Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/155

Rh of a number of states, differing in language as well as in government, although, at times, several of these states may have been subjected to a single conqueror. As on the continent of Europe there are various languages, with a more close relationship between some, as the Portuguese and the Spanish, than between others; so, it should be remembered, are there in India various languages with greatly varying afinities.

India proper is a vast territory, extending from the eighth to the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude, a distance of nineteen hundred miles; and from the Bay of Bengal on the east to the Arabian Sea on the west, a distance of fifteen hundred miles, containing an area of 1,250,000 square miles. In this wide range it embraces climates, scenery, soils, and products varying as greatly as do the languages of the nations that inhabit its different provinces. It will be readily understood that what is said of the Hindus by a writer in one part of India may not be true of the inhabitants of other portions of the country. What is said of the Bengalis may not be true of the inhabitants of Madras or Bombay, and the converse.

All the languages of India have been affected