INTRODUCTORY PHYSICAL CONDITIONS-ETHNIC AND POLITICAL DIVISIONS THE India known to Herodotus was the. Punjab, the country of the river Indus1; the easternmost region of the inhabited. world, the twentieth satrapy of the Persian empire. Later ancient writers thought of India as a wider area of which the Punjab formed part. To Europeans of the Middle Ages India, or the Indies, signified a far-away eastern land, renowned for the spices and costly commodities which it supplied. Afterwards this land became the East Indies, as other Indies had been discovered in the far West, and the name India was applied to the countries between the Persian Gulf and the Malay Peninsula. In our own day India denotes the subcontinent of irregularly triangular shape which lies between Cape Comorin and the Himalayas, stretching into the mainland of Asia as far as Baluchistan on the west and Burma on the east. Burma is part of the British-Indian Empire; but, cut off from India by a series of forest-clad ranges, it has been occupied by Mongolian tribes who have united to form the nation known as Burmese. The physical aspects of India have often been described. It is sufficient here to indicate those particular features which from remote ages have largely shaped her history. Triangular in shape, on two sides she is bounded by an enormous sea-board of about 3,400 miles. On the third she is fenced in by mountain ranges, of which the Himalayas are the central and most impregnable. As these ranges turn westward and southward toward the Arabian Sea, they are here and there traversed by passes which have frequently given access to invading armies but have not encouraged the advance of tribes or families encumbered by women and children. Raids upon a large scale have been easily practicable; but racial invasions have slowed down; and this circumstance, combined with the decimation of the women and children of conquering peoples, 1 The Sanskrit word "sindhu" means a river and particularly the Indus. 3 |