Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c5.4

c5.4

Within that vast territory of some two million square miles the familiar outlines may usefully be recalled. At first sight, the formidable mountain-ranges of the north give the subcontinent an aspect of exclusiveness which it does not in fact possess. For example, there are routes from China to the Brahmaputra in Assam; through Sikkim it is possible to reach the Tibetan plateau; farther west a number of feasible if arduous routes enter Kashmir from Turkestan. The most notable of these routes uses the famous Karakoram Pass, a desolate highway, if such it can be called, from High Asia into trans-Indus Kashmir. But neither this nor any other of these northern approaches has played any dominant rôle in the formation of Indian civilization. Their importance lay rather in the reverse direction, in that they were among the chosen channels for the diffusion of Buddhism and certain aspects of Buddhistic art from India into central Asia and China during the early centuries A.D.