The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s16.t1: (a) Mixture with Non-Indian Races
The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s16.t1
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(a) Mixture with Non-Indian Races
c7.s16.t1.1
International as well as inter-racial relations,—the politics of boundaries, the "geopolitics",—constituted the anatomy of India’s political history as that of Europe’s political history through the ages. These contacts between the races such as have contributed to the making of political India were of the most diverse character. No less heterogeneous than those in Europe were the contacts of the indigenous Indian tribes, races or nations with the non-Indian tribes, races or nations. These extra-Indian peoples may be somewhat chronologically enumerated as follows:
c7.s16.t1.2
(1) Assyro-Babylonian, (2) Iranian-Persian, (3) Hellenists, (4) Parthians, (5) Scythian-Yuechi-Sakas (Tartars), (6) Huns, (7) Tibetans, (8) Chinese, (9) Arabs (Islamized), (10) Turks (Islamized), (11) Moghuls (Islamized), (12) Europeans.
c7.s16.t1.3
In certain instances the Indian peoples had to submit to these non-Indian peoples (excepting perhaps the Chinese) as subject races. In other instances the independent Indian states had to carry on their activities in a system of *maṇḍala* or geopolitical “sphere”, which comprised both Indian and non-Indian states. This is an important consideration the value of which cannot be overlooked in a survey not only of political literature like the *Nītiśāstras* but of every Hindu *vidyā* and *kalā*, art and science, philosophy and religion. India’s debt to non-Indian races is no less an historic reality than her contributions to their progress.