AN HISTORICAL ATLAS OF THE INDIAN PENINSULA

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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP08C01297R000200140008-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 84
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: May 1, 1947
• Content Type: REPORT

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AN
HISTORICAL ATLAS
OF THE
INDIAN
PENINSULA
BY
SECOND EDITION
OXFORD ?UNIVERSITY PRESS
Rs 3.50
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-
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LIST OF MAPS
1. Physical Features.
2. Ancient India c. 500 B.C.
3. Alexander the Great's Asiatic Empire.
4. Alexander's Campaigns in Northern India.
5. Asoka's Empire (250 Lc.).
6. India c. A.D. 150.
7. Ancient Trade Routes between India and the
Western World.
8. The Gupta Empire at the Close of the Fourth
Century A.D.
9. India in A.D. 640.
10. India at the Close of the Ninth Century A.D.
11. The Conquests of Mahmud of Ghazna.
12. India in 1030.
13. The Chola Empire under Kulottunga I
c. 1100.
14. Hindu Expansion in the Archipelago.
15. India in 1236.
16. The Empire of Muhammad bin Tughluq in
1335.
17. India in 1398.
18. India on the Eve of Babur's Invasion (1525).
19. The Portuguese Possessions in the East and
the Route to India.
20. The Sultanates of the Deccan and the Hindu
Kingdom of Vijayanagar in the Sixteenth
Century.
21. India in 1561.
22. The Mughal Empire at the Death of Akbar
(1605).
23. The Marathas in 1680.
Page III of cover.
24. The Mughal Empire at the End of the Seven-
teenth Century.
25. India in the Time of Warren Hastings.
26. India in 1798.
27. The Partition of Mysore in 1799.
28. India in 1805.
29. India in 1836.
30. The Growth of Sikh Power under Ranjit
Singh.
31. Sikh Territories at End of First Sikh War
- 1846.
32. India at the Close of Dalhousie's Admini-
stration.
33. The Absorption of Burma.
34. The North-West Frontier of India (1908).
35. India (1753-1890) showing the Sequence of
Territorial Acquisition.
36. Pathan Tribal Distribution on the North-
West Frontier.
37. South-West Monsoon..
38. North-East Monsoon.
39. Mean Annual Rainfall.
40. Aryan Languages.
41. Non-Aryan Languages.
42. Economic Products (Animal and Vegetable).
43. Economic Products (Minerals).
44. Density of Population by Provinces and
States (1941 Census).
45. Prevailing Religions.
46. Main Lines of Railway Communication.
47. India in 1939.
The Indian Union and Pakistan,' 15 August -1942.
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_ ?
AN
HISTORICAL ATLAS
OF THE
INDIAN
PENINSULA
BY
C. COLLIN .DAVIES
M.A. (OxoN.), PH.D. (CANTAB.).
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Sarkar gold Medallist of the
Asiatic Society
Reader in Indian History in the
University of Oxford
SECOND EDITION
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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INTRODUCTION
THE influence of the physiographic environment
on the history of a country is nowhere more
apparent than in India. In prehistoric.ages desic-
cation in Central Asia was one of the causes
leading to migrations which profoundly altered
the racial distribution of the Indian sub-con-
tinent7 Centuries later, within historical times,
invasions from the same area affected India's
? political structure. All these migrations and in-
vasions added to the heterogeneity of the existing
population. According to the orthodox Hindu
view the Rajputs are the direct descendants of
the Kshatriyas of Vedic India, but this claim is
based on questionable genealogies. The Ksha-
triyas of ancient India disappear from history
and this can probably be explained by invasions
from Central Asia which shattered the ancient
Hindu polity. It is generally accepted that these
invading hordes, such as the Yueh-chi and the
Hunas, became rapidly hinduized, and that their
leaders assumed Kshatriya rank and were ac-
cepted as such. Out of this chaos arose a new
Hindu polity with new rulers, and the families of
invaders which became supreme were recognized
as Kshatriyas or Rajputs. It must not be for-
gotten that in later times many chiefs of the
so-called aboriginal tribes also assumed the title
of Rajput.
Before the advent of the European nations by
sea India was peculiarly susceptible to invasion
through the mountain passes of the north-west.
