There was also a fourth area, which had reached a fairly high level of organization. To the east of the Indus, and stretching parallel to it, is a belt 200 miles wide and 500 or 600 miles in length, which may fairly be called a desert. Its north-eastern portion lies as a wedge between the Punjab and the Middle Land, while between this desert and the forest belt across the north of the peninsula is an area higher than the plain, and yet protected from attack on the north-west and the south. Less productive than the Middle Land, this land, roughly Rajputana, was less attractive to invaders bent on plunder, and it was sufficiently organ ized to withstand for some centuries such attacks as were made on it.
In the far south-eastern plains of the peninsula, too, remote from the inroads which disturbed the northern plain, enjoying some measure of protection from the sea, the earlier corners apparently were able to set up a state which lasted, in some form or another, for more than a thousand years ; and, indeed, the example thus set seems to have been followed across the water in Ceylon, and northwards in both the lower and the upper valleys of the Cauvery, so that these became and re mained independent states for several hundred years. Here, however, life is easy, and there was little stimulus to advance beyond the stage of organizing themselves to resist pressure from the north ; thus no advance was made comparable to the advance made in Europe. They solved their own problem of living well, but when they met a superior civilization on equal terms they could not withstand it.
With the advent of a civilization of another type, and of peoples keeping written records, we begin to be on more sure ground. Mohammedanism spread, not only westwards towards Europe but east to India. As a religion it replaced forms of heathendom to which it was evidently superior; those who brought the religion organized lands where the forms of government were poor and the government weak. Europe withstood the attack for reasons which have already been stated. India was subject to the same attack and in almost the same shape, and the result reflects in a curious way the differences between Europe and India. India was, at length, to a greater or less extent conquered and governed by Mohammedans, but Islam never took a real hold on the people of India, and, except for the descendants of those who were such when they entered India, there are very few strict Mohammedans in the land.
This is not the place to do more than point out that the result is not altogether surprising. Last of all the great religions, it found other forms of religion already strongly believed and organized in the lands of Europe, India and China. Other things being equal, that which is tends to go on. It might seem that the " tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions, demons, demigods, household gods, tribal gods, local gods, universal gods," which make up Hinduism, is not the equal of Islam and of Christianity, but to those dwellers in this hot and for the most part wet land, who are less able to see the reality behind the outward appearance, the obvious fact is not the existence of one supreme, unchanging deity which is fixed in the mind of the wanderer in the desert, but the myriad changing forms which life takes.
There is no ideal unity to strive after ; thus, on the one hand, because the tendency to division is emphasized and there is nothing which could unite India in the same way that the Crusades united Europe, there is the opportunity for a conquering people to use the divisions to obtain control; but, on the other, Mo hammedanism is not a satisfying explanation of the meaning of life to a dweller in India, and he has not accepted it.
From the seventh century to the sixteenth, then, Mohammedan peoples successively entered India. The Arabs, as was natural, came first by land along the coast, and by sea coasting along the shores, but they effected nothing permanent ; the Turks next, from a little before A.D. 1000 onward, over the plateau of Iran and through Afghanistan. In little over a century, largely because of disputes between Hindu rulers, the whole northern plain had acknowledged Mohammedan rule. The dry Punjab became Mohammedan, and has remained so, as the stronghold of the orthodox; but elsewhere, though the rule was acknowledged, the people retained their ancient religions. At first, such of the land as was ruled by these new peoples was ruled from centres in Afghanistan, but with the completion of the conquest of the northern plain in the beginning of the thirteenth century the real power became centralized in Delhi. Now, notice where Delhi is; Sind and the Indus Valley, including the Punjab, though they have given their names to the whole land, form but the ante chamber to India, to which there is a comparatively narrow passage, 150 miles wide, between the Indian desert and the Himalayas. At the exit from this passage stands Delhi. And here, too, the actual lowland is narrowest; running along the eastern edge of the desert is the hill land of the Aravallis, one of the oldest mountain ranges of the world, and now, like all old and stable mountain ranges, much worn down. It is highest towards the south, but continues as an upland almost to Delhi, which thus stands in the gateway between the hills on the south and the Himalayas on the north. Behind it is the Mohammedan land; in front the land, never quite Mohammedan, which had to be governed; to it routes from both converge. Here is the natural capital of India north of the forest belt, so that again and again, from the time when the north was first organized by the Mohammedans, till our own day, some spot within a radius of a few miles has been chosen as the organizing centre and called Delhi. For a few years at a time Agra, a little farther within the plain, has been chosen as centre, but always the superior advantages of Delhi have been recognized.