The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s3.12

c31.s3.12

The claims which the province can fairly make on the respectful attention of the outer world rest on other grounds. It is a gate through which successive hordes of immigrants from the great hive of the Mongolian race in Western China have poured into the plains of India, and many of the resident tribes still are almost pure Mongolians. The religion of such tribes is of more than local concern, because it supplies the clue to the strange Tantric developments of both Buddhism and Hinduism which are so characteristic of mediaeval and modern Bengal. The temple of Kāmākhyā near Gauhātī is one of the most sacred shrines of the Sākta Hindus, the worshippers of the female forms of deity, while the whole country is renowned in Hindu legend as a land of magic and witchcraft. The old tribal beliefs are being abandoned gradually in favour of extreme, or even fanatical, Hindu orthodoxy, and the history of Assam offers many examples of the process by which Brahman priests have established their influence over non-Aryan chiefs step by step, and drawn them within the roomy fold of Hinduism. All the various methods of conversion and absorption enumerated by Sir Alfred Lyall and Sir H. Risley have been adopted from time to time.¹