Geographical Preliminaries9
The Indian land mass forms a well-defined geographical entity between 8°N and 36°N latitudes—between the southernmost point of Cape Comorin and the height of K-2 peak of the Karakorams in the north. Taking the areas of Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan together, it is an area of about 4.4 million sq km, which is only slightly less than the 4.72 million sq km area of Europe excluding the former USSR. Its combined population is well above one billion. ‘India’ is derived from the Greek ‘Indos’, itself derived from the Sanskrit ‘Sindhu’ denoting the Indus river. The Sanskrit ‘Sindhu’ also led to the Persian ‘Hind’ and ‘Hindustan’. The ancient Indians’ name for this land mass is Bharatavarsha, the land where the progenies of the mythical king Bharata live. The Vishnupurana, a text presumably set down in the fourth century, defines its boundaries as between ‘Himavat’ or Himalaya mountain in the north and the sea in the south. Jambudvipa is another major Sanskrit term to denote this land mass.
The geographical elements of the subcontinent are within the confines of its three geomorphological components—the Extra-peninsular Mountain System which runs from the hills of Baluchistan in the west to the Patkoi range and the Arakan Yomas in the north-east and east; the Indo-Gangetic Alluvial Plain which runs up from the Indus delta in Sind to the Brahmaputra valley in Assam, covering the entire sweep of the Ganga plain; and the Peninsula which covers the area to the south of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The Himalayan mountain-building system is still active, beginning some time in the geologically young Tertiary period. The Indo-Gangetic Alluvial Plain is the result of the deposition of mountain-building debris in trough-like formations, whereas the Peninsula represents an ancient and stable block of the earth’s crust.
The baseline of Indian geology is provided by the Archaean deposits in the Peninsular block, which include two groups of successive formations—the granites and gneisses, and the Dharwar and Aravalli formations. These two groups are known as ‘early pre-Cambrian’. The next in the series is the group formed by the Cuddapah rocks and Delhi Quartzites, both dubbed ‘younger pre-Cambrian’. The Cuddapah rocks are found principally in Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, whereas the Delhi Quartzites form the core of the Aravalli system. The Vindhyan rocks from the Cambrian to the Ordovician period overlie the Cuddapahs in Madhya Pradesh and have the Vindhyan range as their most impressive outcrop. The Gondwana group with its three divisions—Lower, Middle and Upper—ranges from the Permian and Carboniferous to the Triassic and Jurassic periods. The Gondwana deposits, which are in the form of some sandstones and some shales and clays, are preserved in the troughs along the drainage lines of the Godavari, Mahanadi and Damodar rivers and associated with coal seams, sometimes of great thickness. In Kutch, Kathiawar and the south-east coast there are patches of Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks, suggesting only marginal marine transgressions. During the late-Cretaceous and early-Tertiary epochs there were tremendous eruptions of lava flow in a large portion of the Peninsula, building up a great thickness of basalt deposit and covering about half a million or more square kilometres with their distinctive terrain. This is known as the Deccan lava formation. The coastal alluvium and the alluvium of the Narmada and Tapti basins constitute the youngest geological stage in the Peninsula.
