The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India: A History of the Establishment and Progress of the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi, 1206–1290 A.D. c7.3

c7.3

River routes of North India. India is a land of sharp climatic and orographical contrast. Inspite of apparent lack of natural boundaries within her frontiers, an invader has to proceed with caution. The Indus valley region is an world in itself. It has greater affinities with the west and the north rather than with the south and the east. A formidable desert on the east, leads to an inhospitable region where mountains, parched soil and a pitiless sun make subsistence the reward of constant struggle. The stony soil of Rajputana has made restless warriors of her men. And yet, across the Aravalli range, only a couple of hundred miles from Central Rajputana, is the agriculturists' paradise. The Ganges valley, a belt of land not exceeding three hundred miles in breadth and skirted by the forbidding Himalayas and the Central Indian wilderness on either side, has the means of supporting the densest population in the whole of North India. Like the Nile valley, it has been the centre of civilised life from the earliest times, for a kind nature has made man indifferent to struggle for material ends. As if to complete its isolation, nature has provided a narrow entrance to the valley which it is not difficult to guard. The Aravalli hills from the southwest and the Siwalikh (Sapadalaksha) from the northeast approach each other across the plain separating the Punjab from the Ganges valley, leaving a conveniently narrow gap not more than a hundred miles in width. Through this gap, or to use a commoner term, bottleneck alone, Hindusthan could be approached militarily from the west. Nature has decreed that Hindusthan's fate is decided in battles fought not inside the valley, but in the plains extending from the Sutlej to the Jumna. For, once the invader set his foot inside this flat river-country, defence was necessarily at a disadvantage. Progress would be found easy until he came up, at the eastern bend of the Ganges, against a similar entrance narrowed by the northern spurs of the Vindhyas and the Terai. At this point, north of the river, the plains are intersected by numerous swift-flowing hill-streams and broad rivers; on the south, the very narrow ledge of the hills jutting almost on the river, affords the only comparatively easier passage into yet another fertile country of rivers and, of plenty. Bengal is remarkably well-provided with natural defences also. Her climate, marshy soil and countless rivers with seasonal floods are a great deterrent to the northerner. On the west, almost an unbroken chain of hills and trackless forests extend to a great length towards the sea; on the east, she is shut off by a similar barrier pierced only by the Brahmaputra which leads to another narrow valley, equally fertile, but whose uneven soil, flooded streams and moist air are a death-trap to the western invader.