INDIA

which would include all the various races of the country
which is now known as India. One tribe, or clan, alone
which passed into the peninsula from the north was sufficiently
 powerful to impress its name upon the northwestern
 districts of the country, and its designation,
Bharata, is the earliest appellation which can be recognised
as being more than locally applicable to any part of those
districts. The nations of the West, equally with those of
the East, first knew India as the land of the Indus. To
all tides of immigration, from whatever landward direction
they were derived, the Indus was the first great barrier
encountered as they passed through the narrow channels
open to them in the mountains of the north-west, and
spread into the plains of the Punjab or of Sind. The
great river of the West, with its network of waterways and
islands, was to them as the open sea, and thus the same
Sanscrit word which they applied to the ocean itself served
to designate the mighty barrier which was set between
them and the plains of the South. So that Sindhus
became gradually the recognised name for the districts
watered by the Indus, and a variation in its form (Sindhavas)
 indicated the inhabitants of the valley. Other
variations followed from the dialectic peculiarities of
foreign nations. To the ancient Persians it was Hendu ;
to the Greeks Indikos; and finally Virgil calls the country
India. In the far East the Chinese made use of the name
Shin-ta and Hien Tau, but it is to the modern Persian
that we owe the term Hindustan ; and the Imperial title,
« Kaisar-i-Hind ” of to-day confers on the King of England
the titular sovereignty of a country which literally only
embraces the Punjab and a part of the Gangetic basin,
but is universally accepted as representing all India.
The shape of India should be described as rhomboidal
cather than triangular, with an acute apex pointing southward
 into the ocean. The length of the north-eastern
side of the rhomboid, from the head of the Bay of Bengal
to the extreme north-west of Kashmir along the mountain
mass of the Himalaya, is about 1400 miles. From Kashmir
 to Karachi, its north-western side is about 1200 miles :