In the Extra-peninsular Mountain System the outer Himalayan belt is generally of Mesozoic-Tertiary age. The main Himalayas incorporate rocks of all ages. The Indo-Gangetic Alluvial Plain and numerous other small lowland areas form the youngest element in the subcontinent’s structure and include fluvial deposits laid down at various points in the Pleistocene and Recent periods. The outermost chain of the subcontinental hills and mountains is provided by the Karakoram and the Hindukush. To the south of the Karakoram lie the Ladakh and Zaskar ranges. The north-eastern segment of Baluchistan is framed between the Toba Kakar in the north and the Suleimans in the south. The rest of Baluchistan is separated from the Indus plain by the Kirthars and from the Seistan segment of Afghanistan by the Chagai hills. The Makran coastal range separates this coast from the interior. The Safed Koh and other ranges of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) are associated with the Hindukush. The Himalayas, which separate the subcontinent from the Tibetan plateau, lie to the south of the Indus furrow and may be divided into the Main, Lesser and Outer Himalayas, or into Western, Central and Eastern segments. The Outer Himalayas are known as the Siwaliks. The Pir Panjal and Dhauladhar ranges in the Western Himalayas belong to the Lesser Himalayas. The parallel elements are more compact in the Central Himalayas, which fall between Himachal Pradesh and eastern Nepal. In the Eastern Himalayas between eastern Nepal and Arunachal Pradesh, the Siwaliks form only a minor element. A number of ranges belonging to the same phase of mountain-building activity or orogeny separate the eastern frontier from Myanmar (formerly Burma)—the lines of the Patkai range and the Arakan Yomas. Inside the subcontinent the Salt Range separates the Potwar plateau from the Punjab Plains. The Aravallis run from Delhi to the Gulf of Cambay. The Vindhyas, and the Satpuras which lie to the south of the Vindhyas, form a kind of divide across the central part. From Orissa downward the coast is flanked by the Eastern Ghats, and from Bombay to Karnataka the Western Ghats separate the coastal Konkan tract from the interior. The Nilgiris and a few other ranges form a knot of hills in the otherwise coastal tract of Tamil Nadu. Outside the major alluvial stretches, the hills always loom in the horizon in the subcontinent.
Among the river systems, the Indus system, which comprises the Indus and its five tributaries—the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej—dominates the area between the NWFP in Pakistan and Punjab—Haryana in India. The length of the Indus is about 2900 km. It retains the character of a gorge-enclosed river till Kalabagh below Attock at the border of the NWFP and Pakistani Punjab. The Jhelum flows through Kashmir before coming down to Punjab. The Jhelum and the Chenab unite and their combined flow meets the Ravi. The Beas flows into the Sutlej which flows for about 1450 km before joining the Indus. Near the NWFP the Indus tributaries include the Kabul, Gomal and Kohat rivers. To the east of the Sutlej lies the dried-up drainage system of the Ghaggar—Hakra which used to join the Indus before falling combinedly into the Rann of Kutch. Further east is the Yamuna which joins the Ganga near Allahabad. The total length of the Ganga is about 2500 km. Apart from the Yamuna, its major tributaries are the Ghaghra or Sarayu. Gandak, Kosi and Son. South of the Rajmahal hills in the east the Ganga develops two channels—the Bhagirathi—Hooghly which flows almost straight south and the Padma which turns east into Bangladesh. There it is first joined by the Brahmaputra, and further east the combined flow is joined by the Meghna, which brings down a large part of the drainage of eastern Assam through the Surma and the Kushiara rivers. The Brahmaputra originates in the Tibetan plateau, where it is known as the Tsangpo; it enters the Indian territory as Dihong near Sadiya. In the east it is joined by the Lohit and comes to be known as the Brahmaputra. The major rivers in the east coast are the Suvarnarekha. Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna and Kaveri, which have built up their own deltas—in Orissa (the Mahanadi-Baitarini delta), Andhra (the Godavari-Krishna delta) and Tamil Nadu (the Kaveri delta). The Narmada and the Tapti are the major rivers in Madhya Pradesh, joining the sea through the mainland Gujarat coast. The Banas, Chambal and Luni are the major rivers of Rajasthan. In Gujarat the Sabarmati is an important river. The Bhima and the Tungabhadra are the major tributaries of the Krishna river. The southernmost rivers are the Vaigai, Tamraparni and the Periyar.
The Himalayan wall cuts off the subcontinent from the northern winds, although areas such as Baluchistan are not entirely immune from it. However, the most important climatic factor here is the monsoon. The great air currents over the Indian Ocean in winter and summer are called, respectively, the north-east and south-west monsoons. The north-east monsoon is by and large ineffective, and the winter rainfall in south India is said to be caused by the retreating south-west monsoon. The pattern of rainfall in India is determined by the south-west monsoon between June and September. The date of its onset varies from region to region. Its arrival in Calcutta, for instance, is earlier than its arrival in Delhi. There is a great variability in the distribution of annual rainfall in India, just as there is considerable variability in both summer and winter temperatures and the associated humidity.
