Physical characteristics of India Two great triangular areas: Hindustan, continental, shut off by mountain ranges; Deccan, maritime, shut off by the sea Land access by migration practicable on north-west only Three great river systems of Hindustan Early trade between Mesopotamia and west coast of Deccan Arabian coasting trade Discovery of the maritime route from Europe to India in 1498 Its results Recent archaeological discoveries in the Indus valley Their interpretation as yet uncertain.
A glance at the physical map of the world suffices to show that no country forming part of the old continents, in which the civilization of mankind has evolved, is so isolated by nature as India. Rhomboidal in outline or roughly diamond-shaped, it extends from its northern angle in Kasmir to Cape Comorin as its southernmost extremity; and from the mouths of the Indus in the west to somewhat beyond the estuary of the Brahmaputra in the east, its utmost length, some 1,900 miles, being about equal to its greatest breadth. Its total area, which, excluding Burma, covers a surface of rather more than one million and a half square miles, is somewhat larger than fifteen times that of Great Britain. It is divided by the tropic of Cancer (23° N. lat.) into a northern and a southern triangle. These are separated from west to east across the greater width of the peninsula by the Vindhya and other connected ranges that lie between the longitude of Mount Abu (73° E.) and Parasnäth Hill (87° E.). The northern triangle consists of an alluvial plain, which in an earlier geological age formed the floor of the ocean, but in later, though still prehistoric, times became raised above the level of the sea. It is continental, surrounded by mountain ranges on all sides. On the west, it is shut off from the neighboring countries of Asia by high mountains. On the east, it is separated from Burma by a series of high hills and by impenetrable jungle. On the north it is bounded by the most stupendous range in the world, at least 1,400 miles in length and about 19,000 ft. in height, its peaks varying from 25,000 to 29,000 ft. In this great barrier, there are some mountain tracks by which men have found their way to India. Such are the passes from the Pamirs by Gilgit, as well as those from Tibet by Leh, by the gorge of the Sutlej, and by Sikkim. But these are not highways by which migrations or invasions from the north have reached or could reach southwards to India. Nor has the eastern frontier, protected by hills and jungles, ever been exposed to hostile attack. It is only on the western side, though even this is guarded by almost continuous ranges of lofty hills, that from time immemorial immigration, conquest, and commerce made their way before 1500 A.D. by narrow roads into India. Access can here be gained either from southern Balochistan by the rocky track leading to the Indus delta, or from Afghanistan by the Bolan, the Tochi, and the Khaibar passes, as well as by the river valleys of the Komal, the Kurram, and the Kabul, to the banks of the Indus farther north.
Only through the western gateways have passed the two major invasions that have vitally affected the fortunes of India. In this way came in prehistoric times the wave of Aryan migration that overspread India with its civilization from that day to this. It was perhaps two thousand years or more afterward that the Semitic conquest by Islam began on the western frontier about 700 A.D. A considerable part of India was held under this alien despotic sway for more than seven hundred years, down to the middle of the eighteenth century. This dominion, though unifying India politically, did not essentially modify its civilization, even though one-fifth of the entire population professes Islam in the present day. Except for the Greeks, from 326 B.C. till about 200 A.D., only Asiatics have come in contact with the continental half of India by land.
This great northern plain is enclosed not only by mountain ranges but by rivers on every side. Two of the three largest of these rise close together in Tibet, near the great Kailäsa group of peaks and the Mãnasarovar lake at the back and about the middle of the Himalayan barrier. The Indus in the first half of its course follows a north-westerly direction; then, bending around the extremity of the Himalayan chain, it flows southward till it falls into the Arabian Sea just north of the tropic of Cancer. Its whole course is about 1,500 miles in length. The Brahmaputra, rising slightly to the east of Lake Mansarovar (c.82,° E.), after an easterly course of many hundreds of miles through Tibet, turns southward at the end of the Himalayan range (c.96.° E.) and, flowing slightly westward of Dacca, finally enters the Bay of Bengal somewhat to the south of the tropic of Cancer, almost opposite the mouths of the Indus on the other side of India. Its whole length is about 100 miles.
The third great river of northern India, the Ganges (in Sanskrit Ganga), which is about 1,540 miles long, uses (c. 80°E.) somewhat to the south-west of the sources of the Indus and the Brahmaputra. Breaking through the southern range of the central Himalayas, it flows in a south-easterly direction through the eastern half of the alluvial plain of Hindustan. At Goalanda it joins the Meghna, the largest and most easterly estuary of the Brahmaputra. Between this and the Hugli, the most westerly and main branch of the Ganges, lies the combined delta of the two mighty rivers.
Parallel to the southern slopes of the Vindhya range, which shuts off the northern plain, flows the Narbada river from its source at Amarkantak (82°E.) with a slight northern trend past Jabalpur (80°E.) and then westward, by Broach2 (thirty miles from its mouth) to the Bay of Cambay.
The area of the great alluvial plain of northern India is called by the Persian name of Hindustan, the ‘country of the Indus’, the river on the western side of the country, with which foreigners first became acquainted.
The area of the great alluvial plain of Hindustan is shut off by the Vindhya range, which forms the northern buttress of the Deccan, the name of southern India, the whole of which lies within the tropics south of the Narbadã river. It is a rocky plateau, bounded on both sides by high ridges of hills called Ghäts, which are separated by narrow strips of lowland on the west from the Arabian Sea, and on the east from the Bay of Bengal. The plateau slopes gradually from the western Ghats, which average about 3,000 ft. in height, to the eastern Ghats which are 1,500 ft high. Owing to this fact many of the rivers of the Deccan rise near its western edge and all fall into the eastern sea.
Though less exposed to migration and conquest from the rest of Asia than Hindustän, the Deccan did not oppose a difficult barrier to Aryan incursion within India itself, as is proved by the occurrence of Indo-Aryan inscriptions quite in the south, dating from as early as the third century B.C. But at a later period, Muhammadan rule did not acquire as firm a hold of the Deccan as it did of Hindustan.
Contact with the outer world by land has always been restricted to Hindustan. More Than 500 years before Christ the region on both sides of the Indus, comprising the western Panjab and Sindh, from the district in ancient times called Gandhãra (with its capital Taxila, twenty miles north of the modern Rawal Pindi) to the mouths of the Indus, became (from 530 B.C.) and remained part of the neighboring Persian Empire till the destruction of that empire by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.