If there be one part of India which we may think of as the shrine of
shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in the trian-
gle of cities – Benares and Patna on the Ganges, and Gayā some fifty miles
south of Patna.
shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in the trian-
gle of cities – Benares and Patna on the Ganges, and Gayā some fifty miles
south of Patna.
Cambridge History of India - v1
Along its quays are great timber yards und oil mills,
for the products of Burma are first and foremost rice, and then timber,
especially great logs of teak, harder than oak, and then petroleum. The
work of the port and mills is largely in the hands of Indians and Chinese.
The Burmese are chiefly occupied with work in the fields.
The geography of Burma is of a simple design. It consists of four
parallel ranges of mountain striking southward, and three long intervening
9
## p. 6 (#36) ###############################################
6
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
ocean, and
valleys. The easternmost range separates Burma and the drainage to the
Indian ocean from Siam and the drainage to the Pacific ocean. This great
divide is continued through the Malay peninsula almost to Singapore, only
one degree north of the equator. The westernmost range divides Burma
from India proper, and then follows the west coast of Burma to Cape
Negrais. This range is continued over the bed of the
reappears
in the long chain of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In its entirety it
has a graceful waving lie upon the map, curving first to the west, then to
the east, and then again to the west. The two intervening ranges separate
the Salween, Sittang, and Irrawaddy valleys.
The valley of the Salween is less deeply trenched between its bound-
ing ranges than are the other two, and therefore has a steeply descending
course broken by rapids, and is of small value for navigation. At its mouth
is the port of Moulmein. The valley of the Sittang, which is a relatively
short river, prolongs the upper valley of the Irrawaddy, for the latter
stream makes a westward bend at Mandalay, and passes by a transverse
gap through one of the parallel ridges. Beyond this gap it bends southward
again, accepting the direction of its tributary, the Chindwin. The railway
from Rangoon to Mandalay runs through the Sittang valley and does not
follow the Irrawaddy.
The delta of the Irrawaddy bears the name of Pegu or Lower Burma.
The region round Mandalay is Upper Burma. The coast land beyond the
westernmost of the mountain ranges is known as Arakan. The coast land
south of the mouth of the Salween, beset with an archipelago of beautiful
islands, is known as Tenasserim.
The train from Rangoon to Mandalay crosses the broad levels of the
delta, passing through endless rice or 'paddy' fields. Only the ears of the
grain are lopped off ; the straw is burnt as it stands. The Burmans are
mostly yeomen, each owning his cattle and doing his own work in the
fields. Beyond the delta the railway follows the Sittang river, with hill
ranges low on the eastern and western horizons. At Mandalay it comes
through to the Irrawaddy again.
There is a bill in the northern suburbs of Mandalay, several hundred
feet high, from which you may look over the city. Even when seen from
this height the houses are so buried in foliage that the place appears like a
wood of green trees. It has a population of about two hundred thousand,
so that it is now smaller than upstart Rangoon. Mandalay is the last of
three capitals a few miles apart, which at different times in the past century
were the seat of the Burmese kings. Amarapura, a few miles to the south,
was the capital until 1822. Ava, a few miles to the west, was the capital
from 1822 to 1837.
## p. 7 (#37) ###############################################
I]
BHAMO: PAGAN
7
The navigation of the Irrawaddy extends for nine hundred miles from
the sea to Bhamo, near the border of the Chinese Empire. As the steamer
goes northward from Mandalay the banks are at first flat, with here and
there a group of white pagodas. Great rafts of bamboo and teak logs float
down the river. At Kathā the flat country is left, for the river there comes
from the east through grand defiles, with wooded fronts descending to the
water's edge. Bhamo lies low along the river bank beyond the narrows.
It is only twenty miles from the Chinese frontier. Many of its houses are
raised high upon piles, because of the river floods. Until recently the
Kachin billmen often raided the caravans passing from Bhamo into China.
To realise the antiquity and the splendour of early Burmese civilisa-
tion we must descend the Irrawaddy below Mandalay to Pagan. There
for some ten miles beside the river, and for three miles back from its bank,
are the ruins of a great capital, which flourished about the time of the
Norman Conquest of England. From the centre of the ruined city there
are pagodas and temples in every direction.
Pagan is situated in what is knɔwn as the dry belt of Burma, the
typical vegetation of which is a tall growth of cactus. In Burma the winds
of summer and autumn blow from the south-west, as they do in southern
India. They bring moisture from the sea, which falls in heavy rain on the
west side of the mountains and over the delta. At Rangoon there is an
annual rainfall of more than one hundred inches, or more than three times
the rainfall of London. At Pagan, however, lying deep in the Irrawaddy
valley under the lee of the continuous Arakan range, the rainfall is small,
as little as twenty inches in the year, and the climate is hot and evapora-
tion rapid.
Elsewhere in Burma are either rich crops, or the most luxuriant
forests of tall leafy trees, full of game and haunted by poisonous snakes.
Wild peacocks come from the woods to feed on the rice when it is ripe, and
tigers are not unknown in the villages. Only a few years ago a tiger was
shot on one of the ledges of the great pagoda in Rangoon. Notwithstanding
the age of its civilisation Burma is still subject to a masterful nature.
Moreover civilisation is confined to the immediate valleys and delta of the
Irrawaddy and Salween. On the forested hills are wild tribes, akin to the
Burmese in speech and physique—the Shans in the east, the Kachins in the
north, and the Chips in the west. Burma contains but twelve million
people – Burmese, Chinese, Hindus, and the hill tribes.
From Burma the passage to Bengal is by steamer, for the Burmese
and Indian railway systems have not yet been connected. The heart of
Bengal is one of the largest deltas in the world, a great plain of moist silt
brought down by the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra from the Himālaya
mountains. But hill country is included along the borders of the province.
## p. 8 (#38) ###############################################
8
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
,
. .
>
* To the north the map shows the high tableland of Tibet, edged by the
Himalaya range, whose southern slopes descend steeply, but with many
foothills, to the level low-lying plains of the great rivers. Eastward of
Bengal there is a mountainous belt, rising to heights of more than six
thousand feet and densely forested, which separates the Irrawaddy valley
of Burma from the plains of India. These mountains throw out a spúr
westward, which rises a little near its end into the Gāro hills. The deeply
trenched, relatively narrow valley of the Brahmaputra, known as Assam,
lies between the Gāro hills and the Himalayas. The southward drainage
from the Gāro hills forms a delta io plain, extending nearly to the port of
Chittagong. This plain, traversed by the Meghna river which gathers water
from the Gāro and Khāsi range, is continuous with the delta of Bengal
proper.
To the west of Bengal is another hill spur, bearing the name of Rāj.
mahāl, which is the 'north-eastern point of the plateau of central and
southern India. A broad lowland gateway is left between the Gāro and
Rājmahāl bills, and through this opening the Brahmaputra and Ganges
rivers turn, southward and converge gradually until they join with the
Meghnā to form a vast estuary. The country west of this estuary is the
Bengal delta, traversed by many minor ehannels, which branch from the
right bank of the Ganges before the confluence with the Meghnă. East of
the estuary is that other deltaic land whose silt is derived from the south
front of the Gāro hills. It is said that the highest rainfall in the world
occurs in those hills, when the monsoon sweeps northward from the Bay of
Bengal, and blows against their face. The rainfall on a single day in the
rainy season is sometimes as great as the whole annual rainfall of London.
Little wonder that there is abundance of silt for the formation of the fertile
plains below!
The approach to the coast of Bengal, as may be concluded from this
geographical description, presents little of interest. At the entrance to the
Hooghly river, the westernmost of the deltaic channels, are broad
grey
mud
banks, with here and there a palm tree. From time to time, as the ship
passes some more solid ground, there are villages of thatched huts, sur-
rounded by tall green banana plantations.
Calcutta, the chief port and largest town of modern India, is placed
no less than eighty, miles up the Hooghly on its eastern bank.
The large
industrial town of Howrah stands opposite on the western bank. Not a
hill is in sight round all the horizon. Only, the great dome of the post
office rises white in the sunshine. Calcutta is connected with the jute mills
and engineering works of Howrah by a single bridge. Below this bridge is
the port, always thronged with shipping. . .
Calcutta has grown round Fort William as a nucleus. The present
Fort, with its outworks, occupies a space of nearly a thousand acres on the
::. .
## p. 9 (#39) ###############################################
I]
BENGAL
9
east bank of the Hooghly below the Howrah Bridge. To the north, east,
and south, forming a glacis for the fort, is a wide green plain, the Maidān,
and beyond this is the city. The European quarter lies to the east of the
Maidān. The government offices, and beyond them the great native city,
lie to the north. Calcutta with more than a million inhabitants exceeds
Glasgow in size, and is the second city of the British Empire.
Three hundred miles away to the north, approached from Calcutta by
the East Bengal Railway, is Darjeeling, the hill station of Calcutta, as Oota-
camund is of Madras. The railway traverses the dead level of the plain,
with its thickly set villages and tropical vegetation. There are some seven
hundred and fifty thousand villages in India, and they contain about ninety
per cent. of the total population. The Province of Bengal has a population
equal to that of Great Britain and Ireland, but concentrated on an area less
than that of Great Britain without Ireland. Yet it contains only one great
city, as greatness of cities is measured in the British Islands.
Midway from Calcutta to Darjeeling the Ganges is crossed.
passage occupies about twenty minutes from one low-lying bank to the
other. Then the journey is resumed through the rice fields, with their
.
clumps of graceful bamboo, until at last the hills become visible across the
northern horizon. The train runs into a belt of jungle at the foot of the
first ascent. Passengers change to a mountain railway, which carries them
up the steep front, with many a turn and twist. On the lower slopes is
tall forest of teak and other great trees, hung thickly with creepers. Pres.
ently the timber becomes smaller, and tea plantations are passed with
trim rows of green bushes. Far below, at the foot of the steep forest,
spreads to the southern horizon the vast cultivated plain. Finally trees of
the fir tribe take the place of leafy trees, and the train attains to the sharp
ridge top on which is placed Darjeeling, a settlement of detached villas in
compounds, hanging on the slopes.
Darjeeling is about seven thousand feet above sea-level, on an east
and west ridge, with the plains to the south and the gorge of the Rangīt
river to the north. In the early morning, in fortunate weather, the visitor
may gaze northward upon one of the most glorious scenes in the world.
