CHAPTER VI

ASSAM, BURMA, AND CEYLON

« HAPPY is the land which has no history” might well be
written of the province of Assam, which, since its annexation
 from Burma in 1826, has steadily added its
growth of revenue to the Indian treasury, enlarging its
agricultural borders from year to year in placid contemplation
 of those events which have stirred the peninsula
and made modern Indian history. On the north the
valley of Assam lies under the eastern ridges of the
Himalayas, where Bhutin and the outlying border of
Tibet occupy the great mass of the hills, and include some
of the most irreclaimable and uncivilised of Himalayan
tribes. On the south the rough tableland of the Khasia
and Garo hills intervenes between the valley and the
Cachar districts of Eastern Bengal drained by the Surma,
ere the Surma joins the Brahmaputra after the latter has
turned the western flank of the hills, Assam is the valley
of the Brahmaputra, and it owes its wealth of agricultural
resources—even its very existence—to that silt-bearing
river. The Brahmaputra rises, like the Sutlej, near the
sacred lake of Manasarawar. For 800 or goo miles it
flows steadily eastward through Tibet as the Tsan-pu,
passing to the south of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Then,
turning the eastern flank of the Himalayas, and receiving
a few Chinese tributaries, it twists into Assam under the
name of the Dihang. At this eastern bend it takes up
the Dibang from the north and another stream (which
is also named Brahmaputra) from the east, and finally,
as the “Son of Brahma, the creator” (7. Brahmaputra),
it proceeds to increase and fertilise the valley of Assam.
[ts drainage basin is 361,200 square miles, and its mean
low-water discharge at Gualpara, near the head of the