Page:India — Wonderland of the East.djvu/13



The Light of Asia 3 THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.

We must begin our study of 'things Indian' with a brief notice of the land, because that land is in itself one of the wonders we have to grasp. India is a world in itself, and its population amounts to a sixth part of the whole human race. It is not quite so difficult to decide questions relating to the ethnic character of that population as in the case of the other countries we have been studying, and we will glance at a few of them before passing on. The subject is intimately connected with the principal physical characteristic of India — its isolation. Shut off from the rest of the world by an almost impassable barrier— the Himalaya, or Himala (wall, or, rather, abode of snow) — India, the traditional home of the black man, is the theatre of some of the earliest doings of the man whom we consider most emphatically white.

THE ARYAN

In that secluded workshop the Aryan elaborated his earliest civilization, while his brother Empire-builder, the Semite, and that mysterious cousin, the 'man of the tombs,' were fighting for supremacy in the basin of the Eastern Mediterranean. At the same time, another race (identified by some with the tomb-builders), which we generally call yellow, was working out a different kind of civilization in similar seclusion in China. The first country was destined to give to the last a religion which she developed and found (shall we say?) too good for her!

1 - 2