Century after century hordes of invaders swept
through these gateways to the Indus and the
plains of the Panjab. Persians, Greeks, and
Afghans, the forces of Alexander the Great, the
armies of Mahmud of Ghazna, the hosts of
Timur, Babur, and Nadir Shah, and the troops
of Ahmad Shah Durrani, all advanced by these
routes, either to found kingdoms and remain as
conquerors or to retire leaving in their train
plundered cities and devastated plains. The his-
tory of invasions from Central Asia proves that
neither the mountain ranges of the north-west
nor the River Indus presented any real barrier
? to an enterprising general. Nor did they form
a good political frontier and serve as a zone of
separation, for the kingdoms of the Persians,
the Graeco-Bactrians, the Parthians, the Kushan
branch of the Yueh-chi, and the Ephthalites or
White Huns in many cases stretched from
Afghanistan to the plains of India.
r The route taken by invaders after crossing the
Indus was also dictated by geographical con-
siderations. From the strategic background of
Afghanistan the path for invaders lay along the
lines of least resistance. Checked on the south
by the deserts of Rajputana, invading armies
were forced to enter the Jumna and Ganges
valleys through the narrow bottle-neck between
the north-eastern extremity of the desert and the
foot of the Himalayas. On three occasions has
the fate of Hindustan been decided on the plain
Lof Panipat : in 1526, when Babur, the Barlas
Turk, defeated Ibrahim Lodi; in 1556, when
Akbar crushed the forces of Hemu; and lastly,
in 1761, when the Marathas were defeated by
Ahmad Shah Durrani. The geographical factor
combined with internal decay has been chiefly
responsible for this.
? The empires of northern India arose in the
fertile basins of the Jumna and Ganges where
the country was able to support a teeming popula-
tion. This is also apparent in the development
of British rule in India. The fact that the French
possessions in the Camatic were not rich enough
to form the nucleus of an empire was one of the
reasons for the failure of Dupleix. Clive and
Warren Hastings, on the other hand, were able
to exploit the wealth of Bengal and Bihar, and,
by means of the subsidiary alliance system, to
control the resources of the buffer state of Oudh.
A detailed account of the payments made by
Bengal to Madras and Bombay will be found in
the author's Warren Hastings and Oudh, p. 145.
In this connexion it should be noted that Sind,
in the eighth century, was neither rich enough
nor sufficiently well placed strategically to serve
as ? a base from which the Arabs could extend
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their rule over India. There were, of course,
other reasons, such as the decline of the Arab
central government and the difficult nature of
their line of communications through Baluchi-
stan, which prevented the dispatch of adequate
reinforcements. In India, as in Europe, the eighth
century witnessed the end of the wave of Arab
expansion. It is interesting to contrast British
policy towards Afghanistan with that adopted on
the north-east frontier. While Afghanistan was
converted into a buffer state Burma was com-
pletely annexed. It would be incorrect to suppose
that Burma was annexed solely for economic
reasons. The acquisition of the coastal strip of
Arakan and Tenasserim, in 1824, partly resulted
from the desire to link up Calcutta with Singa-
pore. While the annexation of Pegu, in 1852,
was an economic asset, Upper Burma remained
for many years a liability. The exploitation of
the wealth of Burma and the development of its
natural resources came much later. It was the
barren nature of Afghanistan, and the warlike
character of its inhabitants, combined with the
Russian advance to the Oxus, which led to its
being con?verted into a buffer state. To be an
efficient buffer state a country must possess
powers of intermediate resistance. These quali-
ties were lacking in Burma.
One fact emerging from a study of the Central
Asian policy of the Mughal emperors and form-
ing further proof that distance, combined with
poor communications, always defeated the efforts
of the Timurids in India, is the extreme difficulty,
almost impossibility, of controlling outlying con-
quests such as Balkh and Badakhshan from a
distant centre like Delhi. In the same way the
Deccan policy of the Mughal emperors and of
their predecessors, the Sultans of Delhi, was
strategically unsound. Aurangzeb, like Muham-
mad bin Tughluq before him, found that the
Deccan could not be controlled from Delhi.
Muhammad bin Tughluq also discovered that it
was equally impossible in those days to control
-- Hindustan from Deogir. In fact one of the most
important lessons of Indian history is that a
united India was impossible until the develop-
ment of communications after 1857 facilitated
centralization.
