The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.152

v1.c15.152

By these physical characteristics India is made fruitful, and is at the same time more than half isolated from the rest of the world. The most primitive of its inhabitants are the Gonds and other tribes, who have been driven into the forest recesses of the hills eastward of the Deccan plateau and into other regions difficult of access throughout the sub-continent. The Dravidian languages have been preserved in the southern promontory. The Āryan and later invaders from western and central Asia have come from the north-west through the passage of Delhi, and have thence dispersed south-eastward down the Ganges to Bengal, and south-westward to the fertile Gujarāti and Marāthā countries. Through the eastern mountains, which sever the Indian Empire from China, have penetrated in historical times few great invasions; and these have not been far-reaching in their political results. But if we may judge from the physical types and languages of the populations, and from their social characteristics, there has been from prehistoric times onwards a constant infiltration of Mongolian stock, not only abundantly into Burma, and along the Tsan-po valley to the foot-hills of the Himālaya, but also in lesser degree into Assam and into the eastern parts of Bengal about Dacca.