The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c15.62

v1.c15.62

The geography of Assam, though very simple, is on a very grand scale. The Tsan-po river rises high on the plateau of Tibet northward of Lucknow. For more than seven hundred miles it flows eastward over the plateau in rear of the Himālayan peaks. Then it turns sharply southward, and descends from a great height steeply through a deep gorge, until it emerges from the mountains at a level not a thousand feet above the sea. At this point, turning westward, it forms the Brahmaputra, ‘the son of Brahmā, the Creator.’ The Brahmaputra flows for four hundred and fifty miles westward through the valley of Assam, deeply trenched between the snowy wall of the Himālayas on the one hand and the forested mountains of the Burmese border and the Khāsi and Gāro hills on the other hand. The river rolls down the valley in a vast sheet of water, depositing banks of silt at the smallest obstruction. Islands form and reform, and broad channels break away from the main river in time of flood, and there is no attempt to control them. The swamps on either hand are flooded in the rainy season, till the lower valley is one broad shining sea, from which the hills slope up on either side. The traffic on the river is maintained chiefly by exports of tea and timber, and imports of rice for the labourers on the tea estates. Some day, when great sums of money are available for capital expenditure, the Brahmaputra will be controlled, and Assam will become the seat of teeming production and a dense population. The Indian Empire contains three hundred and fifteen million people, but it also contains some of the chief virgin resources of the world.