Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c5.9

c5.9

The northern Plains are bounded towards the south by the Vindhya Range which, with its outliers and extensions (notably, the Arāvallis on the west and the Kaimur Range on the east), divides northern India from Gujarāt, the Deccan and the South. Parallel with the Range lies the Narbadā or Narmadā river, which may be regarded as the equivalent riverine frontier, though it is also the axis of a Central India with cultural problems of its own. Thence southwards the core of peninsular India is the great plateau which rises to an average height of 2,000 feet or more, with occasional peaks in the neighbourhood of 9,000 feet. On the west the plateau tumbles steeply to a narrow coastal strip in what are known as the Western Ghāts, which receive the full impact of the summer monsoon. On the east a broader plain, between the Eastern Ghāts and the Bay of Bengal, is enlarged by the valleys of the major rivers which cut back deeply into the central highland. Towards the southern end, at Pālghāt and Coimbatore, rivers falling east and west actually combine to lower a pass through the upland, thus providing an easy cross-country route of considerable interest in the protohistoric period. Through this gap in the 1st century A.D. Roman trafficking, represented by hoards of Roman coins, penetrated from the west coast to the east, avoiding the troublesome navigation of Cape Comorin. By the same accepted way a legend brought St. Thomas to Madras. The pass is marked today by the passage of a trans-peninsular railway.