The traditional scheme of Indian soils recognizes alluvial soil, black cotton soil of the Deccan Lavas, red soils and lateritic soils. Each type possesses numerous variations.
Four vegetation divisions are identifiable on the basis of annual rainfall: over 203.2 cm or 80 inches—evergreen forests; 101.6–203.2 cm—deciduous forests; 50.8–101.6 cm—drier deciduous forests grading into open, thorny scrub; under 50.8 cm—thorny scrub and low open bush merging into semi-desert. The subcontinental wild life, which used to be singularly abundant, now survives or seeks to survive only in the sanctuaries set up in different parts of India. The issue of regions can only be briefly considered here. A rigid definition of regions being impossible, various scholars have proposed various schemes of physiographic classifications for the subcontinent. O.H.K. Spate, for instance, proposed 35 first-order regions, 75 second-order regions and 225 third-order regions. The details of such regions may be considered, when necessary, in specific archaeological contexts. It would suffice for the present to note that the major areas are broadly Baluchistan, NWFP, Kashmir, Ladakh, Sind, Punjab, Indo-Gangetic Divide, Ganga valley, Assam, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and the mountainous and hilly areas of the north-east.
Geographical Issues10
India in Relation to the Rest of Asia and Africa
India is certainly isolated from the rest of Asia by a mountain rim extending from the north-western corner of Baluchistan in the north-west to the Chittagong coast in the extreme south-east. In a number of ways, especially in the area of climate, this isolation has offered India a distinct identity. At the same time, India’s isolation from the rest of Asia need not be overemphasized. This isolation simply means that the modern territorial units of the subcontinent were not always buffeted by winds blowing across from beyond the northern borders. The waves from the rest of Asia were not breaking over unimpeded the subcontinent.
However, mountains never acted as complete barriers to human movements. In fact, they have often acted as cultural saddles supporting the same type of culture on both its slopes. To some extent this has been true along India’s northern mountain rim. The Pushtu-speaking people dwell on both slopes of the Hindukush offshoots forming the border with Afghanistan in NWFP. Central Asia intrudes in the northern heights of Hunza and Gilgit. To the north-east of Kashmir, Ladakh is called ‘little Tibet’, a label applicable to the southern slope of the mountains extending from Ladakh to Arunachal in the east. The influence of Myanmar is seen throughout the eastern frontier. Thus, though the mountains did not encourage human movement, they did not act as barriers either.
On a different level, however, the mountains have defined the lines of human movements, and one may discuss this in some detail. Beginning with Baluchistan, we first notice that the Pakistani Baluchistan is a part of Iranian Baluchistan and that there was no hindrance of communication from across the border in this sector. However, there are two major lines defined by the location of deserts in Iran and Baluchistan. The first is along the Kej valley beyond the Makran coastal range, and the second follows the alignment of the Chagai hills through the desert and eventually reaches Quetta. During the British period, a railway line was laid between Zahidan in eastern Iran and Quetta along the southern flank of the Chagai hills and served in the 1960s as a part of the Hippie trail.
Taking up the northern mountain rim at its north-western corner, the first major entry (in this case from south Afghanistan) is provided by the Bolan pass which basically marks a river defile across some high ridges and higher mountains with its two mouths of the Khojak and Bolan passes. Further up is the Gomal pass marking the defile of the Gomal which eventually joins the Indus. Between the Gomal and the more northerly Khyber, there are quite a few passes (for instance, along the courses of the Tochi and the Kurram), providing entry from the Afghan side. These are not historically famous but are important to understand the mosaic of archaeological cultures and stray finds in these borderlands. At the height of the British rule of the subcontinent, the Khyber acquired a fame disproportionate to its historical significance, mainly because of the tribesmen ever ready to exchange fire with the British soldiers and partly because of the romantic aura these tribesmen are invested with in Rudyard Kipling’s stories. The Swat defile skirts the Khyber and so does the flow of the Kabul river. In this sector there are several links, with the more significant of them leading to north-east Afghanistan or Badakhshan/Kafiristan. Some routes between Peshawar and Chitral lead to the Pamirs, the most famous of them going via Hunza and Gilgit. This Karakoram Highway is now encouraged as a tourist attraction by the Pakistani authorities. There were two major central Asian trading marts beyond the Pamirs—Kashgar and Yarkand. There were routes to central Asia from the direction of Leh in Ladakh as well, skirting the foot of the high peak of Muztagh Ata.
