Thomas H. Holdich, Philip Lake, Richard Strachey and Charles N. E. Eliot

“ The achievements of the Persians in art, literature and religion are by no means contemptible, but somewhat mixed and cosmopolitan. Owing to its position, the Persian state, when it from time to time became a conquering empire, overlapped Asia Minor, Babylon and India, and hence acted as an intermediary for transmitting art and ideas, sending for instance Greek sculpture to India and the cult of Mithra to western Europe. ”

“ On the other hand it is noticeable that the Japanese have little which is original in the way of religion, literature or philosophy. Unlike the Chinese and Indians, they have hitherto not had the smallest influence on the intellectual development of Asia, and though they have in the past sometimes shown themselves intensely nationalist and conservative, they have, compared with India and China, so little which is really their own that their assimilation of foreign ideas is explicable. ”

“ The great elevations above the sea-level of the central part of Asia, and of the table-lands of Afghanistan and Persia, tend to exaggerate the winter cold; while the sterility of the surface, due to the small rainfall over the same region, operates powerfully in the opposite direction in increasing the summer heat. In the summer a great accumulation of solar heat takes place on the dry surface soil, from which it cannot be released upwards by evaporation, as might be the case were the soil moist or covered with vegetation, nor can it be readily conveyed away downwards as happens on the ocean. ”

“ In both art and literature modern Asia is inferior to the past more conspicuously than Europe.
As for science, astronomy was cultivated by the Babylonians at an early period, and it is probably from them that a knowledge of the heavenly bodies and their movements spread over Asia. Grammar and prosody were studied in India with a marvellous accuracy and minuteness several centuries before Christ. Mathematics were cultivated by the Chinese, Indians and Arabs, but nearly all the sciences based on the observation of nature, including medicine, have remained in a very backward condition. ”

“ Christianity has made little way farther east then Asia Minor. Modern missions have made no great conquests there, and in earlier times the Nestorians and Jacobites who penetrated to central Asia, China and India, received respectful hearing, but never had anything like the success which attended Buddhism and Islam. Yet Buddhism has never made much impression west of India; and Islam is clearly repugnant to Europeans, for even when under Moslem rule (as in Turkey) they refuse to accept it in a far larger proportion than did the Hindus in similar circumstances. ”

“ The south-west monsoon does not generally extend, in its character of a south-west wind, over the land. The current of air flowing in from over the sea is gradually diverted towards the area of least pressure, and at the same time is dissipated and loses much of its original force. The winds which pass northward over India blow as south-easterly and easterly winds over the north-eastern part of the Gangetic plain, and as south winds up the Indus. They seem almost entirely to have exhausted their northward velocity by the time they have reached the northern extremity of the great Indian plain ”

“ The changes of temperature and climate caused by difference of elevation are quite comparable in their magnitude and effect on all organized creatures with those due to differences of latitude; and the relative position of the high and low lands on the earth’s surface, by modifying the direction of the winds, the fall of rain, and other atmospheric phenomena, produce effects in no sense less important than those due to the relative distribution of the land and sea. ”

“ In politics these races have been less successful in modern times, but the Semitic states of Babylonia and Assyria were once the principal centres for the development and distribution of civilization. It is generally agreed that this civilization can be traced back to an earlier race, the Sumero-Akkadians, whose language seems allied to the agglutinative idioms of central Asia. If this ancient civilized race was really allied to the ancestors of the Turks and Huns, it is a remarkable instance of how civilization thrives best by being transplanted at a certain period of growth. ”

“ But beyond the eastern shores of the Caspian no system of direct geodetic measurements by first-class triangulation has been possible, and the surveys of Asiatic Russia are separated from those of Europe by the width of that inland sea. The arid nature of the trans-Caspian deserts has proved an insuperable obstacle to those rigorous methods of geodetic survey which distinguish Russian methods in Europe, so that Russian geography in central Asia is dependent on other means than that of direct measurement for the co-ordinate values in latitude and longitude for any given point. ”

“ Thus, whenever the population of a Moslem country is of mixed belief, a ruling caste of Moslems is formed, as in Turkey at the present day and India under the Moguls. Islam is paramount in Turkey, Persia, Arabia and Afghanistan. India is the dividing line: Islam is strong in northern and central India, weaker in the south. But only one-fifth of the whole population is Moslem. Beyond India it has spread to Malacca and the Malay Archipelago, where it overwhelmed Hindu civilization, and reached the southern Philippines. But it made no progress in Indo-China or Japan ”