Over the deep valley at his feet, still dark in the shade, and over successive
ridge tops beyond, rises the mighty snow range of the Himālayas, fifty miles
away, with the peak of Kinchinjunga, more than five miles high, dominating
the landscape. Behind Kinchinjunga, a little to the west, and visible from
Tiger hill, near Darjeeling, though not from Darjeeling itself, is Mount
Everest, the highest mountain in the world, more than five and a half miles
high. Across the vast chasm and bare granite summits 'in the foreground,
the glittering wall of white mountains seems to hang in the sky as though
belonging to another world. The broad distance, and the sudden leap to
>
## p. 10 (#40) ##############################################
10
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
eur.
supreme height, give to the scene a mysterious and almost visionary grand.
It is, however, only occasionally that the culminating peaks can be
seen, for they are often veiled in cloud.
The people of Sikkim, the native state in the hills beyond Darjeeling,
are highlanders of Mongolian stock and not Indian. They are of Buddhist
religion like the Burmans, and not Hindu or Muhammadan like the inhabi-
tants of the plains. They are small sturdy folk, with oblique cut eyes and
a Chinese expression, and they have the easy-going humorous character of
the Burmans, though not the delicacy and civilisation of those inhabitants
of the sunny lowland.
It is an interesting fact that these hill people should belong to the
race which spreads over the vast Chinese Empire. That race here advan-
ces to the last hill brinks which overlook the Indian lowland. The politi-
cal map of this part of India illustrates a parallel fact. While the plains
are administered directly by British officials, the mountain slopes descend-
ing to them are ruled by native princes, whose territories form a strip along
the northern boundary of India. North of Assam and Bengal we have in
succession, from east to west in the belt of hill country, the lands of Bhu.
tān, Sikkim, and Nepāl. From Nepāl are recruited the Gurkha regiments
of the Indian army, the Gurkhas being a race of the same small and sturdy
hill men as the people of Sikkim. In other words, they are of a Mongoloid
stock, though of Hindu religion.
The Ranjit river drains from the hills of Darjeeling, and from the
snow mountains beyond, into a tributary of the Ganges. Several hundred
such torrents burst in long succession through deep portals in the Himāla.
yan foot-hills and feed the great rivers of the plain. These torrents are
perennial, for they originate in the melting of the glaciers, and the Himāla.
yan glaciers cover a vast area, being fed by the monsoon snows. Nearly all
the agricultural wealth of northern India owes its origin to the summer or
oceanic monsoon, which beats against the Himālayan mountain edge. That
edge, gracefully curving upon the map, extends through fifteen hundred
miles. The streams which descend from it in long series gather into the
rivers Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Indus.
The valley of the Brabmaputra forms the province of Assam. Not-
withstanding its vast natural resources, Assam is a country which, at most
periods of its history, has remained outside the Indian civilisation. Even
to-day it has but a sparse population and a relatively small commercial
development, for it lies on the through road no whither. High and difficult
mountains close in the eastern end of its great valley.
The geography of Assam, though very simple, is on a very grand
scale. The Tsan-po river rises high on the plateau of Tibet northward of
Lucknow. For more than seven hundred miles it flows eastward over the
## p. 11 (#41) ##############################################
)
I]
HINDUSTAN
11
>
plateau in rear of the Himalayan peaks. Then it turns sharply southward,
and descends from a great height steeply through a deep gorge, until it
emerges from the mountains at a level not a thousand feet above the sea.
At this point, turning westward, it forms the Brahmaputra, 'the son of
Brahmā, the Creator. ' The Brahmaputra flows for four hundred and fifty
miles westward through the valley of Assam, deeply trenched between the
snowy wall of the Himālayas on the one hand and the forested mountains
of the Burmese border and the Khāsi and Gāro hills on the other hand.
The river rolls down the valley in a vast sheet of water, depositing banks of
silt at the smallest obstruction. Islands form and reform, and broad chan-
nels break away from the main river in time of flood, and there is no attempt
to control them. The swamps on either hand are flooded in the rainy
season, till the lower valley is one broad shining sea, from which the hills
slope up on either side. The traffic on the river is maintained chiefly by
exports of tea and timber, and imports of rice for the labourers on the tea
estates. Some day, when great sums of money are available for capital
expenditure, the Brahmaputra will be controlled, and Assam will become
the seat of teeming production and a dense population. The Indian Empire
contains three hundred and fifteen million people, but it also contains some
of the chief virgin resources of the world.
Where the Brahmaputra bends southward round the foot of the Gāro
hills the valley of Assam opens to the plain of Bengal. Across that plain
westward, where the Ganges makes a similar southward bend round the
Rājmahāl hills, Bengal merges with the great plain of Hindustān, which
extends westward and north-westward along the foot of the Himālayas for
some seven hundred miles to the point where the Jumna, westernmost of
the Gangetic tributaries, leaves its mountain valley. Hindustān begins
with a breadth of about a hundred miles between the Rājmahāl hills and
the northern mountains, spreads gradually to a breadth of two hundred
miles from the foot-hills of the Himālayas to the first rise of the Central
Indian hills, and then narrows again to a hundred miles where it merges
with the Punjab plain between the Ridge of Delhi and the Himālayas. The
great river Jumna-Ganges streams southward from the mountains across
the head of the plain to Delhi, and then gradually bends south-eastward
and eastward along that edge of the plain which is remote from the moun-
tains, as though it were pinned against the foot of the Central hills by the
impact of the successive great tributaries from the north. Three of these
tributaries are the Upper Ganges itself, whose confluence is at Allahābād,
and the Gogrā and the Gandak which enter above Patna. The Jumna-
Ganges receives from the south the Chambal and Son, long rivers but com-
paratively poor in water.
Access to the plains of Hindustān was formerly by the navigation of
## p. 12 (#42) ##############################################
12
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
the Ganges and its tributaries. Then the Grand Trunk Road was made from
Calcutta to Delhi. More recently the East Indian Railway has been built
from Bengal to the Punjab. Both the road and the railway avoid the great
bend round the hills by crossing the upland to the west of Rājmahāl. The
road descends to the Ganges at Patna, but the railway at Benaras, where it
crosses by the lowest bridge over the Ganges.
Two great provinces divide the plain of Hindustān between them. In
the east is Bihār, with its capital at Patna ; in the west are the United
Provinces of Agra and Outh with their capital at Allahābād. For adminis-
trative purposes Bihār is now joined with Orissa, the deltaic plain of the
Mahānadi river on the coast of Bengal. A broad belt of sparsely populated
hills separates Bihār from Orissa, whereas each of these fertile lowlands
opens freely to Bengal, the one along the Ganges, and the other along the
coast.
When we go from Bengal into Bihār, or from Bihār into the United
Provinces it is as though we crossed from one to another of the great conti.
nental states of Europe. The population of Bengal is larger than that of
France. The population of Bihār and Orissa is equivalent to that of Italy.
The population of the United Provinces is nearly equal to that of Germany
since the War.
Five considerable cities focus the great population of the United
Provinces - Allahābād, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and Benares. Allahābād
is built in the angle of confluence between the Jumna and the Ganges. A
hundred miles above Allahābād, on the right or south bank of the Ganges,
is the city of Cawnpore, and on the opposite or north bark extends the old
kingdom of Oudh, with Lucknow for its capital, situated some forty miles
north-east of Cawnpore. Agra, which gives its name to all that part of the
United Provinces which did not formerly belong to Oudh, is situated on the
right or south bank of the Jumna, a hundred and fifty miles west of
Lucknow. All these distances lie over the dead level of the plain, dusty and
like a desert in the dry season, but green and fertile after the rains. Scat.
tered over the plain are innumerable villages in which dwell nineteen out
of twenty of the inhabitants of the United Provinces.
Eighty miles below Allahābād, on the north bank of the Ganges is
Benares, the most sacred city of the Hindus. Benares extends for four
miles along the bank of the river, which here descends to the water with a
steep brink. Down this brink are built flights of steps known as Ghāts, at
the foot of which pilgrims bathe, and dead bodies are burnt. The south
bank opposite lies low and is not sacred. The word Ghāt is identical with
the name applied geographically to the west and east brinks of the Deccan
Plateau.
Cawnpore is the chief inland manufacturii g city of India, contrasted
## p. 13 (#43) ##############################################
I]
UNITED PROVINCES : CENTRAL INDIA AGENCY
13
in all its ways with Benares. But none of these cities are really great, when
compared with the population of the United Provinces. Lucknow is the
largest, and has only a quarter of a million inhabitants. Notwithstanding
the great changes now in progress, India still presents in most parts essen-
tially the same aspect as in long past centuries.
If there be one part of India which we may think of as the shrine of
shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in the trian-
gle of cities – Benares and Patna on the Ganges, and Gayā some fifty miles
south of Patna. Benares has been a focus of Hinduism from very early
times. Patna was the capital of the chief Gangetic kingdom more than two
thousand years ago when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, first of the
westerns, travelled thus far into the east. Gayā was the spot where Buddha,
seeking to reform Hinduism some five hundred years before Christ, obtained
‘enlightenment, and then migrated to teach at Benares, or rather at
Sārnāth, now in ruins, three or four miles north of the present Benares.
The peoples of all the vast Indian and Chinese world, from Karāchi to
Pekin and Tokyo, look to this little group of cities as the centre of holiness,
whether they be followers of Brahmā or of Buddha.
The language of the United Provinces and of considerable districts
to east, south, and west of them, is Hindi, the tongue of modern India
most directly connected with ancient Sanskrit. Hindi is now spoken by a
hundred million people in all the north centre of India. It is the language
not only of Bihār and the United Provinces, but also of Delhi and of a
wide district in Central India drained by the Chambal and Son rivers.
Other tongues of similar origin are spoken in the regions around – Bengali
to the east, Marāthī and Gujarātī to the south-west beyond the Ganges
basin, and Punjābi to the north-west. Away to the south, beyond the limit
of the Sanskrit tongues, in the Province of Madras and neighbouring
areas, are languages wholly alien from Sanskrit. They differ from Hindi,
Bengali, Marāthī, Gujarātī, and Punjābi much as the Turkish and Hunga-
rian languages differ from the group of allied Indo-European tongues spoken
in Western Europe. These southern Indian tongues are known as Dravidian.