At this point mention must be made of the fact that all these routes across the Karakoram, and at least the main ones which went to Afghanistan, were feeders of the famous Silk Route which went all the way from China to Rome in the early Christian era. Another fact which calls for attention is that the routes across the main Hindukush massif in central Afghanistan were closely linked with the routes moving into, or coming from, the subcontinent. It was along such routes that Buddhism spread to central Asia. China and beyond, and there are many Buddhist statues and painted caves standing sentinels along these hill and desert paths. The famous Buddha images of Bamiyan in the Hindukush, the sensuous ivories of Begram in the Kabul region, the caves of the thousand Buddhas at Dun Huang at the edge of the Taklamakan desert—these are only some of the beauteous things marking the trail of merchants, monks and pilgrims along these routes. In the early centuries AD the entire region from the deserts of central Asia or at least the Oxus—Jaxartes system to the heart of Gangetic India was under one political domination—that of the Kushana dynasty.
Moving further east, one encounters the long alignment of the Himalayas with the Tibetan plateau on the other side. The major entries into Tibet are widely spaced: Shipki La which can be reached by following the Sutlej gorge from Simla; Niti pass which lies in the heights of Uttar Pradesh; and the Chumbi valley between Sikkim and Bhutan. There is easy access from the heights of the Tibetan plateau into Arunachal in north-east India, the Tawang-Bomdila alignment being well known.
It is possible to travel to Yunnan in south China through the Sadiya frontier, a route dating back to the 10th–12th centuries AD. Further to the east one can reach Burma or Myanmar in a number of ways, but most importantly, through the Manipur valley. The routes led to Bhamo in northern Myanmar, which was an entrepot of Chinese trade in the nineteenth century. According to some, this alignment marked a southern version of the Silk Route in the late centuries BC and early centuries AD. Another major overland connection was maintained with Myanmar along the Chittagong coast.
A look at the map of the world suggests India’s central role in any traffic in the Indian Ocean. The Indus delta and the Gujarat coast have been traditionally linked with the Gulf, and the modern smuggling runs between Dubai and the Bombay coast only continue a much earlier tradition of movement in sailing vessels. The west coast has also enjoyed traditional mercantile intimacy with the east coast of Africa. A hoard of Kushana coins has been found in Ethiopia and Axumite coins (c. fifth century AD as a central point) of Ethiopia have been reported from India, suggesting an untold story of India’s African connections. With the expansion of the Roman trade, which included the entire area up to China in its maritime network, there was a greater emphasis on India’s role in the Indian Ocean trade. There were many ports along the coast, all linked to the Mediterranean and south-east Asiatic trade. The river mouths played an important role in this trade, particularly those of the Narmada, the Kaveri and the Ganga. Thus, the geography of ancient India certainly ensured that she could maintain an archaeological and cultural distinctiveness of her own.
Frontiers and Boundaries
The boundaries of modern nation states are products of various historical situations. For instance, the north-western boundary of India, the Durand Line, was delimited only in 1893, with the local details worked out still later. The main boundary line between India and Tibet, the McMahon Line, was arrived at only in 1913–14. Such boundaries basically reflect the political forces which shaped them. They may be based on some geographical parameters but geography is not their sole—and occasionally not even primary—determinant. The Radcliffe Line which divided Bengal in 1947 had very little to do with geography.
