North India

“ In those days vast territories were still covered by forest, the home of countless wild beasts and scanty tribes of savage men; but regions of great extent in Northern India had been occupied for untold centuries by more or less civilized communities of the higher races who, from time to time, during the unrecorded past, had pierced the mountain barriers of the north-western frontier. ”

“ India is shut off from the rest of Asia on the north by a vast mountainous region, known in the aggregate as the Himalayas, amid which lie the independent states of Nepal and Bhutan, with the great table-land of Tibet behind. The native principality of Kashmir occupies the north-western angle of Boundaries. ”

“ During some centuries India, as a political region, was not delimitated on the north-western side as it is at present and numerous principalities rose and fell which included Indian territory as well as parts of Afghanistan. ”

“ What, however, really renders India so interesting as an object of study is that it is now a living entity. Greece and Rome are dead and have passed away, and we are living so completely in the midst of modern Europe, that we cannot get outside to contemplate it as a whole. But India is a complete cosmos in itself; bounded on the north by the Himalayas, on the south by the sea, on the east by impenetrable jungle, and only on the west having one door of communication, across the Indus, open to the other world. ”

“ No one could more appropriately undertake the task of an accurate and well-proportioned thumb-nail sketch of North-West India and, what is equally important to the earnest reader, no author could more obviously delight in his subject. ”

“ India is about 1,900 miles in extent from north to south, and 1,600 in breadth in latitude 25° north. The boundaries of this vast country, established by nature for the most part, are the Bay of Bengal (now called a sea in the southern portion) on the south-east, and the Arabian Sea on the south-west. On the north the Himalaya Mountains separate it from China, Thibet, and Turkestan ”

“ It is necessary, once more, to remind the reader that the peninsula of India has an area and population roughly equal to the area and population of Europe without Russia. Everyone who has learnt geography at school is familiar with the great triangle, its base in the soaring Himalayan heights in the north, its apex jutting into the Indian Ocean, and marked by the satellite island of Ceylon. To the north, then, is the great mountain barrier, a tangled mass of snowy peaks, glaciers and snowfields, separating the sunny plains of India proper from the plateaux of Central Asia. ”

“ Politically, India is that country which, throughout the length and breadth of these, its natural limits, is more under paramount British dominion than any English country; for, throughout its extent, the will and the word of its British rulers are, in point of fact, law. Socially, India is a population of two hundred millions of men, the vast majority of whom have for ages been indissolubly knit together by a common religion and common traditions,—by common laws, and common civil and municipal institutions,—by common castes, rites, observances, and manners ”

“ And it is a commonplace of history that one of the main streams of this great migration of the pioneers of the world's civilization entered India through her north-western mountain passes to build up her spiritual character, even as the Indus and the Ganges have broken through the Himalayas to create her physical character. For centuries these Indo-Aryans pushed on their work of colonizing India amid struggles and conflicts with the original inhabitants of the country, and developed a civilization that is reflected in the literature they have created. ”

“ The ancient kingdoms of the south, although rich and populous, inhabited by Dravidian nations not inferior in culture to their Aryan rivals in the north, were ordinarily so secluded from the rest of the civilized world, including Northern India, that their affairs remained hidden from the eyes of other nations, and, native annalists being lacking, their history, previous to the year 1000 of the Christian era, has almost wholly perished. ”

“ In Western India, Kāṭhiāwār and all the portions of Gujarāt above Broach lie to the north of the Narbadā; but from the palaeographic point of view, if not so much from the historical, they belong essentially to Southern India. Our modern Central India lies entirely in Northern India, but has various palaeographic connexions with Southern India. Our Central Provinces extend in the Saugar district into Northern India ”

“ The third is that India is divided off from the Continent of Asia by barriers even more stupendous than those which separate the Continent of Asia from the Continents of Europe and Africa, or the Continent of North America from that of South America. ”

“ North and South India differ largely in a multitude of things. The north is the land of the fighting races and has the large towns and cities of India with their keen intellectual and commercial life. The south is the land of peaceful villages, nestling among green fields and gardens, inhabited by a conservative and peace-loving people who are contented with a little. The south was far away from the battlefields of Empire until the time of the British ”

“ My object throughout has been to give an historical summary of the various wars and expeditions in which we have been engaged during the present century on the North -West frontier of India; and of the causes which have led to them. My observations are founded on Parliamentary official papers, and on other works of authority; and I hope they may prove useful to the public, who have not, as a rule time to study the intricate details of this difficult subject. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Himalayas not only form a double wall along the north of India, but at both their eastern and western extremities send out ranges to the south, which protect its north-eastern and north-western frontiers. On the north-east, those offshoots, under the name of the Naga and Patkoi mountains, &c., form a barrier between the civilized districts of Assam and the wild tribes of Upper Burma. On the opposite or north-western frontier of India, the mountainous offshoots run down the entire length of the British boundaries from the Himalayas to the sea. ”

“ In our times the process has been reversed, and we 2 seek for information with our backs to the South. We have worked our way northward, having entered India by the southern water gates, and as we have from time to time struggled rather to remain content within narrow borders than to push outward and forward, the drift to the north has been very slow, and there has never been, right from the very beginning, any strenuous haste in the expansion of commercial interests, or any spirit of crusade in the advance of Conquest. ”