The most important of them are Telugu, spoken by twenty millions, and
Tamil spoken by fifteen millions. The Dravidian south, however, and the
Aryan north and centre agree generally in holding some form of Hinduism
or Islām.
Within the central hilis there is a wide district drained north-eastward
into the Jumna-Ganges chiefly by the rivers Chambal and Son. This district,
much less fruitful than the plain of Hindustān, because less abundantly
watered, ard composed of rocky ground instead of alluvium, is ruled by
native chiefs. The British suzerainty is exercised under the Viceroy by the
Central Indian Agency. Of the chiefs of Central India the most important
a
## p. 14 (#44) ##############################################
14
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
9
are Sindhia and Holkar, two Marāthās ruling Hindi populations. Sindhia's
capital, Gwalior, lies a little south of Agra. It is dominated by an isolated
rock fort, flat topped and steep sided, more than three hundred feet in height.
Indore, Holkar's capital, lies in the land of Mālwā, on high ground
about the sources of the Chambal river, a considerable distance south of
Gwalior. In the neighbourhood is Mhow, one of the chief cantonments of
the Indian army, placed on the high ground for climatic reasons, like Ban-
galore in southern India.
The long upward slope to the Chambal headstreams ends on the sum-
mit of the Vindhya range, a high brink facing southward. From east to
west along the foot of the Vindhya face runs the sacred river Narbadā in
a deeply trenched valley. Thus the Narbadā has a course at right angles
to the northward flowing Chambal streams on the heights above. The Son
river occupies almost the same line of valley as the Narbadā, but flows
north-eastward into the Ganges. On the south side of the Narbadā valley
is the Sātpurā range, parallel with the Vindhya brink, and beyond this is
the Tāpti river, shorter than the Narbadā, but flowing westward with a
course generally parallel to that of the sacred river. The Narbadā and
Tāpti form broad alluvial flats before they enter the side of the shallow
Gulf of Cambay. South of the Tāpti begins the Deccan Plateau.
Thus a line of hills and valleys crosses India obliquely from Rājmahāl
to the Gulf of Cambay, and divides the rivers of the Indian Upland into
three systems. North of the Vindhya brink, over an area as large as
Germany, the drainage descends north-eastward to the Jumna-Ganges.
Between the Vindhya range and the edge of the Deccan Plateau are the two
exceptional rivers, Narbadā and Tāpti, flowing westward in deeply trench-
ed valleys. From the Western Ghāts, and from the hills which cross India
south of the Tāpti and Son to Rājmahāl, three great rivers flow southward
and eastward to the Bay of Bengal - the Mahānadi, Godāvari, and Kistna.
The area drained by these three streams of the plateau is a third of India.
The first 'factory' of the English East India Company was at Surat
on the lower Tāpti, but Bombay, two hundred miles farther south, long ago
supplanted Surat as the chief centre of European influence in Western
India. The more northern town had an easy road of access to the interior
by the Tāpti valley, but the silt at the river mouth made it difficult of ap-
proach from the sea. Bombay offered the security of an island, and has a
magnificent harbour between the island and the mainland, far from the
mouth of any considerable stream.
Two new facts have of recent years altered all the relations of India
with the cuter world, and have vitally changed the conditions of internal
government as compared with those prevailing even as late as the Mutiny.
The first of these facts was the opening of the Suez Canal, and the second
## p. 15 (#45) ##############################################
I]
BOMBAY
15
>
was the construction, and as regards main lines the virtual completion, of
the Indian railway system. Formerly shipping came round the Cape of
Good Hope, and it was as easy to steer a course for Calcutta as for
Bombay. To-day only bulky cargo is taken from Suez and Aden round the
southern point of India through the Bay of Bengal to Calcutta. The fast
mail boats run to Bombay, and thence the railways diverge south-eastward,
north-eastward, and northward to all the frontiers of the Empire. Only
the Burmese railways remain for the present a detached system. But in
regard to tonnage of traffic Calcutta is still the first port of India, for the
country which lies in rear of it-Bengal, Bihār, and the United Pro
vinces - contains more than a hundred million people.
From Bombay inland runs the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The
line branches a short distance from the coast, striking on the one hand
south-eastward in the direction of Madras, and on the other hand north-
eastward in the direction of Allahābād on the East Indian Railway. Each
week, a few hours after the arrival of the mail steamer at Bombay, three
express trains leave the Victoria Station of that city. One of them is bound
south-eastward for Madras. The second runs north-eastward to Allahābād,
and then on to Howrah for Calcutta. The third also runs north-eastward,
but diverges northward from the Calcutta route to Agra and Delhi. When
the Government of India is at Simla the last-mentioned train continues
beyond Delhi to the foot of the mountains. The time taken to Madras is
twenty-six hours, to Calcutta thirty-six hours, and to Delhi twenty-seven
hours. Recently a more direct line has been made from Bombay to
Calcutta which does not pass through Allahābād, but through Nāgpur. It
traverses a hilly country, much forested and relatively thinly peopled, in
the
upper
basins of the Godāvari and Mahānadi rivers.
The two lines of the Great Indian Peninsula system approach one
another from Allahābād and from Madras at an angle. They are carried
separately down the steep mountain edge of the Deccan Plateau by two
passes, the Thalghāt and the Borghāt, which have put the skill of engineers
to the test. The junction is in the narrow. coastal plain at the foot of the
mountains. Thence the rails pass by a bridge over a sea strait into Salsette
Island, and by a second bridge over a second strait into Bombay Island.
The island of Bombay is about twelve miles long from north to south.
At its southern end it projects into the southward Colāba Point and the
sonth-westward Malabar Point, between which, facing the open sea, is Back
Bay. The harbour, set with hilly islets, lies between Bombay and the main-
land, the entry being from the south round Colāba Point. Bombay is now
a very fine city, but like the other great seaports of India, it is new-as time
goes in the immemorial East. Calcutta was already great when Bombay
was but a small place, for a riverway extends through densely peopled plains
a
## p. 16 (#46) ##############################################
16
[CA.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
a
for a thousand miles inland from Calcutta, whereas the horizon of
Bombay is barred beyond the harbour by the mountain face of the Western
Ghāts. The real greatness of Bombay came only with the opening of the
Suez Canal, and of the railway lines up the Borghāt and the Thalghāt.
The train works up the Ghāts from Bombay through thick forests,
and if it be the rainy season past rushing waterfalls, until it surmounts
the brink top and comes out on to the plain of the Deccan table-land in
the relative drought of the upper climate. The Western Deccan in rear of
Bombay constitutes the Marāthā country. The Marāthās are the southern-
most of the peoples of Indo-European speech in India. Their homeland
on the plateau, round the city of Poona, now forms the main portion of
the Province of Bombay. The landscape of the plateau lies widely open,
studded here and there with table-topped mountains, not unlike the kopjes
of South Africa. These steep-sided isolated mountain blocks have often
served as strongholds in warfare.
South-eastward of Poona, but still on the plateau country, is Hyderā.
bād, the largest native state in India. It is ruled under British suzerainty
by the Nizām. The majority of the Nizām's subjects speak Telugu and are
of Hindu faith, but the Nizām is a Muhammadan. Near his capital, Hyderā.
bād, is Golconda Fort, rising above the open plateau with flat top and cliff
sides. The name of Golconda has become proverbial for immensity of wealth.
Formerly it was the Indian centre of diamond cutting and polishing.
The wide Deccan Plateau is in most parts of no great fertility. Over
large areas it is fitted rather for the pasture of horses and cattle than for
the plough. Agriculture is best in the river valleys. But there is one large
district lying on the plateau top east of Bombay, and on the hill tops north
and south of the Narbadā valley which is of a most singular fertility. The
usually granitic and schistose rocks of the plateau have here been overlaid
by great sheets of basaltic lava. Detached portions of these lava beds form
the table tops of most of the kopje-like hills. The lava disintegrates into a
tenacious black soil, which does not fall into dust during the dry season,
but cracks into great blocks which remain moist. As the dry season
advances these blocks shrink, and the cracks grow broader, so that finally
it is dangerous for a horse to gallop over the plain, lest his hoof should be
caught in one of these fissures.
This remarkable earth is known as the Black Cotton Soil. The cotton
seeds are sown after the rains, and as the young plant grows a clod of earth
forms round its roots which is separated from the next similar clod by
cracks. Wheat is grown on this soil in the same manner, being sown after
the rainy season and reaped in the beginning of the hot season, so that
from beginning to end the crop is produced without exposure to rain, being
drawn up by the brilliant sunshine, and fed at the root by the moisture
preserved in the heavy soil.
## p. 17 (#47) ##############################################
I]
CENTRAL PROVINCES : BARODA
17
Thus in the part of India, which lies immediately east, north-east, and
north of Bombay the lowlands and the uplands are alike fertile - the
lowlands round Ahmadābād and Baroda, and in the valleys of the Narbadā
and Tāpti rivers, because of their alluvial-soil, and the uplands round
Poona and Indore because they are clothed with the volcanic cotton soil.
The east coast of India, where it trends north-eastward from the
mouths of the Godāvarī river to those of the Mahānadi, is backed by great
hill and forest districts, tenanted by big game and by uncivilised tribes of
men. The Eastern Ghāts are here higher than elsewhere, and they approach
near to the coast, so that their foot plain affords only a relatively narrow
selvage of populated country. Through this coastal plain the railway is
carried from Calcutta to Madras.
The reason for the primitive character of this part of the country, and
of many of the districts which extend northward through the hills almost to
the valley of the Son, is to be found in the conditions of soil and climate.
There have been no volcanic outpourings on the gneissic and granitic rocks
hereabouts, and the summer cyclones from the Bay of Bengal strike most
frequently upon this coast and travel inland in a north-westerly direction.
Some of the Gond tribes of the forests, who may perhaps be described as the
aborigines of India, still speak tongues which appear to be older than Dra-
vidian. In the more fertile parts of the upper Mahānadi and Godāvari
basins are comprised the Central Provinces of the direct British Raj, whose
capital is at Nāgpur. The Central Provinces have an area comparable
with that of Italy, though their population is but one-third the Italian
population. They must not be confused with the Central Indian Agency.
