Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/37

, a product of the Indian soil which extended its influence beyond its limits over all countries lying east and north of India—from the steppes of the Mongols and the mountainous wildernesses of Tibet, through Japan, and on the south and east far into the Indian Archipelago. For centuries India stood out as the heart of the Old World, moulding and dominating its thought and life. Meanwhile there continued to beat upon Indian shores successive waves of foreign influence, such as the Iranian influence flowing from the first veritable empire of the ancient Orient, the empire of the Achaemenides, which under Darius included within itself the whole of Sindh and a considerable portion of the Punjab east of the Indus, forming his twentieth satrapy and yielding the enormous tribute of fully a million sterling, an influence that left some marks upon Indian art and architecture and methods of government and administration; the Hellenic influence beginning from Alexander's invasion and exercised by a succession of Greek rulers of the Punjab and neighbouring regions, but "which touched only the fringe of Indian civilization"; and the Graeco-Roman influence during the time of the Kushan or Indo-Scythian kings. Then, also, the two great civilizing forces of the world that next arose did not fail to touch India and contribute to her making, viz. the Islamic culture and civilization, and the European,