suffering, show for all countries.

Buddha and Confucius episode are low on information

Bettany Hughes's three-part series profiles three very different thinkers - Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius - and assesses the major contribution they have made to different philosophical and religious traditions.

Content-wise, the programs are extremely good: Hughes interviews several experts in Buddhism, classical philosophy, and Confucianism; and visits several of the ancient sites associated with all three of them. Although the arguments are sometimes difficult to follow - especially in the Buddhist program - they are crisply advanced by a presenter who possesses an obvious enthusiasm for her subjects.

And yet there is a strange feeling of similarity about all three programs, despite the diversity of subject-matter. We witness Hughes tramping across various locations in her skirt and long boots - in China and India especially, she looks particularly incongruous when compared to the people surrounding her. This is not really a criticism per se, but it does suggest that all the arguments are filtered through her western consciousness. At the end of each program, she tries to assimilate all three thinkers' ideas into a universalizing paradigm; although very different in conception, they should appeal to "humanity." The effect is to make the programs appear like the visual equivalent of an Introduction to Civilizations course; if we understand what these belief-systems are, we can become more "human" in our world-view. The conflation between universalism and westernization is evident; and reasserted in visual terms through Hughes's ubiquitous presence on screen.

In truth, some of her arguments are a little tenuous. In the Buddha program, she claims that Buddhism could be embraced by merchants, which would seem to equate it with capitalism. Yet one of the central tenets of Buddhism is the need to renounce earthly values and search instead for a spiritual truth. This quality is what renders it to attractive to believers across cultures. M

GENIUS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD is acceptable as an introductory series, but has to be viewed through the ideological prism within which it has been conceived.