We return to the west coast. The Bombay and Baroda Railway runs
out of Bombay northward and does not ascend the Ghāts, but follows the
coastal plain across the lower Tāpti and Narbadā rivers to Baroda, and
thence on, across the alluvial flats of the Mahī and neighbouring small
rivers, to Ahmadābād. The Gaikwār of Baroda governs a small but very
rich and populous lowland. His people speak Gujarātī, though the Gaikwār
is a Marātbā, like Sindhia and Holkar. His territories are so mixed with
those of the Bombay Presidency that the map of the plains round Ahmadā.
bād and Baroda city is like that part of Scotland which is labelled Ross
and Cromarty. Ahmadābād was once the most important Muhammadan
city of Western India, and contains many fine architectural monuments,
surpassed only by those of the great Mughal capitals, Delhi and Agra.
Westward of the alluvial plains of Gujarāt, and beyond the Gulf of
Cambay, is the peninsula of Kāthiāwār, a low plateau, lower considerably
than the Deccan, but clothed in part with similar sheets of fertile volcanic
soil. Baroda has territory in Kāthiāwār, as has also the Presidency of
Bombay, but in addition there are a multitude of petty chieftainships.
## p. 18 (#48) ##############################################
18
[CH.
THE SUB-COVTIVENT OF INDIA
North of Kāthiāwār is another smaller hill district, constituting the island
of Cutch. The Rann of Cutch, a marshy area communicating with the sea,
separates the island from the mainland. Apart from Travancore and Cochin
in the far south, Kāthiāwār and Cutch are the only parts of India where
Feudal States come down to the coast. There are a few diminutive coas-
tal settlements belonging to the French and Portuguese governments, but
these are too insignificant to break the general rule that the shores of India
are directly controlled by the British Raj. The largest of the foreign
European settlements is at Goa on the west coast south of Bombay. Goa
has a fine harbour but the Ghāts block the roads inland.
We have now completed the itinerary of the inner parts of India.
What remains to be described is the north-western land of passage where
India merges with Irān and Turān-Persia and Turkestān. The Himālayan
barrier, and the desert plateau of Tibet in rear of it, so shield the Indian
world from the north and north-east that the medieval Buddhist pilgrims
from China to Gayā were in the habit of travelling westward by the desert
routes north of Tibet as far as the river Oxus, and then southward over
the Hindu Kush. Thus they came into India from the north-west, having
circumvented Tibet rather than cross it. Great mountain ranges articu-
late with the Himālayas at their eastern end, and extend into the roots of
the peninsula of Further India. Thus the direct way from China into
India by the east is obstructed. To-day as we have seen the railway systems
of Burma and India are still separate.
The centre of north-western India is occupied by a group of large
Native States, known collectively as Rājputāna. Through Rājputāna,
diagonally from the south-west north-eastward, there runs the range of
the Arāvalli hills for a distance of fully three hundred miles. The north-
eastern extremity of the Arāvallis is the Ridge of Delhi on the Jumna river.
At their southern end, but separated from the main range by a hollow, is
the isolated Mount Abu, the highest point in Rājputāna, standing up con-
spicuously from the surrounding plains to a height of some five thousand
feet.
East of the Arāvallis, in the basin of the Chambal tributary of the
Jumna-Ganges, is the more fertile part of Rājputāna, with the cities of
Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, and the old fortress of Chitor. Beyond the
Chambal river itself, but within its basin, are Gwalior and Indore, the seats
of the princes Sindhia and Holkar. But Gwalior and Indore belong to the
Central Indian Agency and not to Rājputāna.
West of the Arāvalli hills is the great Indian desert, prolonged seaward
by the salt and partly tidal marsh of the Rann of Cutch. In oases of this
desert are some of the smaller Rājput capitals, notably Bikaner. Beyond the
desert flows the great Indus river through a land which is dry, except for the
## p. 19 (#49) ##############################################
I]
THE GREAT INDIAN DESERT
19
irrigated strips beside the river banks and in the delta of Sind below
Hyderābād. South of Mount Abu streams descend from the end of the
Arāvalli hills to the Gulf of Cambay through the fertile lowland of
Ahmadābād, sunk like a land strait between the plateau of Kāthiāwār to
the west and the ends of the Vindhya and Sātpurā ranges to the east. The
Arāvallis are the last of the Central Indian hills towards the north-west.
Outside the Arāvallis the Indus valley spreads in wide low-lying alluvial
plains, like those of the Ganges, but dry.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance to India of the
existence of the great desert of Rājputāna. The ocean to the south-east
and south-west of the peninsula was at most times an ample protection
against overseas invasion, until the Europeans rounded the Cape of Good
Hope. The vast length of the Himālaya, backed by the desert plateau of
Tibet, was an equal defence on the north side. Only to the north-west does
India lie relatively open to the incursions of the warlike peoples of Western
and Central Asia. It is precisely in that direction that the Indian desert
presents a waterless void extending north-eastward from the Rann of
Cutch, for some 400 miles, with a breadth of 150 miles. In rear of the
desert a minor bulwark is constituted by the Arāvalli range.
Only between the north-eastern extremity of the desert and the foot
of the Himālayas below Simla is there an easy gateway into India. No
river traverses this gateway, which'is on the divide between the systems
of the Indus and the Jumna-Ganges. Delhi stands on the west bank of
the Jumna at the northern extremity of the Arāvallis, just where the
invading forces from the north-west came through to the navigable waters.
1 Aided by such powerful natural conditions the Rājputs--the word
means 'sons of princes’– were during many centuries the defenders of India
against invasion by the direct road to Delhi. Unable at last to stem the
tide of Musalmān conquest, they have maintained themselves on the
southern flank of the advance, and to-day some of their princely families
claim to trace their lineage back in unbroken descent from ancestors before
the Christian era. The descendants of conquerors who had won their
kingdoms with the sword, they remain even now proud aristocratic clans
holding a predominant position in the midst of a population far more
numerous than themselves.
Narrow gauge lines branch through Rājputāna in the direction of
Delhi, past the foot of Mount Abu, which rises like an island of granite
from amid the sandy desert. The top of Abu is a small rugged plateau,
measuring fourteen miles by four, in the midst of which is the Gem Lake, a
most beautiful sheet of water, set with rocky islands and overhung with great
masses of rock. The house of the Resident of Rājpuātna is on its shore, for
Mount Abu is the centre from which Rājputāna is controlled, so far as is
## p. 20 (#50) ##############################################
20
[CH,
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
one
>
necessary, by the advice of the Viceroy. The summit of Abu also bears
some famous ruins of Jain temples.
Some of the most beautiful cities of India are in Rājputāna. Udaipur
stands beside a lake, with its palaces and ghāts reflected in the clear
waters. Ajmer, now under direct British rule, is set in a hollow among
low hills, and is surrounded by a wall. Here also there is a lake, and upon
its banks are marble pavilions. Jaipur is a walled city, surrounded by
rocky hills crowned with forts. The streets are broad, and cross
another at right angles.
The Rājputāna Agency is as large as the whole British Isles, but it
contains only about ten million people, since a great part of it is desert.
The Central Indian Agency is about as large as England and Scotland
without Wales. It has a population only a little smaller than that of
Rājputāna. We may measure the significance of the more important
chiefs in these two Agencies by the fact that Sindhia rules a country little
less, either in area or population, than the kingdom of Scotland.
From Rājputāna we come to Delhi, which may truly be called the
historical focus of all India ; for, as we have seen, it commands the gate-
way which leads from the Punjab plain to Hindustān, the plain of the
Jumna and the Ganges. Here the fate of invasions from India from the
north-west has been decided. Some have either never reached this gate-
way or have failed to force their way through it. The conquests of Darius
in the latter part of the sixth century B. C. and of Alexander the Great in the
years 327-5 B. C. were not carried beyond the Punjab plain. Such direct in-
fluence as they exercised in modifying the character of Indian civilisation
must, therefore, have been confined to this region. On the other hand, the
invasions which have succeeded in passing the gateway and in effecting a per-
manent settlement in Hindustān have determined the history of the whole
sub-continent. These belong to two groups, the Āryan and the Musalmān,
distinguished by religion, language, and type of civilisation, and separated
from each other by an interval of probably some two thousand years.
For the chronology of the Aryan conquests, which may well have
extended over many generations or even centuries, we possess no certain
dates. All the knowledge which we can hope to gain of the history of
.
this remote period must be gleaned from the study of the apcient scrip-
tures of these Āryan invaders.
The course of Musalmān invasion, which entailed consequences of per-
haps equal importance, may be traced with greater precision. If we reckon
from the Arab conquest of Sind in 712 A. D. to the establishment of the Sul-
tanate of Delhi in 1193 A. D. , we shall see that nearly five centuries elapsed
before Musalmān conquest spread from the confines through the Delhi
gateway into the very 'heart of India. During this long period it was held in
## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################
I]
DELHI
21
check by the Rājput princes ; and their ultimate failure to impede its
progress was due to internal discord which has always been the bane of
feudal confederations.
So Delhi, founded by the Rājputs in the neighbourhood of Indra-
prastha (the modern Indarpat), the capital of the Kurus in the heroic ages
celebrated in India's great epic poem, the Mahābhārata, passed into the
hands of the invading Musalmāns and with it passed the predominant
power in India.
What Benares, and Patna, and Gayā were and are to the Brāhman
and Buddhist civilisations native to India, what Calcutta, and Madras, and
Bombay, and Karāchi are to the English from over the seas, that were
Delhi and Agra to the Musalmāns entering India from the north-west.
More than three centuries and a quarter later another Musalmān
invasion, more effective than the former, came into India by way of Delhi.
The Mughals or Mongols of Central Asia had been converted to Islām, and
in the time of our King Henry VIII they refounded the Musalmān power
at Delhi. For a hundred and fifty years, from the time of our Queen
Elizabeth to that of our Queen Anne, a series of Mughal emperors, from
Humāyān to Aurangzeb, ruled in splendid state at Delhi over the greater
part of India. Agra, a hundred miles lower down the Jumna, became a
secondary or alternative capital, and in these two cities we have to-day
the supreme examples of Muhammadan architectural art.