“ The number of species common to southern China, Japan and northern Asia is small. The cultivated plants of China are, with a few exceptions, the same as those of India. South China, therefore, seems, botanically, hardly distinct from the great Indian region, into which many Chinese forms penetrate, as before noticed. The flora of north China, which is akin to that of Japan, shows manifest relation to that of the neighbouring American continent, from which many temperate forms extend, reaching to the Himalaya, almost as far as Kashmir. ”

“ The Manchus and Mongols are chiefly Buddhist, with letters derived from the ancient Syriac. The Manchus are now said to be gradually falling under the influence of Chinese civilization, and to be losing their old nomadic habits, and even their peculiar language. The predatory habits of the Turkish, Mongolian and Manchu population of northern Asia, and their irruptions into other parts of the continent and into Europe, have produced very remarkable results in the history of the world. ”

“ The great rivers of northern India—the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Indus—all derive their waters from the Tibetan mountain mass; and it is a remarkable circumstance that the northern water-parting of India should lie to the north of the Himalaya in the regions of central Tibet.
The population of India is very large, some of its districts being among the most densely peopled in the world. The country is generally well cleared, and forests are, as a rule, found only along the flanks of the mountains, where the fall of rain is most abundant. ”

“ Whatever national unity the Hindu peoples possessed came from the persistent and penetrating influence of the Brahman caste. Kings held a secondary position, and were generally regarded as adventitious tyrants, rather than as the heads and representatives of the nation. Even the great dynasties have left few traces, and it is with difficulty that the patient historian disinters the minor kingdoms from obscurity, but Indian religion, literature and art have influenced all Asia from Persia to Japan. ”

“ Overlooking all smaller details, we may consider Asia to consist of a northern mass and a southern mass, too rigid to crumple, but not too strong to fracture, and an intermediate belt of softer rock which was capable of folding. If then by the contraction of the earth’s interior the outer crust were forced to accommodate itself to a smaller nucleus, the central softer belt would yield by crumpling; the more rigid masses to the north and south, if they gave way at all, would yield by faulting. ”

“ The Turks, and to some extent the Arabs in Spain, were successful because they first conquered the parts of Asia and Africa adjoining Europe, so that the final invaders were in touch with Asiatic settlements. Though the Turks have profoundly affected the whole of eastern Europe, the result of their conquests has been not so much to plant Asiatic culture in Europe as to arrest development entirely, the countries under their rule remaining in much the same condition as under the moribund Byzantine empire. ”

“ In western Asia we have learned the exact value of the mountain barrier which lies between Merv and Herat, and have mapped its connexion with the Elburz of Persia. We can now fully appreciate the factor in practical politics which that definite but somewhat irregular mountain system Indian frontiers—Afghanistan, &c.represents which connects the water-divide north of Herat with the southern abutment of the Hindu Kush, near Bamian. Every pass of importance is known and recorded; every route of significance has been explored and mapped ”

“ In later centuries the Arabs from the west reached the valley of the Indus by their western route, and there established a dynasty which lasted for 300 years. The identification of existing peoples with the various Scythic, Persian and Arab races who have passed from High Asia into the Indian borderland, has opened up a vast field of ethnographical inquiry which has hardly yet found adequate workers for its investigation. To such fields may be added the yet more complicated problems of those reflex waves which flowed backwards from India into the border highlands. ”

“ The impenetrable shady forests of the Malay peninsula and eastern Bengal, of the west coast of the Indian peninsula, and of Ceylon, offer a strong contrast to the more loosely-timbered districts of the drier regions of central India and the north-western Himalaya. The forest areas of India include the dense vegetation and luxuriant growth of the Tarai jungles at the foot of the eastern Himalaya, and wide stretches of loosely-timbered country which are a prevailing feature in the Central Provinces and parts of Madras. ”

“ It is only natural that Europe should have chiefly felt the influence of western Asia. Though Europeans may be indebted to China for some mechanical inventions, she was too distant to produce much direct effect, and the influence of India has been mainly directed towards Influence of Asia on other continents.the East. The resemblances between primitive Christianity and Buddhism appear to be coincidences, and though both early Greek philosophy and later Alexandrine ideas suggest Indian affinities, there is no clear connexion such as there is between certain aspects of Chinese thought and India. ”

“ China has moulded the civilization of the eastern mainland and Japan, without much affecting the Malay Archipelago. In the sphere of direct influence fall Korea, Japan and Annam; in the outer sphere are Mongolia, Tibet, Siam, Cambodia and Burma, where Indian and Chinese influence are combined, the Indian being often the stronger. These countries, except Japan, have all been at some time at least nominal tributaries of China. Where Chinese influence had full play it introduced Confucianism, a special style in art and the Chinese system of writing. ”