Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/10

2 by those mountains which were known to the ancients under the name of Paropamisus: Mount Caucasus forms its barrier to the north, separating it from various nations of Tartars, from the great and little Thibet. From mount Caucasus to Chitigan, marshes and rivers divide it from the kingdoms of Tepra, Assam, and Aracan: the sea, from Chitigan to cape Comorin and from hence to Persia, embraces the rest of Indostan. THIS great extent of country has been inhabited, from the earliest antiquity, by a people who have no resemblance either in their figures or manners with any of the nations which are contiguous to them. Although these nations have at different times sent conquerors amongst them, who have established themselves in different parts of the country: although the Mogul Tartars under Tamerlane and his successors have at last rendered themselves lords of almost the whole of it; yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character by the establishment of these strangers amongst them.

BESIDES the particular denominations which they receive from the casts and countries in which they are born, there is one more general, which is applied indiscriminately to distinguish the original natives from all who have intruded themselves amongst them, Hendoo, from whence Indian.

THE Indians have lost all memory of the ages in which they began to believe in VISTNOU, ESWARA, BRAMA, and a hundred thousand divinities subordinate to these. These divinities are worshipped in temples called Pagodas in every part of Indostan, the whole extent of which is holy land to its inhabitants; for there is no part in which some divinity has not appeared and done something to merit a temple and priests to take care of it. Some of these fabrics are of immemorial antiquity: they are at the same time monuments of such stupendous labour, that they are supposed to have been built by the gods to whom they arc consecrated.