More than sixty-two millions of the Indian population hold the faith
of Islām. They are scattered all over the land, usually in a minority, but
frequently powerful, for Jsām has given ruling chiefs to many districts
which are predominantly Hindu.
for the products of Burma are first and foremost rice, and then timber,
especially great logs of teak, harder than oak, and then petroleum. The
work of the port and mills is largely in the hands of Indians and Chinese.
The Burmese are chiefly occupied with work in the fields.
The geography of Burma is of a simple design. It consists of four
parallel ranges of mountain striking southward, and three long intervening
9
## p. 6 (#36) ###############################################
6
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
ocean, and
valleys. The easternmost range separates Burma and the drainage to the
Indian ocean from Siam and the drainage to the Pacific ocean. This great
divide is continued through the Malay peninsula almost to Singapore, only
one degree north of the equator. The westernmost range divides Burma
from India proper, and then follows the west coast of Burma to Cape
Negrais. This range is continued over the bed of the
reappears
in the long chain of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In its entirety it
has a graceful waving lie upon the map, curving first to the west, then to
the east, and then again to the west. The two intervening ranges separate
the Salween, Sittang, and Irrawaddy valleys.
The valley of the Salween is less deeply trenched between its bound-
ing ranges than are the other two, and therefore has a steeply descending
course broken by rapids, and is of small value for navigation. At its mouth
is the port of Moulmein. The valley of the Sittang, which is a relatively
short river, prolongs the upper valley of the Irrawaddy, for the latter
stream makes a westward bend at Mandalay, and passes by a transverse
gap through one of the parallel ridges. Beyond this gap it bends southward
again, accepting the direction of its tributary, the Chindwin. The railway
from Rangoon to Mandalay runs through the Sittang valley and does not
follow the Irrawaddy.
The delta of the Irrawaddy bears the name of Pegu or Lower Burma.
The region round Mandalay is Upper Burma. The coast land beyond the
westernmost of the mountain ranges is known as Arakan. The coast land
south of the mouth of the Salween, beset with an archipelago of beautiful
islands, is known as Tenasserim.
The train from Rangoon to Mandalay crosses the broad levels of the
delta, passing through endless rice or 'paddy' fields. Only the ears of the
grain are lopped off ; the straw is burnt as it stands. The Burmans are
mostly yeomen, each owning his cattle and doing his own work in the
fields. Beyond the delta the railway follows the Sittang river, with hill
ranges low on the eastern and western horizons. At Mandalay it comes
through to the Irrawaddy again.
There is a bill in the northern suburbs of Mandalay, several hundred
feet high, from which you may look over the city. Even when seen from
this height the houses are so buried in foliage that the place appears like a
wood of green trees. It has a population of about two hundred thousand,
so that it is now smaller than upstart Rangoon. Mandalay is the last of
three capitals a few miles apart, which at different times in the past century
were the seat of the Burmese kings. Amarapura, a few miles to the south,
was the capital until 1822. Ava, a few miles to the west, was the capital
from 1822 to 1837.
## p. 7 (#37) ###############################################
I]
BHAMO: PAGAN
7
The navigation of the Irrawaddy extends for nine hundred miles from
the sea to Bhamo, near the border of the Chinese Empire. As the steamer
goes northward from Mandalay the banks are at first flat, with here and
there a group of white pagodas. Great rafts of bamboo and teak logs float
down the river. At Kathā the flat country is left, for the river there comes
from the east through grand defiles, with wooded fronts descending to the
water's edge. Bhamo lies low along the river bank beyond the narrows.
It is only twenty miles from the Chinese frontier. Many of its houses are
raised high upon piles, because of the river floods. Until recently the
Kachin billmen often raided the caravans passing from Bhamo into China.
To realise the antiquity and the splendour of early Burmese civilisa-
tion we must descend the Irrawaddy below Mandalay to Pagan. There
for some ten miles beside the river, and for three miles back from its bank,
are the ruins of a great capital, which flourished about the time of the
Norman Conquest of England. From the centre of the ruined city there
are pagodas and temples in every direction.
Pagan is situated in what is knɔwn as the dry belt of Burma, the
typical vegetation of which is a tall growth of cactus. In Burma the winds
of summer and autumn blow from the south-west, as they do in southern
India. They bring moisture from the sea, which falls in heavy rain on the
west side of the mountains and over the delta. At Rangoon there is an
annual rainfall of more than one hundred inches, or more than three times
the rainfall of London. At Pagan, however, lying deep in the Irrawaddy
valley under the lee of the continuous Arakan range, the rainfall is small,
as little as twenty inches in the year, and the climate is hot and evapora-
tion rapid.
Elsewhere in Burma are either rich crops, or the most luxuriant
forests of tall leafy trees, full of game and haunted by poisonous snakes.
Wild peacocks come from the woods to feed on the rice when it is ripe, and
tigers are not unknown in the villages. Only a few years ago a tiger was
shot on one of the ledges of the great pagoda in Rangoon. Notwithstanding
the age of its civilisation Burma is still subject to a masterful nature.
Moreover civilisation is confined to the immediate valleys and delta of the
Irrawaddy and Salween. On the forested hills are wild tribes, akin to the
Burmese in speech and physique—the Shans in the east, the Kachins in the
north, and the Chips in the west. Burma contains but twelve million
people – Burmese, Chinese, Hindus, and the hill tribes.
From Burma the passage to Bengal is by steamer, for the Burmese
and Indian railway systems have not yet been connected. The heart of
Bengal is one of the largest deltas in the world, a great plain of moist silt
brought down by the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra from the Himālaya
mountains. But hill country is included along the borders of the province.
## p. 8 (#38) ###############################################
8
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THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
,
. .
>
* To the north the map shows the high tableland of Tibet, edged by the
Himalaya range, whose southern slopes descend steeply, but with many
foothills, to the level low-lying plains of the great rivers. Eastward of
Bengal there is a mountainous belt, rising to heights of more than six
thousand feet and densely forested, which separates the Irrawaddy valley
of Burma from the plains of India. These mountains throw out a spúr
westward, which rises a little near its end into the Gāro hills. The deeply
trenched, relatively narrow valley of the Brahmaputra, known as Assam,
lies between the Gāro hills and the Himalayas. The southward drainage
from the Gāro hills forms a delta io plain, extending nearly to the port of
Chittagong. This plain, traversed by the Meghna river which gathers water
from the Gāro and Khāsi range, is continuous with the delta of Bengal
proper.
To the west of Bengal is another hill spur, bearing the name of Rāj.
mahāl, which is the 'north-eastern point of the plateau of central and
southern India. A broad lowland gateway is left between the Gāro and
Rājmahāl bills, and through this opening the Brahmaputra and Ganges
rivers turn, southward and converge gradually until they join with the
Meghnā to form a vast estuary. The country west of this estuary is the
Bengal delta, traversed by many minor ehannels, which branch from the
right bank of the Ganges before the confluence with the Meghnă. East of
the estuary is that other deltaic land whose silt is derived from the south
front of the Gāro hills. It is said that the highest rainfall in the world
occurs in those hills, when the monsoon sweeps northward from the Bay of
Bengal, and blows against their face. The rainfall on a single day in the
rainy season is sometimes as great as the whole annual rainfall of London.
Little wonder that there is abundance of silt for the formation of the fertile
plains below!
The approach to the coast of Bengal, as may be concluded from this
geographical description, presents little of interest. At the entrance to the
Hooghly river, the westernmost of the deltaic channels, are broad
grey
mud
banks, with here and there a palm tree. From time to time, as the ship
passes some more solid ground, there are villages of thatched huts, sur-
rounded by tall green banana plantations.
Calcutta, the chief port and largest town of modern India, is placed
no less than eighty, miles up the Hooghly on its eastern bank.
The large
industrial town of Howrah stands opposite on the western bank. Not a
hill is in sight round all the horizon. Only, the great dome of the post
office rises white in the sunshine. Calcutta is connected with the jute mills
and engineering works of Howrah by a single bridge. Below this bridge is
the port, always thronged with shipping. . .
Calcutta has grown round Fort William as a nucleus. The present
Fort, with its outworks, occupies a space of nearly a thousand acres on the
::. .
## p. 9 (#39) ###############################################
I]
BENGAL
9
east bank of the Hooghly below the Howrah Bridge. To the north, east,
and south, forming a glacis for the fort, is a wide green plain, the Maidān,
and beyond this is the city. The European quarter lies to the east of the
Maidān. The government offices, and beyond them the great native city,
lie to the north. Calcutta with more than a million inhabitants exceeds
Glasgow in size, and is the second city of the British Empire.
Three hundred miles away to the north, approached from Calcutta by
the East Bengal Railway, is Darjeeling, the hill station of Calcutta, as Oota-
camund is of Madras. The railway traverses the dead level of the plain,
with its thickly set villages and tropical vegetation. There are some seven
hundred and fifty thousand villages in India, and they contain about ninety
per cent. of the total population. The Province of Bengal has a population
equal to that of Great Britain and Ireland, but concentrated on an area less
than that of Great Britain without Ireland. Yet it contains only one great
city, as greatness of cities is measured in the British Islands.
Midway from Calcutta to Darjeeling the Ganges is crossed.
passage occupies about twenty minutes from one low-lying bank to the
other. Then the journey is resumed through the rice fields, with their
.
clumps of graceful bamboo, until at last the hills become visible across the
northern horizon. The train runs into a belt of jungle at the foot of the
first ascent. Passengers change to a mountain railway, which carries them
up the steep front, with many a turn and twist. On the lower slopes is
tall forest of teak and other great trees, hung thickly with creepers. Pres.
ently the timber becomes smaller, and tea plantations are passed with
trim rows of green bushes. Far below, at the foot of the steep forest,
spreads to the southern horizon the vast cultivated plain. Finally trees of
the fir tribe take the place of leafy trees, and the train attains to the sharp
ridge top on which is placed Darjeeling, a settlement of detached villas in
compounds, hanging on the slopes.
Darjeeling is about seven thousand feet above sea-level, on an east
and west ridge, with the plains to the south and the gorge of the Rangīt
river to the north. In the early morning, in fortunate weather, the visitor
may gaze northward upon one of the most glorious scenes in the world.
