The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c10.7

c10.7

In those days vast territories were still covered by forest, the home of countless wild beasts and scanty tribes of savage men; while regions of great extent in Northern India had been occupied for untold centuries by more or less civilized communities of the higher races who, from time to time, during the unrecorded past, had pierced the mountain barriers of the north-western frontier. Practically nothing is ascertained concerning the immigration of the possibly equally advanced Dravidian races who entered India, we know not how, where, or whence, spread over the plateau of the Deccan, and extended to the extremity of the Peninsula. Our slender stock of knowledge is limited to the fortunes of the vigorous races, speaking an Aryan tongue, who poured down from the mountains of the Hindū Kush and Pāmīrs, filling the plains of the Panjāb and the upper basin of the Ganges with a sturdy and quick-witted population, unquestionably superior to the aboriginal races of those regions. The settled country between the Himalaya mountains and the Narbadā river was divided into a multitude of independent states, some monarchies and some tribal republics, owning no allegiance to any paramount power, secluded from the outer world, and free to fight among themselves. The most ancient literary traditions, compiled probably in the fourth or fifth century B. C., but looking back to an older time, enumerate sixteen of such states or powers, extending from Gandhāra, on the extreme north-west of the Panjāb, comprising the modern districts of Peshāwar and Rāwalpindi, to Avanti or Mālwā, with its capital Ujjain, which still retains its ancient name unchanged.¹