ASIA 



To people in a land like North America, 

 which possesses a civilization less than three 

 centuries old, largely imported from another 

 continent, i M civilization of Eastern 



Asia is almost impossible to understand. Rev- 

 erence for the past has been the dominant note 

 in the history of the people. If a thing had 

 not been done centuries ago, in the days of 

 their worshiped ancestors, it does not now com- 

 mend itself, however strong its appeal to com- 

 mon sense; and this tendency for centuries 

 prevented progress on the part of peoples who 

 are beginning to prove themselves capable of 

 making vast strides once they are aroused. See 

 iTQB WORSHIP. 



Southern Asia. This is the tropical section 

 of Asia the region of intense heat from which 

 European inhabitants must flee if they wish 

 to escape fevers; of heavy drenching rains, 

 which no lands but the tropics or subtropics 

 ever know. Of all the writers who have felt 

 the charm of these southern countries, India, 

 Burma and the Malay peninsula, and have 

 truthfully pictured them, the most widely read 

 is Rudyard Kipling, and it is the Southern 

 Asia of Kipling with which people are most 

 familiar. 



The People. Unlike Eastern Asia, Southern 

 Asia is not a region of one race. Over the 

 mountains to the north there came in past 

 centuries horde after horde of invaders who 

 differed in race, in manners, in speech and in 

 civilization; whether these conquered or were 

 themselves subjected, they left their mark 

 upon the country. Of the 300,000,000 inhabi- 

 tants, some are Aryans, who belong to the 

 white race, but are easily distinguished from 

 the white men who have come from Europe; 

 some are the yellow or Mongol race, though 

 of a different stock from the Chinese or Japa- 

 nese. Then there are the Malays, or the brown 

 race, and various representatives of the black 

 race, notably the Dravidians (which see) of 

 India and the Negritos of the Malay Archipel- 

 ago. Nothing can make more clear this great 

 diversity than the statement that there are 

 spoken in Southern Asia almost 150 languages, 

 and these are not tongues which have been 

 introduced in recent times, as Bohemian or 

 Polish have been introduced into the United 

 States by immigrants, but languages which 

 have been for centuries the speech of the sec- 

 tions in which they still exist. 



The Land. Southern Asia has 2,000,000 

 square miles, and scattered over this area is a 

 population almost as dense as that of Eastern 



416 ASIA 



Asia. To the north stretch the groat mountain 

 ms the Himalaya, Karakonnn and other 

 r ranges; but Southern Asia itself is not 

 notably mountainous, save in Burma. Great 

 rivers, the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra 

 and the Irrawaddy. drain the country and exer- 

 cise a great influence on its life and commerce. 

 In few places is there scarcity of rainfall, and 

 in certain parts, as Assam, which lies just south 

 of the Himalayas, more rain falls than in any 

 other place in the world. The greatest amount 

 ine one year was 800 inches; the average is 500 

 inches, or over forty feet. 



As in Eastern Asia, the people of Southern 

 Asia have learned through the ages to demand 

 little beyond a bare living, but, unlike the 

 dwellers in the latter region, they are not here 

 forced to work hard for what they have. Few 

 places in the world are more fertile than the 

 great river plains, and rice, sugar and cotton 

 can be grown with very little labor. The 

 cocoanut, the sago palm and the breadfruit 

 tree flourish in certain sections, and often any 

 one of these trees will furnish sustenance for a 

 family. 



Animal Life. Southern Asia has the most dis- 

 tinctive animals of any part of the continent 

 the great jungle beasts which adventurous 

 hunters risk their lives to kill. The tiger, the 

 elephant and the rhinoceros are peculiar to 

 the region, and wolves, monkeys, reptiles and 

 birds abound. In his Jungle Book and Second 

 Jungle Book Kipling has shown the animal life 

 of the jungle as seen through the eyes of 

 little Mowgli, foster-child in a wolf family. 

 The books make no claim to scientific aacur- 

 acy, for they give to the animals speech and 

 the power of reasoning, but in one sense they 

 are accurate descriptions, with their account 

 of the great drought and its effects, and of the 

 method of life of the various kinds of animals. 



As the other sections of Asia have their 

 distinctive domestic animals, with the excep- 

 tion of Eastern Asia, so Southern Asia has its 

 own the elephant, which elsewhere is scarcely 

 ever tamed and made a beast of burden. Of 

 course the elephant is not used commonly as 

 is the horse in North America, but there are 

 many tasks which require great strength, as 

 the hauling and stacking of heavy teakwood 

 logs, for which it is excellently adapted. Of 

 cattle, horses, goats or sheep there are few, 

 for the fertile farm lands are too valuable to 

 be given over to grazing. 



Southwestern Asia. Of all Asia, this is the 

 part which has most influenced Western civili- 