Over the deep valley at his feet, still dark in the shade, and over successive
ridge tops beyond, rises the mighty snow range of the Himālayas, fifty miles
away, with the peak of Kinchinjunga, more than five miles high, dominating
the landscape. Behind Kinchinjunga, a little to the west, and visible from
Tiger hill, near Darjeeling, though not from Darjeeling itself, is Mount
Everest, the highest mountain in the world, more than five and a half miles
high. Across the vast chasm and bare granite summits 'in the foreground,
the glittering wall of white mountains seems to hang in the sky as though
belonging to another world. The broad distance, and the sudden leap to
>
## p. 10 (#40) ##############################################
10
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
eur.
supreme height, give to the scene a mysterious and almost visionary grand.
It is, however, only occasionally that the culminating peaks can be
seen, for they are often veiled in cloud.
The people of Sikkim, the native state in the hills beyond Darjeeling,
are highlanders of Mongolian stock and not Indian. They are of Buddhist
religion like the Burmans, and not Hindu or Muhammadan like the inhabi-
tants of the plains. They are small sturdy folk, with oblique cut eyes and
a Chinese expression, and they have the easy-going humorous character of
the Burmans, though not the delicacy and civilisation of those inhabitants
of the sunny lowland.
It is an interesting fact that these hill people should belong to the
race which spreads over the vast Chinese Empire. That race here advan-
ces to the last hill brinks which overlook the Indian lowland. The politi-
cal map of this part of India illustrates a parallel fact. While the plains
are administered directly by British officials, the mountain slopes descend-
ing to them are ruled by native princes, whose territories form a strip along
the northern boundary of India. North of Assam and Bengal we have in
succession, from east to west in the belt of hill country, the lands of Bhu.
tān, Sikkim, and Nepāl. From Nepāl are recruited the Gurkha regiments
of the Indian army, the Gurkhas being a race of the same small and sturdy
hill men as the people of Sikkim. In other words, they are of a Mongoloid
stock, though of Hindu religion.
The Ranjit river drains from the hills of Darjeeling, and from the
snow mountains beyond, into a tributary of the Ganges. Several hundred
such torrents burst in long succession through deep portals in the Himāla.
yan foot-hills and feed the great rivers of the plain. These torrents are
perennial, for they originate in the melting of the glaciers, and the Himāla.
yan glaciers cover a vast area, being fed by the monsoon snows. Nearly all
the agricultural wealth of northern India owes its origin to the summer or
oceanic monsoon, which beats against the Himālayan mountain edge. That
edge, gracefully curving upon the map, extends through fifteen hundred
miles. The streams which descend from it in long series gather into the
rivers Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Indus.
The valley of the Brabmaputra forms the province of Assam. Not-
withstanding its vast natural resources, Assam is a country which, at most
periods of its history, has remained outside the Indian civilisation. Even
to-day it has but a sparse population and a relatively small commercial
development, for it lies on the through road no whither. High and difficult
mountains close in the eastern end of its great valley.
The geography of Assam, though very simple, is on a very grand
scale. The Tsan-po river rises high on the plateau of Tibet northward of
Lucknow. For more than seven hundred miles it flows eastward over the
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)
I]
HINDUSTAN
11
>
plateau in rear of the Himalayan peaks. Then it turns sharply southward,
and descends from a great height steeply through a deep gorge, until it
emerges from the mountains at a level not a thousand feet above the sea.
At this point, turning westward, it forms the Brahmaputra, 'the son of
Brahmā, the Creator. ' The Brahmaputra flows for four hundred and fifty
miles westward through the valley of Assam, deeply trenched between the
snowy wall of the Himālayas on the one hand and the forested mountains
of the Burmese border and the Khāsi and Gāro hills on the other hand.
The river rolls down the valley in a vast sheet of water, depositing banks of
silt at the smallest obstruction. Islands form and reform, and broad chan-
nels break away from the main river in time of flood, and there is no attempt
to control them. The swamps on either hand are flooded in the rainy
season, till the lower valley is one broad shining sea, from which the hills
slope up on either side. The traffic on the river is maintained chiefly by
exports of tea and timber, and imports of rice for the labourers on the tea
estates. Some day, when great sums of money are available for capital
expenditure, the Brahmaputra will be controlled, and Assam will become
the seat of teeming production and a dense population. The Indian Empire
contains three hundred and fifteen million people, but it also contains some
of the chief virgin resources of the world.
Where the Brahmaputra bends southward round the foot of the Gāro
hills the valley of Assam opens to the plain of Bengal. Across that plain
westward, where the Ganges makes a similar southward bend round the
Rājmahāl hills, Bengal merges with the great plain of Hindustān, which
extends westward and north-westward along the foot of the Himālayas for
some seven hundred miles to the point where the Jumna, westernmost of
the Gangetic tributaries, leaves its mountain valley. Hindustān begins
with a breadth of about a hundred miles between the Rājmahāl hills and
the northern mountains, spreads gradually to a breadth of two hundred
miles from the foot-hills of the Himālayas to the first rise of the Central
Indian hills, and then narrows again to a hundred miles where it merges
with the Punjab plain between the Ridge of Delhi and the Himālayas. The
great river Jumna-Ganges streams southward from the mountains across
the head of the plain to Delhi, and then gradually bends south-eastward
and eastward along that edge of the plain which is remote from the moun-
tains, as though it were pinned against the foot of the Central hills by the
impact of the successive great tributaries from the north. Three of these
tributaries are the Upper Ganges itself, whose confluence is at Allahābād,
and the Gogrā and the Gandak which enter above Patna. The Jumna-
Ganges receives from the south the Chambal and Son, long rivers but com-
paratively poor in water.
Access to the plains of Hindustān was formerly by the navigation of
## p. 12 (#42) ##############################################
12
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
the Ganges and its tributaries. Then the Grand Trunk Road was made from
Calcutta to Delhi. More recently the East Indian Railway has been built
from Bengal to the Punjab. Both the road and the railway avoid the great
bend round the hills by crossing the upland to the west of Rājmahāl. The
road descends to the Ganges at Patna, but the railway at Benaras, where it
crosses by the lowest bridge over the Ganges.
Two great provinces divide the plain of Hindustān between them. In
the east is Bihār, with its capital at Patna ; in the west are the United
Provinces of Agra and Outh with their capital at Allahābād. For adminis-
trative purposes Bihār is now joined with Orissa, the deltaic plain of the
Mahānadi river on the coast of Bengal. A broad belt of sparsely populated
hills separates Bihār from Orissa, whereas each of these fertile lowlands
opens freely to Bengal, the one along the Ganges, and the other along the
coast.
When we go from Bengal into Bihār, or from Bihār into the United
Provinces it is as though we crossed from one to another of the great conti.
nental states of Europe. The population of Bengal is larger than that of
France. The population of Bihār and Orissa is equivalent to that of Italy.
The population of the United Provinces is nearly equal to that of Germany
since the War.
Five considerable cities focus the great population of the United
Provinces - Allahābād, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Agra, and Benares. Allahābād
is built in the angle of confluence between the Jumna and the Ganges. A
hundred miles above Allahābād, on the right or south bank of the Ganges,
is the city of Cawnpore, and on the opposite or north bark extends the old
kingdom of Oudh, with Lucknow for its capital, situated some forty miles
north-east of Cawnpore. Agra, which gives its name to all that part of the
United Provinces which did not formerly belong to Oudh, is situated on the
right or south bank of the Jumna, a hundred and fifty miles west of
Lucknow. All these distances lie over the dead level of the plain, dusty and
like a desert in the dry season, but green and fertile after the rains. Scat.
tered over the plain are innumerable villages in which dwell nineteen out
of twenty of the inhabitants of the United Provinces.
Eighty miles below Allahābād, on the north bank of the Ganges is
Benares, the most sacred city of the Hindus. Benares extends for four
miles along the bank of the river, which here descends to the water with a
steep brink. Down this brink are built flights of steps known as Ghāts, at
the foot of which pilgrims bathe, and dead bodies are burnt. The south
bank opposite lies low and is not sacred. The word Ghāt is identical with
the name applied geographically to the west and east brinks of the Deccan
Plateau.
Cawnpore is the chief inland manufacturii g city of India, contrasted
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I]
UNITED PROVINCES : CENTRAL INDIA AGENCY
13
in all its ways with Benares. But none of these cities are really great, when
compared with the population of the United Provinces. Lucknow is the
largest, and has only a quarter of a million inhabitants. Notwithstanding
the great changes now in progress, India still presents in most parts essen-
tially the same aspect as in long past centuries.
If there be one part of India which we may think of as the shrine of
shrines in a land where religion rules all life, it is to be found in the trian-
gle of cities – Benares and Patna on the Ganges, and Gayā some fifty miles
south of Patna. Benares has been a focus of Hinduism from very early
times. Patna was the capital of the chief Gangetic kingdom more than two
thousand years ago when the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, first of the
westerns, travelled thus far into the east. Gayā was the spot where Buddha,
seeking to reform Hinduism some five hundred years before Christ, obtained
‘enlightenment, and then migrated to teach at Benares, or rather at
Sārnāth, now in ruins, three or four miles north of the present Benares.
The peoples of all the vast Indian and Chinese world, from Karāchi to
Pekin and Tokyo, look to this little group of cities as the centre of holiness,
whether they be followers of Brahmā or of Buddha.
The language of the United Provinces and of considerable districts
to east, south, and west of them, is Hindi, the tongue of modern India
most directly connected with ancient Sanskrit. Hindi is now spoken by a
hundred million people in all the north centre of India. It is the language
not only of Bihār and the United Provinces, but also of Delhi and of a
wide district in Central India drained by the Chambal and Son rivers.
Other tongues of similar origin are spoken in the regions around – Bengali
to the east, Marāthī and Gujarātī to the south-west beyond the Ganges
basin, and Punjābi to the north-west. Away to the south, beyond the limit
of the Sanskrit tongues, in the Province of Madras and neighbouring
areas, are languages wholly alien from Sanskrit. They differ from Hindi,
Bengali, Marāthī, Gujarātī, and Punjābi much as the Turkish and Hunga-
rian languages differ from the group of allied Indo-European tongues spoken
in Western Europe. These southern Indian tongues are known as Dravidian.