However, the term ‘frontier’ in archaeology denotes something wider. It reflects a shaded territory which may be somewhat ill-defined on the ground but is broadly indicative of a transitional zone between two major geographical areas. This tends to denote sections where the influences from both the flanking geographical areas have been historically operative. On a general level, the ‘frontiers’ are basically interaction zones. Theoretically, such interaction zones—areas of geographical and cultural transition—are available all along the north-western, northern, north-eastern and eastern political boundaries of the subcontinent. However, not all these zones have been historically significant to an equal extent. From the point of view of the subcontinent’s history, it is the north-western frontier which is most significant. Not only did the rich political and cultural worlds of Iran and central Asia lie on its other side, it was here that these worlds met the world of India. The alignment of the subcontinent’s northern frontier abutted on the cold heights of the Tibetan plateau which did not go much beyond the carving of a religious kingdom and (on the Indian side) trans-Himalayan trade carried on mule backs. The bamboo-clad high ridges of the eastern frontier did not encourage much human movement except through the lateral valleys of Manipur, and even on the other side, the northern stretch of Myanmar was not a historically significant area. The focus of Myanmar’s ancient history lay lower down in the Irrawaddy valley and further south. In fact, the only segment of the eastern frontier which can claim some historical distinction is the Chittagong-Arakan sector because by the fourth century AD there was a kingdom in Arakan using Sanskrit language, and still earlier, there was a prehistoric fossilwood industry spanning the 500 km stretch between the Lalmai hills of Bangladesh, the western Tripura hills in India and the area to the south of Mandalay in Myanmar.
The north-western frontier as an interaction zone is fairly wide and covers the southern part of central Asia, the eastern rim of Iran which runs from Meshed in the north-east to Zabul and Zahidan in the Iranian Seistan, Afghanistan, and the Indus valley and Kashmir in the subcontinent. Both politically and economically these areas constitute a single interaction zone. Politically, the entire area was unified under the Kushanas of the early centuries AD. In other periods it was politically fragmented, a process subject to both subcontinental and central and west Asiatic factors. To give only one example, the Mauryan kingdom based in Patna stretched up to the southern flanks of the Hindukush whereas its northern side was subject to post-Alexandrine Greek control. It is this overall area which was the springboard of various pre-Islamic and Muslim invasions of India, but virtually in all cases the so-called invaders belonged to this interaction zone and were thus in a sense parts of the south Asian mosaic. The second element which binds this zone together is economic interaction, a fact which is archaeologically and historically well documented. Even now, every winter there are large-scale movements of Powindah traders from Afghanistan to Pakistan. While coming they bring goods from Afghanistan, and on their return journey to the cooler heights of the Hindukush before the onset of summer, they carry goods from the subcontinent. An interesting historical sidelight on this economic interaction is the wide distribution of the Hindu bania or mercantile network covering virtually the whole of this segment of Asia in the nineteenth century and earlier. Archaeologically, this wide stretch from the Oxus to the Indus needs careful attention; too often the distribution of artefacts, which possibly suggests nothing more than the goods of itinerant merchants, has been taken to connote the movement of people and/or diffusion of culture.
India as a Geographical Entity
The geographical diversity of the Indian subcontinent is well known, and occasionally one has gone to the extent of arguing that there was no such country as India and that what we call India today was only an offshoot of the European dominance of the land. In any attempt to introduce the Indian land mass, this issue deserves some consideration. The first point to note is that modern nation states are products of modern political forces, and as nation states many European countries did not take shape before the nineteenth century. India’s case is hardly an exception.
What is perhaps more relevant to understand India as a geographical entity is a number of historical and cultural facts which suggest that in the ancient period itself there was a notion of India being such an identity. We have already drawn attention to the Vishnupurana which refers to the land between the Himalayas and the sea as belonging to the descendants of the mythical king, Bharata. Perhaps more important is a persistent reference in the ancient political texts to the domain of an universal emperor—Chakrabarti-Kshetra. It is the total subcontinental land mass which constitutes this ideal domain. So an ideal of political unity was always there, although that ideal was only infrequently achieved.
Hinduism is deeply rooted in the Indian landscape, with some of its features apparently underlining its pan-Indian geographical frame. A few examples will suffice. The major textually sanctioned centres of Shakti worship or the worship of the female principle/energy in the subcontinent are distributed right from Hinglaj in the Makran hills of Baluchistan to Sitakunda near Chittagong in the extreme south-east. The major centres of Saivite pilgrimage extend from Pasupatinath near Kathmandu to Rameshwaram in the deep south. While performing an obligatory ritual for one’s dead ancestors at the famous Hindu sacred place of Gaya on the bank of the Falgu river, the pilgrim is identified in a moving ritual hymn as belonging to a land with many rivers. The names of these rivers are interesting in the present context because they include all the major ones from the Indus to the Kaveri. There seems to be truth in the Vishnupurana notion of Bharatavarsha.