It is often suggested in text-books that the
Greek invasion under Alexander gave the im-
petus to the foundation of a single sovereignty
embracing the greater part of India. This is
refuted by the fact that the conception of a
universal empire is quite familiar in the Vedic
period. The conception of Chakravartin or
universal emperor and the implications of the
asvamedha sacrifice existed long before Alexan-
der's time. The nearest approach to unity in
ancient India was under Asoka, but the back-
wardness of communications presupposes that
there could have been no exaggerated centra-
lization. Implicit in the nature of these early
empires was the recognition of almost autono-
mous powers in the outlying provinces. The
difficulty experienced by the central government
in its attempts to control the provincial governors
will be apparent to all students of Mughal
administration.
? The influence of geography upon history is
very clearly marked in the case of the Deccan
and southern India, which, because of distance
and geographical isolation, have a separate his-
tory from that of northern India, until the in-
trusion of foreign nations by sea. In their struggle
with the Maratha confederacy which had the
advantage of a commanding strategical position
in the centre of India the unity of the scattered
? British settlements was at first secured by control
of the sea. It will be evident from the map show-
ing the sequence of territorial acquisition that the
British, after securing Bihar and Bengal, pro-
ceeded to acquire control of the greater part of
the coastal districts so as to prevent the access of
other powers by sea. It was not until 1849 that
the advance to the north-west frontier made the
British political frontier coterminous with the
geographical.
? The influence of climate upon Indian history
has been stressed in the maps dealing with the
monsoons, rainfall, and agricultural products.
For further details attention is directed to the
text describing the various maps.
Twenty-five years of teaching and lecturing on
Indian history have impressed upon the author
the importance of an adequate atlas for the
understanding of Indian historical problems.
Nothing tends to make a map more confusing
than a multiplicity of names and the insertion of
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unnecessary detail. Care has therefore been
, taken to include only those names which are
likely to be useful to the student of a particular
period or problem. I shall be grateful to all
users of this atlas for suggestions for its improve-
ment in later editions.
I wish to thank the Cambridge University
Press for allowing me to reproduce two maps
from my Problem of the North-West Frontier.
The map of Burma is based on one prepared by
OXFORD
May 1949
Mr. G. E. Harvey, whose History of Burma is the
standard work on that subject. Finally I wish
to express my indebtedness to Mr. H. J. Stooke,
Librarian of the Indian Institute, for his courtesy
in supplying my constant demand for books, and
to my colleague Professor Burrow, Professor of
Sanskrit in the University of Oxford, for some
valuable suggestions in connexion with the maps
relating to Ancient India.
C. COLLIN DAVIES
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over 6000 feet.
over 18000 feet.
Contours drawn at
1200, 3000,Isoo, boor),
9ooc3 )2000 & M000 a.
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ANCIENT INDIA c. 500 B.C.
THOUGH much valuable research has been done
by F. G. Pargiter in his Ancient Indian Historical
Tradition (1922) and by H. Raychaudhuri in his
Political History of Ancient India (1932), it has
been thought inadvisable to include maps based
on a knowledge of Vedic, Epic, and Pauranic
literature, as history cannot be divorced from
chronology. Approximate chronology for nor-
thern India begins in the seventh century B.C.,
for southern India at a much later date. The
chronology of India has been built up from the
identification of the Sandracottus of the Greek
writers with Chandragupta Maurya. The earliest
date known for certain in Indian history is the
invasion of Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. Rhys
Davids in his Buddhist India (1903) has sum-
marized the historical information in the Pali
texts.
In the seventh century B.C. northern India and
part of the Deccan were divided into sixteen
principalities, the sixteen Mahajanapadas of the
Buddhist Anguttara Nikaya. Of southern India
nothing definite has come to light, but we may
suppose that the traditional Tamil kingdoms
were in existence. The sixteen great powers of
northern India were: (1) Anga, (2) Magadha, (3)
Kasi, (4) Kosala, (5) Vajji, (6) Malla, (7) Chedi,
(8) Vatsa, (9) Kuru, (10) Panchala, (11) Matsya,
(12) Surasena, (13) Asmaka, (14) Avanti, (15)
Gandhara, (16) Kamboja.
es)
When Buddhism arose there was no paramount
power, but the larger kingdoms were beginning
to absorb the smaller. The most important king-
doms were Magadha, Kosala, Vatsa, and Avanti.
