EARLY INDIA
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on the south-west, from Karachi to Cape Comorin, 1750
miles of coast-line face the Arabian Sea ; and from Cape
Comorin to the mouths of the Ganges are 1300 miles of
seaboard washed by the Bay of Bengal. If we take about
300 miles of the north-eastern face of the rhomboid
extending. upwards from the mouth of the Ganges, and
base thereon an acute-angled triangle reaching 550 miles
to the north-east, it will include the province of Assam ;
and if again, on the south-eastern face of the latter, we
extend another long attenuated triangle for some 1200
miles southward and eastward till it narrows to a point
about two degrees north of Cape Comorin, we shall
roughly represent the extent of the Burmese provinces
under British rule,
It is a notable fact that one of the greatest of Greek
geographers, Strabo, defines the shape of India as rhomboidal,
and he gives the following distances for the length
of the sides respectively. From the sources of the Indus to
the mouth of the Ganges, 16,000 stadia. From the mouth
of the Ganges to Cape Comorin, 16,000. From Cape
Comorin to the mouth of the Indus, 19,000. From the
mouth of the Indus to its source in the mountains, 1 3,000.
The Greek stadium was undoubtedly an elastic quantity,
but the generally accepted length of it is 606% feet, or
about .115 of a mile. These measurements preserve the
general proportion of the sides of the figure fairly well,
but they are all about 200 miles in excess of the actual
lengths, It is a remarkable testimony to the accuracy of
Greek research.
Geographically, if not politically, the island of Ceylon
must be regarded as a part of India. The latitude of its
southern extremity is only six degrees north of the equator.
The extreme north latitude of the north-western corner of
Kashmir is thirty-seven degrees north, and the altitude of
the land surface of India varies from flats a few inches above
sea-level to peaks 28,000 feet above it. Thus every conceivable
variety of climate, every condition of physical
existence from the equatorial to the arctic, is to be found
in India—and occasionally found in close juxtaposition.
