268 



NATURE 



[January 19, 1905 



THE TOPOGRAPHY OF BRITISH INDIA. 

 India. By Colonel Sir Thomas Holdich, K.C.M.G., 

 K.C.I.E., C.B., R.E. Pp. 375 ; 8 maps in colours. 

 The Regions of the World. Edited by H. J. 

 Mackinder. (London : Henry Frowde, Oxford 

 University Press, n.d.) Price 75. 6d. net. 



WITH climates varying from the ice-bound deserts 

 of the higher Himalayas and the rain-steeped 

 forests of Tenasserim, to the desolation of Makran, 

 where at one time of the year lire is almost 

 unnecessary, even for cooking, and at another the 

 cold blasts almost defy human endurance; the in- 

 habitants of which number races unsurpassed as brave 

 and stubborn fighters, and races among whom physical 

 cowardice is regarded as no disgrace; where in one 

 part music is produced by stamping on a piece of 

 wood, and in another has been carried to a refinement 

 which requires sixty-four tones to our octave — both 

 extremes, it may be added, equally unmusical to the 

 European ear; where there is found a system of laws 

 so elaborate that the cashier who has confessed to 

 embezzlement may yet succeed in escaping punish- 

 ment, and a system of government so paternal that 

 it imprisons the husband, whose domestic happiness 

 has been ruined, to prevent his committing the crime 

 of murder; the territories known as British India 

 may be a country for political purposes, but in no 

 proper sense of the word do they constitute a nation, 

 they are hardly even a " region of the world," and 

 the name is nothing but a geographical expression 

 for the area which is administered by the British 

 Government through the agency of the Governor- 

 General of India in Council. To write a descrip- 

 tion which, in a book of moderate compass, will 

 convey a clear and fairly proportioned conception, re- 

 quires a master hand; not to have failed is in itself 

 high praise, but Sir Thomas Holdich has done more 

 than this, he has produced a topographical descrip- 

 tion of the Indian Empire which, in spite of minor 

 errors — such as the reference to the Kasmur bund as 

 intended for the storage of water, and a general in- 

 accuracy where he ventures into geology — is not only 

 interesting to read, but accurate and well proportioned 

 on the whole. 



With all its manifold diversity in detail, the Indian 

 Empire is composed of two parts, each of which may 

 be regarded as a geographical unit, and each geo- 

 graphically distinct from the other. The larger and 

 more important of the two may be regarded as India 

 proper, and consists of the alluvia! plains of the Indo- 

 Gangetic river system, and the triangular area known, 

 though incorrectly, as the Peninsula. It is cut off 

 from Burma by a tract of mountains, impassable by 

 reason of the deep-cut network of valleys and the dense 

 vegetation with which their slopes are covered, and on 

 the north it is bounded by the mighty range of the 

 Himalayas. Both these barriers have proved effective 

 against either ethnical or military invasion, but on the 

 west are the semi-desert hills and open plains of 

 Afghanistan and Baluchistan, which have repeatedly 

 been traversed by invaders. It is in the description of 

 this region that Sir Thomas Holdich is at his best, 

 partly, no doubt, because it is that of which he has the 

 NO. 1838, VOL. 71] 



most intimate personal knowledge, but largely, too, 

 because of the intrinsic interest attaching to it ; for 

 across this region came not only the great prehistoric 

 Dravidian and the semi-historic Aryan invasions of 

 India, but also the military invasions of Alexander the 

 Great, and of the successive Mohammedan conquerors 

 of India. Until the improvement of navigation brought 

 in the nations of the west, it was the only way by 

 which invasion and conquest were possible, and it is 

 through this region alone that we need look for a 

 serious attack on India, so long as we hold the com- 

 mand of the sea. 



Of this long series of invasions all the historical 

 ones, from Alexander onwards, have been purely 

 military; they have left their impress, more or less 

 deeply marked, on the religion, the administration and 

 the political geography of India, in buildings and in 

 public works, but they have hardly affected the great 

 bulk of the people, who derive their origin from the 

 earlier invasions. In these it was no mere conquering 

 army that came, but nations, with their wives and 

 families, their flocks and herds, their household goods 

 and gods, who absorbed or exterminated the in- 

 habitants of the land, and whose descendants are found 

 over the length and breadth of India, constituting nine- 

 tenths of the total population. 



The other unit in the Indian Empire is Burma, which 

 belongs, geographically, rather to Indo-China than to 

 India. Cut off from the latter by a band of forest- 

 clad mountains, which has rarely been traversed even 

 by marauding expeditions, it received centuries ago 

 its religion and philosophy from India, but has re- 

 mained unaffected in all other respects, and maintained 

 its ethnical distinction untouched. This isolation of 

 Burma is now at an end ; the establishment of steamer 

 lines across the Bay of Bengal has rendered it easy 

 of access, the Hindu prejudice against crossing the 

 sea has given way to the stronger claims of pecuniary 

 gain, and the gay, picturesque, pleasure-loving 

 Burman, who had evolved an epicurean philosophy 

 and regarded life merely as something to be enjoyed, 

 is being ousted by the plodding, but joyless and un- 

 attractive native of Behar or Madras. 



.•\cross the north of the Empire runs the great moun- 

 tain barrier of the Himalayas, the highest and greatest 

 mountain range of the world, which separates the 

 Mongolians of Thibet from the races of India, 

 and has left its impress on their mythology and folk- 

 lore. This naturally gets a chapter to itself, and it 

 is satisfactory that the author recognises the futility 

 of an attempt to trace any limited number of 

 continuous chains in a mountain range of so great 

 an extent, and wisely abstains from formulating any 

 theory of the Himalayas. We cannot, however, 

 accept the statement, repeated more than once, that 

 the eastern Himalayas are older than the western ; it 

 is true that the rocks of which they are composed are 

 older, but the rise of the Himalayas, as a mountain 

 range, belongs to the great period of mountain form- 

 ation which commenced at the close of the Secondary 

 era, and there is no reason for supposing that the two 

 halves of the range differ materially in the age of their 

 elevation. 