The most important of them are Telugu, spoken by twenty millions, and
Tamil spoken by fifteen millions. The Dravidian south, however, and the
Aryan north and centre agree generally in holding some form of Hinduism
or Islām.
Within the central hilis there is a wide district drained north-eastward
into the Jumna-Ganges chiefly by the rivers Chambal and Son. This district,
much less fruitful than the plain of Hindustān, because less abundantly
watered, ard composed of rocky ground instead of alluvium, is ruled by
native chiefs. The British suzerainty is exercised under the Viceroy by the
Central Indian Agency. Of the chiefs of Central India the most important
a
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14
[CH.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
9
are Sindhia and Holkar, two Marāthās ruling Hindi populations. Sindhia's
capital, Gwalior, lies a little south of Agra. It is dominated by an isolated
rock fort, flat topped and steep sided, more than three hundred feet in height.
Indore, Holkar's capital, lies in the land of Mālwā, on high ground
about the sources of the Chambal river, a considerable distance south of
Gwalior. In the neighbourhood is Mhow, one of the chief cantonments of
the Indian army, placed on the high ground for climatic reasons, like Ban-
galore in southern India.
The long upward slope to the Chambal headstreams ends on the sum-
mit of the Vindhya range, a high brink facing southward. From east to
west along the foot of the Vindhya face runs the sacred river Narbadā in
a deeply trenched valley. Thus the Narbadā has a course at right angles
to the northward flowing Chambal streams on the heights above. The Son
river occupies almost the same line of valley as the Narbadā, but flows
north-eastward into the Ganges. On the south side of the Narbadā valley
is the Sātpurā range, parallel with the Vindhya brink, and beyond this is
the Tāpti river, shorter than the Narbadā, but flowing westward with a
course generally parallel to that of the sacred river. The Narbadā and
Tāpti form broad alluvial flats before they enter the side of the shallow
Gulf of Cambay. South of the Tāpti begins the Deccan Plateau.
Thus a line of hills and valleys crosses India obliquely from Rājmahāl
to the Gulf of Cambay, and divides the rivers of the Indian Upland into
three systems. North of the Vindhya brink, over an area as large as
Germany, the drainage descends north-eastward to the Jumna-Ganges.
Between the Vindhya range and the edge of the Deccan Plateau are the two
exceptional rivers, Narbadā and Tāpti, flowing westward in deeply trench-
ed valleys. From the Western Ghāts, and from the hills which cross India
south of the Tāpti and Son to Rājmahāl, three great rivers flow southward
and eastward to the Bay of Bengal - the Mahānadi, Godāvari, and Kistna.
The area drained by these three streams of the plateau is a third of India.
The first 'factory' of the English East India Company was at Surat
on the lower Tāpti, but Bombay, two hundred miles farther south, long ago
supplanted Surat as the chief centre of European influence in Western
India. The more northern town had an easy road of access to the interior
by the Tāpti valley, but the silt at the river mouth made it difficult of ap-
proach from the sea. Bombay offered the security of an island, and has a
magnificent harbour between the island and the mainland, far from the
mouth of any considerable stream.
Two new facts have of recent years altered all the relations of India
with the cuter world, and have vitally changed the conditions of internal
government as compared with those prevailing even as late as the Mutiny.
The first of these facts was the opening of the Suez Canal, and the second
## p. 15 (#45) ##############################################
I]
BOMBAY
15
>
was the construction, and as regards main lines the virtual completion, of
the Indian railway system. Formerly shipping came round the Cape of
Good Hope, and it was as easy to steer a course for Calcutta as for
Bombay. To-day only bulky cargo is taken from Suez and Aden round the
southern point of India through the Bay of Bengal to Calcutta. The fast
mail boats run to Bombay, and thence the railways diverge south-eastward,
north-eastward, and northward to all the frontiers of the Empire. Only
the Burmese railways remain for the present a detached system. But in
regard to tonnage of traffic Calcutta is still the first port of India, for the
country which lies in rear of it-Bengal, Bihār, and the United Pro
vinces - contains more than a hundred million people.
From Bombay inland runs the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. The
line branches a short distance from the coast, striking on the one hand
south-eastward in the direction of Madras, and on the other hand north-
eastward in the direction of Allahābād on the East Indian Railway. Each
week, a few hours after the arrival of the mail steamer at Bombay, three
express trains leave the Victoria Station of that city. One of them is bound
south-eastward for Madras. The second runs north-eastward to Allahābād,
and then on to Howrah for Calcutta. The third also runs north-eastward,
but diverges northward from the Calcutta route to Agra and Delhi. When
the Government of India is at Simla the last-mentioned train continues
beyond Delhi to the foot of the mountains. The time taken to Madras is
twenty-six hours, to Calcutta thirty-six hours, and to Delhi twenty-seven
hours. Recently a more direct line has been made from Bombay to
Calcutta which does not pass through Allahābād, but through Nāgpur. It
traverses a hilly country, much forested and relatively thinly peopled, in
the
upper
basins of the Godāvari and Mahānadi rivers.
The two lines of the Great Indian Peninsula system approach one
another from Allahābād and from Madras at an angle. They are carried
separately down the steep mountain edge of the Deccan Plateau by two
passes, the Thalghāt and the Borghāt, which have put the skill of engineers
to the test. The junction is in the narrow. coastal plain at the foot of the
mountains. Thence the rails pass by a bridge over a sea strait into Salsette
Island, and by a second bridge over a second strait into Bombay Island.
The island of Bombay is about twelve miles long from north to south.
At its southern end it projects into the southward Colāba Point and the
sonth-westward Malabar Point, between which, facing the open sea, is Back
Bay. The harbour, set with hilly islets, lies between Bombay and the main-
land, the entry being from the south round Colāba Point. Bombay is now
a very fine city, but like the other great seaports of India, it is new-as time
goes in the immemorial East. Calcutta was already great when Bombay
was but a small place, for a riverway extends through densely peopled plains
a
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16
[CA.
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
a
for a thousand miles inland from Calcutta, whereas the horizon of
Bombay is barred beyond the harbour by the mountain face of the Western
Ghāts. The real greatness of Bombay came only with the opening of the
Suez Canal, and of the railway lines up the Borghāt and the Thalghāt.
The train works up the Ghāts from Bombay through thick forests,
and if it be the rainy season past rushing waterfalls, until it surmounts
the brink top and comes out on to the plain of the Deccan table-land in
the relative drought of the upper climate. The Western Deccan in rear of
Bombay constitutes the Marāthā country. The Marāthās are the southern-
most of the peoples of Indo-European speech in India. Their homeland
on the plateau, round the city of Poona, now forms the main portion of
the Province of Bombay. The landscape of the plateau lies widely open,
studded here and there with table-topped mountains, not unlike the kopjes
of South Africa. These steep-sided isolated mountain blocks have often
served as strongholds in warfare.
South-eastward of Poona, but still on the plateau country, is Hyderā.
bād, the largest native state in India. It is ruled under British suzerainty
by the Nizām. The majority of the Nizām's subjects speak Telugu and are
of Hindu faith, but the Nizām is a Muhammadan. Near his capital, Hyderā.
bād, is Golconda Fort, rising above the open plateau with flat top and cliff
sides. The name of Golconda has become proverbial for immensity of wealth.
Formerly it was the Indian centre of diamond cutting and polishing.
The wide Deccan Plateau is in most parts of no great fertility. Over
large areas it is fitted rather for the pasture of horses and cattle than for
the plough. Agriculture is best in the river valleys. But there is one large
district lying on the plateau top east of Bombay, and on the hill tops north
and south of the Narbadā valley which is of a most singular fertility. The
usually granitic and schistose rocks of the plateau have here been overlaid
by great sheets of basaltic lava. Detached portions of these lava beds form
the table tops of most of the kopje-like hills. The lava disintegrates into a
tenacious black soil, which does not fall into dust during the dry season,
but cracks into great blocks which remain moist. As the dry season
advances these blocks shrink, and the cracks grow broader, so that finally
it is dangerous for a horse to gallop over the plain, lest his hoof should be
caught in one of these fissures.
This remarkable earth is known as the Black Cotton Soil. The cotton
seeds are sown after the rains, and as the young plant grows a clod of earth
forms round its roots which is separated from the next similar clod by
cracks. Wheat is grown on this soil in the same manner, being sown after
the rainy season and reaped in the beginning of the hot season, so that
from beginning to end the crop is produced without exposure to rain, being
drawn up by the brilliant sunshine, and fed at the root by the moisture
preserved in the heavy soil.
## p. 17 (#47) ##############################################
I]
CENTRAL PROVINCES : BARODA
17
Thus in the part of India, which lies immediately east, north-east, and
north of Bombay the lowlands and the uplands are alike fertile - the
lowlands round Ahmadābād and Baroda, and in the valleys of the Narbadā
and Tāpti rivers, because of their alluvial-soil, and the uplands round
Poona and Indore because they are clothed with the volcanic cotton soil.
The east coast of India, where it trends north-eastward from the
mouths of the Godāvarī river to those of the Mahānadi, is backed by great
hill and forest districts, tenanted by big game and by uncivilised tribes of
men. The Eastern Ghāts are here higher than elsewhere, and they approach
near to the coast, so that their foot plain affords only a relatively narrow
selvage of populated country. Through this coastal plain the railway is
carried from Calcutta to Madras.
The reason for the primitive character of this part of the country, and
of many of the districts which extend northward through the hills almost to
the valley of the Son, is to be found in the conditions of soil and climate.
There have been no volcanic outpourings on the gneissic and granitic rocks
hereabouts, and the summer cyclones from the Bay of Bengal strike most
frequently upon this coast and travel inland in a north-westerly direction.
Some of the Gond tribes of the forests, who may perhaps be described as the
aborigines of India, still speak tongues which appear to be older than Dra-
vidian. In the more fertile parts of the upper Mahānadi and Godāvari
basins are comprised the Central Provinces of the direct British Raj, whose
capital is at Nāgpur. The Central Provinces have an area comparable
with that of Italy, though their population is but one-third the Italian
population. They must not be confused with the Central Indian Agency.
