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2

INDIA

tribution of the races of men who first occupied the
peninsula. Indian tradition indeed (such traditions as
we find embodied in their great epics, the Ramayana
and Mahabharata) tell obscurely of ancient conflicts between
 northern races, aliens to the aboriginal non-Aryan
peoples who occupied the southern plains, and there are
dim visions of moving populations from High Asia ever
sweeping into India from the north-west ; sufficient indication
 that through all historic ages the land routes to
India have been as they now are. The first authentic
sea trade with the Indian coasts was that maintained by
the fleets of Solomon and Hiram, whose ship captains
“not only brought Indian apes, peacocks, and sandalwood
to Palestine ; they also brought their Sanscrit names.”?
Our earliest exact knowledge of India is derived from the
Greeks. The profound philosophy of the Brahmanical
school which, in weaning men from the pomps and
vanities of an evanescent world, weaned them also from
trivial contemplation of the world itself, absolutely forbid
such authentic records of the actual facts of human
existence as might have been expected from a highly
advanced Aryan community, and it is to the West that
we must look for our first historical knowledge of the
East. Hekataios of Miletus (549-486 B.C.) first distinguishes
 India as a geographical entity, but it is Herodotus
(450 B.C.) to whom we owe the earliest definition of the
political divisions of the countries bordering India, although
his eastern horizon was limited by the Indus. Herodotus
has never yet received a full measure of acknowledgment
for the general geographical accuracy of those compilations
 which define the position of the tribal communities
of the remote Persian satrapies of his time. The same
processes of geographical survey which have lately unravelled
 the hazy tangle of subsequent Arab geography,
have proved that from the days of Herodotus to modern
times a very large proportion of the tribes of Eastern
Persia and of the wild districts intervening between Persia
and Western India are to be found in the relative positions
1 Hunter, p. 163.