Major Geographical Lineaments of Indian History and Archaeology
There are a number of major divides in India’s historical geography, and to understand the geo-political factors in operation it is important to know them. The first divide is the line which one draws joining Delhi, the Aravalli hills and the Gulf of Cambay. In one sense this marks a secondary area of influence of the Indus—Oxus interaction zone, and in another sense this carries the thrust of the Ganga valley to the Indus—Oxus stretch. This is a kind of marchland where the influences emanating both from the Ganga valley and the Indus—Oxus interaction sphere have been operative. The second major divide is based on the line of the Vindhyas and the Satpuras. In a loose sense, the alignment of these ranges represents a north–south divide; unless one travelled to south India along the Orissan coast from east India or along the Konkan coast from Gujarat, one could move from Gangetic India to the south only across this divide. The third major divide is the terai belt separating the northern hills from the plains below. Until comparatively recently, the terai was both swampy and jungly and not subjected to large-scale clearance till the commercial needs for timber and tea plantations were felt.
A good example of the geo-political forces operative in Indian history is the case of the Satavahanas of the late pre-Christian and early Christian era, and the Marathas of the second half of the seventeenth century AD and later. Their epicentre was the upper Godavari valley. For any ambitious political power with this epicentre, a number of geographical possibilities were open for expansion. It certainly was possible to move towards the Gujarat coast with a share in Gujarat’s maritime wealth in mind. It was also possible to try to carve out an access to the Ganga plains through Malwa in central India. Third, nothing prevented the movement towards Vidarbha from the upper Godavari valley. In the southern direction, a major emphasis would be on the control of the Konkan coast and southern Deccan. Having secured a foothold in southern Deccan, one could think of moving towards the coast of Tamil Nadu and Andhra. Eventually, success would depend on the political situations of the areas in the line of the possible movements, but these lines are geographically defined. If one would compare the political movements of the Satavahanas and the Marathas, one would, in fact, find a lot of similarities which were conditioned by the identical geographical choices open before them. An equally important point is that it is not always a question of the macro-geopolitical choices that we have laid down for the Satavahanas and the Marathas; the smaller features of the terrains within individual areas also deserve a close study. The routes, agricultural pockets, resource areas, etc have all a part to play in the historical configuration of the area, and a knowledge of them will aid our understanding of the long-term geographical impulses running through the course of Indian archaeology and history.
A reas of Attraction, Relative Isolation and Isolation: A Critique of the Idea11
This scheme is based on the idea of grading the different areas of the land in terms of population, agriculture and the frequency of the location of historical kingdoms. In F.J. Richards’ classificatory system there were four so-called ‘areas of attraction’: the Ganga plain, the south, the Krishna–Godavari delta of Andhra, and Gujarat. Later, this simple classification became elaborate in the writings of O.H.K. Spate and B. Subbarao. In Subbarao’s scheme, the areas which fall in the category of ‘areas of attraction’ are Punjab, the Indo-Gangetic divide, Ganga basin, Malwa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The ‘areas of relative isolation’ included Sind, Marwar, Gujarat, Saurashtra, Konkan, Kerala and Assam. The Aravallis, the central Indian highlands and similar forested areas were considered ‘areas of isolation’.
The only value of such classifications is that it tries to provide a geographical framework for the understanding of the process of multilineal cultural development in India. But such classifications may also be historically inaccurate. The forested areas of the subcontinent, arbitrarily relegated to the areas of isolation, have, in fact, been primarily resource-bearing areas, and from this point of view alone, they can hardly be called isolated from the main productive forces of the subcontinent at any point of history. To give another example, Gujarat has been supposed to belong to the area of relative isolation. On the contrary, Gujarat was always in the forefront of India’s maritime enterprises and thus in the forefront of economic development as well. To sum up, geographical categories and lines or divides are no doubt important, but one has to be constantly aware of their historical dimensions.