[6

INDIA

in clearing up many of the geographical difficulties which
lay in the way of a satisfactory translation of these Chinese
records. The weary route pursued by the Buddhist devotees
 can now be traced almost step by step, but they end
chiefly in the northern plains of the Punjab, and add little
or nothing to our early geographical knowledge of peninsular
 India. Possessing a knowledge of trans-Himalayan
regions, we can follow the pilgrims ; but the record of the
pilgrims hardly enlightens us on any more important point
than the impracticable nature of the Northern Himalayan
routes. It is true that the great Greek geographer
Ptolemy had, long before the downfall of Greek ascendency,
 not only collected a great store of information consisting
 of place names covering a vast area of the known
world, but had evolved the first practicable scheme for
the construction of a map by the co-ordination of these
places in latitude and longitude. Many maps of India
illustrating the Ptolemaic scheme have been made and
published within comparatively modern times, and they
are of great interest and value as indications of the theoretical
 knowledge which had been derived and collated from
Greek adventure and exploration, which under one form
or another had doubtless penetrated to the far East long
before the days of Alexander. But little practical advantage
 is to be gained by the purely academic study of Indian
geography in such early times, and it is to the hitherto
but partially illustrated movements of Arab invaders, and
of explorers from Western Asia, that we should now turn
if we wish to appreciate the influence on the destinies of
India which has been exercised by the geographical configuration
 of her western borderland. Practical geographical
 exploration into India ceased for a time with
one great military invasion—that of Alexander ; it reopened
 with another—that of the Arab general, Muhammad
Kasim, about ten centuries later.
From the very beginning of civilisation, and the consequent
 demand for luxuries in Egypt, trade with India and
the East has been the desire of Western nations. The
sommand of it has raised them to pre-eminence ; the