India, an extensive region of southern Asia, and next after China the most populous area in the world. It was celebrated during many ages for its riches and natural productions, its beautiful manufactures and costly merchandise, the magnificence of its sovereigns, and the early civilisation of its people. It possesses especial interest to British people from the imperial connection of its history with that of their own nation. It affords, too, the greatest market in the world for British textile manufactures, and a great field for the employment of British capital.
Nomenclature.—The name India comes to us, through the Romans, from the Greeks, who borrowed it from the Persians. The latter applied the name Hind to the dwellers in the basin of the Sindhu River, a Sanskrit name for the Indus. Sindhu, by the regular change of s into h, becomes Hind. The river is still called Sind; while the land is Hind. Officially, then, the country is Hind in the vernacular, and India in English. The national name Hindu is derived from Hind. Then from Hindu came the name Hindustan, which is only a province—viz. the region of the Jumna and the Ganges. This name has sometimes been applied to India as a whole, but this is quite erroneous.
Geographers write of Further India and Hither India. The former, lying eastward beyond the Malay Peninsula, is mostly in native hands, and partly under French protection. The latter is under British dominion, and is in legal phrase India. It was in 1877 proclaimed as the Indian empire. This article will refer only to the official India thus indicated. It will for method and condensation be divided into five parts—I. The Land; II. The People; III. The Government and the Military Defence; IV. The Civil Administration; V. The History.
I. THE LAND.
India is the central peninsula of southern Asia, and lies in 8° 4'—35° N. lat. and 67°—92° E. long. According to these limits, its length may be stated approximately at 1900 miles, and its breadth, reckoned along the parallel of 25° N. lat., at 1600 miles, with an area of at least 1,350,000 sq. m. But in round numbers the square miles contained in this area may be reckoned at one million and a half—inclusive of Burma. The natural boundaries of this vast region are, on the N., the range of the Himalaya Mountains, which separates it from Tartary, China, and Tibet; on the W. the Suliman Mountains, dividing it from Afghanistan and Beluchistan; on the SW. and S. the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean; on the E. the hill-ranges which border upon Burma, and the Bay of Bengal. From the mouths of the Brahmaputra on the eastern side, and of the Indus on the western side, the two coasts, east and west, incline towards the same point, and meet at Cape Comorin, thus producing the form of an inverted triangle. The two sides of the triangle have together a coastline of about 2000 miles. Thus southern and central, or as it may be called peninsular India, is from its extent of seaboard a maritime country. It is northern India only that has a continental character.
Geography.—For the geography of India there exist excellent materials from the Grand Trigonometrical Survey—a work of the highest scientific value—which has determined the height of the mountains and the situation of all the principal places; from the topographical survey, which has displayed the contour and configuration of the whole country; from the revenue and cadastral surveys, which have delineated the boundaries not only of villages but of fields also for all provinces except Bengal and Behar. The region presents a diversified surface and scenery. It has indeed been called 'an epitome of the whole earth,' consisting as it does of mountains far above the level of perpetual snow, broad and fertile plains, bathed in intense sunshine, arid wastes, and impenetrable forests. Its natural divisions are the Himalaya, the sub-Himalayan ranges, the plains of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, the basin of the Indus, the highlands of Hindustan, the Vindhya and Satpura ranges, and the peninsula south of those ranges.
The Himalaya (meaning 'the abode of snow') consists of a chain some 1500 miles in length, in which the links are formed by mountain knots covered with perpetual snow, some of which rise from 20,000 to near 30,000 feet above sea-level, and are the highest yet discovered in the world. It is the dominating factor in the geography of northern India, being the source of the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, and of their principal affluents. See HIMALAYA.
The sub-Himalayan ranges run between the chain of the Himalaya and the plains of the Ganges and Indus. They occupy Cashmere, the Simla hill-states, Gurhwal, Kumaon, Nepāl, Sikkim, and Bhutan, which, owing to their elevation above the sea (5000 to 9000 feet), have a climate like central Europe in summer and cold as Switzerland in winter, with the vegetation of the temperate zones. These regions are separated from the plain of the Ganges by the submontane tract called Terai, which extends in a long belt, 5 to 25 miles in width, from Hurdwar (where the Ganges issues from the sub-Himalayan ranges) to the Brahmaputra. It is covered with forest, and is the haunt of wild beasts. The soil is very fertile, but malaria has rendered it uninhabitable by man and the domestic animals, at least from April to October. This wilderness is being gradually narrowed or invaded by the progress of drainage and cultivation.
The plains of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, which include Bengal, Behar, the Doab (meaning the 'Mesopotamia' of the Ganges and Jumna rivers), Oudh, and Rohilcund, form an alluvial flat, terminating in a delta, and extending from the Bay of Bengal to the slight uplands on the Punjab border that form the water-parting between the Ganges and the Indus. Throughout its entire length the Ganges and its numerous tributaries spread out like the veins of a leaf, carrying everywhere their fertilising influence. The population of these fertile and well-cultivated plains is very dense.
The basin of the Indus, in the north-west, is towards the south separated from that of the Ganges by the Aravalli Hills. The Punjab occupies the northern portion. South of the Punjab, and parallel with the river, the great sandy desert of the Indus extends for nearly 500 miles. The valley of the Indus is continued through Sind to the