India, March 21 -- By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist

For nearly 2,000 years, Arab traders used the monsoon winds to travel across the sea to India. Along the Western coasts, in Kerala, Karnataka and Goa, they met people who allowed them to marry their daughters, but did not let them take these wives back home.

These were matri-lineal communities, where the son-in-law lived with the wife in her house. She gave him shelter while he was at the port. He gave her children, who belonged to her, not him.

From India, the Arabs took cotton, sugar and spices to be sold in the Mediterranean. They also took the idea of the place-holder zero, the decimal system, concepts such as infinity and calculus. Indian merch...