The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.219

v1.c15.219

The diversity of speech in the Indian Empire, like the diversity of race, is naturally explained as the result of invasions from Western and Further Asia. Such invasions belong to a period which was only brought to a close by the establishment of the British dominion. The power which has succeeded in welding all the subordinate ruling powers into one great system of government is essentially naval; and since it controls the sea-ways, it has been forced, in the interests of security, to close the land-ways. This has been the object of British policy in regard to the countries which lie on the frontiers of the Indian Empire—Afghānistān, Baluchistān, and Burma. Political isolation has thus followed as a necessary consequence of political unity. But it must be remembered that this political isolation is a recent and an entirely novel feature in the history of India. It is the great landmark which separates the present from the past.