Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c5.3

c5.3

India was the land of the great river Sindhu or Indus which, paradoxically, flows mostly within the modern state of Pakistan. The name or its substance was anciently extended, however vaguely, to the whole subcontinent, and even across the present Khyber barrier to the range of the Hindu Kush, north of Kābul. In that enlarged geographical connotation it will on occasion be used in these pages, without reference to the modern political map. It will relate to the whole subcontinent south of the Himālayas and the Hindu Kush, east of the Helmand Desert, and west of the Chin Hills. No doubt so cavalier a disregard of barbed wire will be resented, and resentment is readily intelligible. But even the clumsy carpet-bag term 'Indo-Pakistan subcontinent' fails to meet the case, and there is indeed no practical alternative to the retention and even the expansion of the traditional name. As one with good friends in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, I can only beg forgiveness for crossing and recrossing so many proud frontiers without passport. I must plead that my sole concern is with prehistoric and protohistoric geography prior to the 2nd century B.C.