We return to the west coast. The Bombay and Baroda Railway runs
out of Bombay northward and does not ascend the Ghāts, but follows the
coastal plain across the lower Tāpti and Narbadā rivers to Baroda, and
thence on, across the alluvial flats of the Mahī and neighbouring small
rivers, to Ahmadābād. The Gaikwār of Baroda governs a small but very
rich and populous lowland. His people speak Gujarātī, though the Gaikwār
is a Marātbā, like Sindhia and Holkar. His territories are so mixed with
those of the Bombay Presidency that the map of the plains round Ahmadā.
bād and Baroda city is like that part of Scotland which is labelled Ross
and Cromarty. Ahmadābād was once the most important Muhammadan
city of Western India, and contains many fine architectural monuments,
surpassed only by those of the great Mughal capitals, Delhi and Agra.
Westward of the alluvial plains of Gujarāt, and beyond the Gulf of
Cambay, is the peninsula of Kāthiāwār, a low plateau, lower considerably
than the Deccan, but clothed in part with similar sheets of fertile volcanic
soil. Baroda has territory in Kāthiāwār, as has also the Presidency of
Bombay, but in addition there are a multitude of petty chieftainships.
## p. 18 (#48) ##############################################
18
[CH.
THE SUB-COVTIVENT OF INDIA
North of Kāthiāwār is another smaller hill district, constituting the island
of Cutch. The Rann of Cutch, a marshy area communicating with the sea,
separates the island from the mainland. Apart from Travancore and Cochin
in the far south, Kāthiāwār and Cutch are the only parts of India where
Feudal States come down to the coast. There are a few diminutive coas-
tal settlements belonging to the French and Portuguese governments, but
these are too insignificant to break the general rule that the shores of India
are directly controlled by the British Raj. The largest of the foreign
European settlements is at Goa on the west coast south of Bombay. Goa
has a fine harbour but the Ghāts block the roads inland.
We have now completed the itinerary of the inner parts of India.
What remains to be described is the north-western land of passage where
India merges with Irān and Turān-Persia and Turkestān. The Himālayan
barrier, and the desert plateau of Tibet in rear of it, so shield the Indian
world from the north and north-east that the medieval Buddhist pilgrims
from China to Gayā were in the habit of travelling westward by the desert
routes north of Tibet as far as the river Oxus, and then southward over
the Hindu Kush. Thus they came into India from the north-west, having
circumvented Tibet rather than cross it. Great mountain ranges articu-
late with the Himālayas at their eastern end, and extend into the roots of
the peninsula of Further India. Thus the direct way from China into
India by the east is obstructed. To-day as we have seen the railway systems
of Burma and India are still separate.
The centre of north-western India is occupied by a group of large
Native States, known collectively as Rājputāna. Through Rājputāna,
diagonally from the south-west north-eastward, there runs the range of
the Arāvalli hills for a distance of fully three hundred miles. The north-
eastern extremity of the Arāvallis is the Ridge of Delhi on the Jumna river.
At their southern end, but separated from the main range by a hollow, is
the isolated Mount Abu, the highest point in Rājputāna, standing up con-
spicuously from the surrounding plains to a height of some five thousand
feet.
East of the Arāvallis, in the basin of the Chambal tributary of the
Jumna-Ganges, is the more fertile part of Rājputāna, with the cities of
Jaipur, Ajmer, Udaipur, and the old fortress of Chitor. Beyond the
Chambal river itself, but within its basin, are Gwalior and Indore, the seats
of the princes Sindhia and Holkar. But Gwalior and Indore belong to the
Central Indian Agency and not to Rājputāna.
West of the Arāvalli hills is the great Indian desert, prolonged seaward
by the salt and partly tidal marsh of the Rann of Cutch. In oases of this
desert are some of the smaller Rājput capitals, notably Bikaner. Beyond the
desert flows the great Indus river through a land which is dry, except for the
## p. 19 (#49) ##############################################
I]
THE GREAT INDIAN DESERT
19
irrigated strips beside the river banks and in the delta of Sind below
Hyderābād. South of Mount Abu streams descend from the end of the
Arāvalli hills to the Gulf of Cambay through the fertile lowland of
Ahmadābād, sunk like a land strait between the plateau of Kāthiāwār to
the west and the ends of the Vindhya and Sātpurā ranges to the east. The
Arāvallis are the last of the Central Indian hills towards the north-west.
Outside the Arāvallis the Indus valley spreads in wide low-lying alluvial
plains, like those of the Ganges, but dry.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance to India of the
existence of the great desert of Rājputāna. The ocean to the south-east
and south-west of the peninsula was at most times an ample protection
against overseas invasion, until the Europeans rounded the Cape of Good
Hope. The vast length of the Himālaya, backed by the desert plateau of
Tibet, was an equal defence on the north side. Only to the north-west does
India lie relatively open to the incursions of the warlike peoples of Western
and Central Asia. It is precisely in that direction that the Indian desert
presents a waterless void extending north-eastward from the Rann of
Cutch, for some 400 miles, with a breadth of 150 miles. In rear of the
desert a minor bulwark is constituted by the Arāvalli range.
Only between the north-eastern extremity of the desert and the foot
of the Himālayas below Simla is there an easy gateway into India. No
river traverses this gateway, which'is on the divide between the systems
of the Indus and the Jumna-Ganges. Delhi stands on the west bank of
the Jumna at the northern extremity of the Arāvallis, just where the
invading forces from the north-west came through to the navigable waters.
1 Aided by such powerful natural conditions the Rājputs--the word
means 'sons of princes’– were during many centuries the defenders of India
against invasion by the direct road to Delhi. Unable at last to stem the
tide of Musalmān conquest, they have maintained themselves on the
southern flank of the advance, and to-day some of their princely families
claim to trace their lineage back in unbroken descent from ancestors before
the Christian era. The descendants of conquerors who had won their
kingdoms with the sword, they remain even now proud aristocratic clans
holding a predominant position in the midst of a population far more
numerous than themselves.
Narrow gauge lines branch through Rājputāna in the direction of
Delhi, past the foot of Mount Abu, which rises like an island of granite
from amid the sandy desert. The top of Abu is a small rugged plateau,
measuring fourteen miles by four, in the midst of which is the Gem Lake, a
most beautiful sheet of water, set with rocky islands and overhung with great
masses of rock. The house of the Resident of Rājpuātna is on its shore, for
Mount Abu is the centre from which Rājputāna is controlled, so far as is
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20
[CH,
THE SUB-CONTINENT OF INDIA
one
>
necessary, by the advice of the Viceroy. The summit of Abu also bears
some famous ruins of Jain temples.
Some of the most beautiful cities of India are in Rājputāna. Udaipur
stands beside a lake, with its palaces and ghāts reflected in the clear
waters. Ajmer, now under direct British rule, is set in a hollow among
low hills, and is surrounded by a wall. Here also there is a lake, and upon
its banks are marble pavilions. Jaipur is a walled city, surrounded by
rocky hills crowned with forts. The streets are broad, and cross
another at right angles.
The Rājputāna Agency is as large as the whole British Isles, but it
contains only about ten million people, since a great part of it is desert.
The Central Indian Agency is about as large as England and Scotland
without Wales. It has a population only a little smaller than that of
Rājputāna. We may measure the significance of the more important
chiefs in these two Agencies by the fact that Sindhia rules a country little
less, either in area or population, than the kingdom of Scotland.
From Rājputāna we come to Delhi, which may truly be called the
historical focus of all India ; for, as we have seen, it commands the gate-
way which leads from the Punjab plain to Hindustān, the plain of the
Jumna and the Ganges. Here the fate of invasions from India from the
north-west has been decided. Some have either never reached this gate-
way or have failed to force their way through it. The conquests of Darius
in the latter part of the sixth century B. C. and of Alexander the Great in the
years 327-5 B. C. were not carried beyond the Punjab plain. Such direct in-
fluence as they exercised in modifying the character of Indian civilisation
must, therefore, have been confined to this region. On the other hand, the
invasions which have succeeded in passing the gateway and in effecting a per-
manent settlement in Hindustān have determined the history of the whole
sub-continent. These belong to two groups, the Āryan and the Musalmān,
distinguished by religion, language, and type of civilisation, and separated
from each other by an interval of probably some two thousand years.
For the chronology of the Aryan conquests, which may well have
extended over many generations or even centuries, we possess no certain
dates. All the knowledge which we can hope to gain of the history of
.
this remote period must be gleaned from the study of the apcient scrip-
tures of these Āryan invaders.
The course of Musalmān invasion, which entailed consequences of per-
haps equal importance, may be traced with greater precision. If we reckon
from the Arab conquest of Sind in 712 A. D. to the establishment of the Sul-
tanate of Delhi in 1193 A. D. , we shall see that nearly five centuries elapsed
before Musalmān conquest spread from the confines through the Delhi
gateway into the very 'heart of India. During this long period it was held in
## p. 21 (#51) ##############################################
I]
DELHI
21
check by the Rājput princes ; and their ultimate failure to impede its
progress was due to internal discord which has always been the bane of
feudal confederations.
So Delhi, founded by the Rājputs in the neighbourhood of Indra-
prastha (the modern Indarpat), the capital of the Kurus in the heroic ages
celebrated in India's great epic poem, the Mahābhārata, passed into the
hands of the invading Musalmāns and with it passed the predominant
power in India.
What Benares, and Patna, and Gayā were and are to the Brāhman
and Buddhist civilisations native to India, what Calcutta, and Madras, and
Bombay, and Karāchi are to the English from over the seas, that were
Delhi and Agra to the Musalmāns entering India from the north-west.
More than three centuries and a quarter later another Musalmān
invasion, more effective than the former, came into India by way of Delhi.
The Mughals or Mongols of Central Asia had been converted to Islām, and
in the time of our King Henry VIII they refounded the Musalmān power
at Delhi. For a hundred and fifty years, from the time of our Queen
Elizabeth to that of our Queen Anne, a series of Mughal emperors, from
Humāyān to Aurangzeb, ruled in splendid state at Delhi over the greater
part of India. Agra, a hundred miles lower down the Jumna, became a
secondary or alternative capital, and in these two cities we have to-day
the supreme examples of Muhammadan architectural art.
More than sixty-two millions of the Indian population hold the faith
of Islām. They are scattered all over the land, usually in a minority, but
frequently powerful, for Jsām has given ruling chiefs to many districts
which are predominantly Hindu.
