Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c5.2

c5.2

If to far India's coast we sail, we encounter today insistent barriers which have nothing to do with a study of the subcontinent's ancient past. Variant uniforms and graces meet us at the gates of West and East Pakistan and of the thousand miles of the new India that divide them. Adam's Bridge has long ceased to offer the most tenuous and symbolic link with Ceylon. The antique fortress of Goa still wears the alien flag of Portugal. At Kātmāndu the traveller, who may now indeed arrive by air, is confronted by the guardians of Nepal, if less obdurately than of old. The Afghan sentry leans warily upon the closed gate at the head of the Khyber Pass, though little heeded by the nomads who were already passing that way from season to season long before his advent. In no sense, ancient or modern, does the term 'India' nominally contain this vast and changing amalgam. At the outset our artificial usage of the word in the context of this book must therefore be defined.