History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v1.c8.s13.3

v1.c8.s13.3

As mentioned above, the great master fact that explains almost all we know of the ancient history of India is our knowledge that two thousand years or more before the birth of Christ a Sanskrit-speaking nation migrated from the valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes. They crossed the Indus in such numbers as to impress their civilisation and their language on the whole of the north of India, and this to such an extent as practically to obliterate, as far as history is concerned, the original inhabitants of the valley of the Ganges, whoever they may have been. At the time when this migration took place the power and civilisation of Central Asia were concentrated on the lower Euphrates, and the Babylonian empire never seems to have extended across the Karmanian desert to the eastward. The road, consequently, between Baktria and India was open, and nations might pass and re-pass between the two countries without fear of interruption from any other people.