Eventually, as we shall see, Magadha was to be-
come the paramount power in northern India.
In addition to the kingdoms we learn of the
existence of republican clans ruled by popular
assemblies. In the sixth century B.C. the country
to the east of Kosala, between the Himalayas and
the Ganges, was the home of the following clans:
the Sakiyas, Bulis, Kalamas, Bhaggas, Koliy.as,
Moriyas, the Mallas of Pava and Kusinara, the
Videhas of Mithila, and the Licchavis of Vesali.
Gandhara had been annexed to the Persian
empire of Darius which consisted of twenty
satrapies. The exact limits of the Indian satrapy
cannot be determined, but it probably comprised
the Indus valley and parts of the Punjab. It was
the richest of the satrapies, paying an annual
tribute in gold-dust of 360 Euboic talents, equiva-
lent to over a million pounds sterling.
Scholars have been unable to identify Kamboja
with any certainty. The Nirukta, a text of about
500 B.C., tells us that the speech of the Kambojas
differed from ordinary Indian speech, 'referring
doubtless to the tribes living north-west of the
Indus who bore that name' (Cambridge History
of India, vol. i, p. 117).
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, KURU
Indrarrastha
Ahchatia
T A
Sravasti
MATSYA PANCHALA vI
iALLAS
SURASENA
Mathura4 KaPlavaetu
KOSALA
c' 9,
Kausambi Prayag
CHED I VATSA ASI
VI DE HA
VaisgU
Patal iputra
Raiagrlha ANZA
MAGADHA
AVANT I
? Ujjaln
HOJ.AS VIDARBHA
MUCAKA ?
0 AS MAKA
DAKSHI NA PATHA
honadi
ANDHRA
OCAA
ANCIENT INDIA
c.500 B.C.
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3
ALEXANDER THE GREAT'S ASIATIC EMPIRE
SINCE the great invasions of India before the
advent of the European nations took place
through the north-western passes it is essential
to have some knowledge of the Central Asian
background which played such an important part
in shaping the destinies of India. It is no exag-
geration to state that Alexander's conquest of
the Achaemenian empire altered the face of the
world in the short space of eleven years from the
crossing of the Hellespont in 334 B.C. to his death
in 323 s.c.
Under his father, who was assassinated in
336 B.C., Macedonia had become the dominant
power in Hellas. Alexander left Macedonia in
the spring of 334 B.C. Crossing the Hellespont
he marched through the western parts of Asia
Minor to Cilicia and passing through the Cilician
Gates defeated the Persian king Darius Codo-
mannus at the battle of Issus (333 s.c.). After
a gallant though unsuccessful resistance by the
garrisons of Tyre and Gaza he easily overran
Egypt. Retracing his steps through Syria to
Mesopotamia he crossed the Euphrates at Thap-
sacus and the swiftly flowing Tigris, driving the
Persians from Gaugamela and Arbela. The so-
called battle of Arbela (331 s.c.) was actually
fought at Gaugamela, some sixty miles north-
-west of Arbela. This battle had far-reaching
effects. It opened the road to Babylon and Susa
which submitted without resistance. After brush-
ing aside serious opposition Alexander reached
Persepolis. Ecbatana was occupied in 330 B.C.
and converted into an advanced military base.
In pursuit of Darius, who had deserted his army
after Gaugamela, he reached Damghan only to
find that Darius had been assassinated. This
facilitated his conquest of the remaining pro-
vinces of the Persian empire. After annexing
Hyrcania and Parthia, Aria submitted and the
satraps of Carmania and Gedrosia acknowledged
his rule. He then marched through Drangiana
(the Helmand area) to Arachosia where he
founded the city of Alexandria Arachoton (Kan-
dahar). From Kandahar he advanced probably
by way of Ghazni to Kabul which he reached in
329 B.C.
In five years Alexander had conquered the
Achaemenian dominions between the Hellespont
and the Caspian. The opposition now stiffened
and it took him another two years to complete
his task by conquering Bactria and Sogdiana in
the Oxus-Jaxartes basin. The limit of his advance
in this direction was marked by the city of
Alexandreschate which he founded on the banks
of the Jaxartes, 3,500 miles east of Hdlas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Cambridge Ancient History, vol. vi, 1927, chs. Aii and )(EL
2. Macedonian Imperialism, P. JOUGUET, 1928.
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