“ It is a land wonderful in the variety of its climates. It is difficult to imagine greater contrasts than those existing between the various climates of India—from the eternal snows in the north to the fierce and constant heat of the tropics in the south ”

“ India is a very large country,—several large countries,—since it equals in area and population all of Europe outside of Russia; and one travels the nineteen hundred miles of its extent from south to north through as many political divisions as there are great divisions of Europe, and differing as greatly in climate, physical features, and inhabitants. ”

“ The People. The people of India number, according to the census of 1901, 291,236,000—about one-fifth of the inhabitants of the globe. This population represents more races than are found in the whole of Europe. Besides many small tribes, it has eleven nations, the least of which numbers 2,250,000 souls. Of these nations seven are of Aryan, and four of Dravidian, extraction; and they differ in physique, temperament and language. Between the sturdy Aryan on the north and the degraded primitive people on the plains of the south there is a great gulf. ”

“ We know, too, that there is a vast tract of country in Central India, extending east and west from shore to shore, and north and south from Sadras to Ellora, which is covered with buildings of great beauty and interest, but which nobody cares to explore. ”

“ Beyond, stretching like a huge irregular barrier, rise the noble Himalaya, and the lofty and fantastic peaks of the mountains enveloped in everlasting winter. To associate tropical India with the North Pole would seem ridiculously fictitious ”

“ Madras exceeds Great Britain; Bombay equals Germany; the North- Western Provinces and Oude cover as much space as Great Britain, Belgium, and Holland ; the size of the Punjab is that of Italy ; while the native States put together have an area equal to Great Britain and Ireland, Germany, and France combined."
The population of India at present, reader mine, is over rather than under 300,000,000, and our beloved Queen is Empress of the whole. ”

“ Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land, with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square miles, upon which is spread unequally a population of one hundred and eighty millions of souls. ”

“ It is only by an examination of the historical records which concern them, and the geographical conditions which surround them, that any clear appreciation of their value can be attained; and it is only within the last century that such examinations have been rendered possible by the enterprise and activity of a race of explorers (official and otherwise) who have risked their lives in the dangerous field of the Indian trans-frontier. In ancient days the very first (and sometimes the last) thing that was learned about India was the way thither from the North. ”

“ British Baluchistan, Bengal, Bombay, Burma, Central Provinces with Berar, Coorg, Eastern Bengal and Assam, Madras, North-West Frontier Province, Punjab, and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Each of these provinces is described under its separate name.
The native states are governed, as a rule, by native princes with the help of a political officer appointed by the British government and residing at their courts. Some of them administer the internal affairs of their states The native states. with almost complete independence; others require more assistance or a stricter control. ”

“ Again, these facts which, in point of truth, are incontrovertible and, in point of time, cover no less than fifty-five centuries of its history, prove that, historically, India is and ever has been in all but name a "continent ". ”

“ And you must know that this kingdom of Kesmacoran is the last in India as you go towards the west and north-west. ”

“ No country in the Orient is of greater interest to the West today than is India. It is picturesque in its life, wonderful in its history, remarkable in its present conditions and fascinating in its promise for the future.
It is a land most worthy of study both for what it has been, for what it is and for what it is to become; as the arena for the greatest conflict upon which our Faith and Civilization have ever entered ”

“ Those of us who know Northern India have memories of many such a sojourn in the enchanted no-man's-land of a Punjâb river-bed, where the soil on which the tent is pitched one year may be deep stream the next, and the great solemn cranes stalk amongst the young green wheat, and the flocks of flamingoes show rosy-red in the sunrises. ”

“ For three thousand years before England's arrival in the Orient, Indian Kingdoms and Empires had held leading places in Asia, and that means in the world. Some of the ablest rulers, statesmen, generals and financiers known to history, as well as many of the greatest thinkers and writers of mankind, have been of India’s production. How is it, then, that she suddenly becomes imbecile and unable to stand on her own feet or conduct her own affairs as soon as England appears on the scene? ”

“ As to these Aryan migrations, we do not know when a large body crossed the Himalaya Mountains, and settled on the banks of the Indus, but probably it was at least two thousand years before Christ. Northern India had great attractions to those hardy nomadic people, who found it so difficult to get a living during the long winters of their primeval home. India was a country of fruits and flowers, with an inexhaustible soil, favorable to all kinds of production, where but little manual labor was required,--a country abounding in every kind of animals, and every kind of birds ”

“ It should also be remembered and made prominent in our consideration of this subject that the people of India are an Oriental people and are the children of the tropics and, as such, will always remain and must remain very different from us of the Northwest. ”

“ How shouldst thou see, strange-bred as thou art from the uttermost guile of India--this old, old India that was guileful long ages before thy island came into being? What canst thou or thy kind know of the bottomless deceits, the dregs of many years, the sediment of many men which must underlay the smooth levels of India? ”

“ Whether from the difficulty of approach, the distance, or the diversion of the current of adventure to other quarters of the world, this chief portion of the African continent continues almost unknown to Europeans. The central region is a blank in our maps, but occasional tales reach us of the plenty, the pomp, and even of the civilisation and industry of the table-land. The centre of India is a table-land, possessing, in that region of fire and fever, a bracing air, and a productive, though rugged soil. ”