One of the most significant differences between India
and the Near East
is climatic: India gets much more rain. The high terrain to the north
and the open ocean to the south generates the monsoon, the wet summer
so alien to the Near East. But the distribution of summer rainfall in
India is very uneven. The wettest regions are the coastal strip in the
southwest and a large area in the northeast; by contrast, the southern
highlands are dry, and the northwest shares the aridity of the Near
East, of which it is in effect a climatic extension. As a result, the
two great rivers that rise in the northern mountains have somewhat
different effects on the lands through which they flow. Both of them
deliver a valuable agricultural resource, namely silt. But in the
northeast the Ganges takes its water to a jungle region of abundant
rainfall; whereas in the northwest the Indus brings life to a land much
of which would otherwise be desert.
For historical purposes India may be divided
into three major regions.
* The south, with its coastal plains, modest mountain
ranges, and
highland plateau; it is by no means lacking in agricultural resources,
but they are somewhat dispersed.
* The northeast, centered on the Ganges, has an extraordinary
concentration of rich agricultural land.
* The northwest, today Pakistan, centered on the Indus;
here irrigated
agriculture is possible as in Egypt or Mesopotamia.
An important respect in which these three regions of
India differed in
earlier times was their potential for contact with the outside world,
with all its costs and benefits.
The most remote area was the south. Until the development
of navigation
on the open oceans, it had no direct contact with regions outside
India, and within the subcontinent its physical character rendered it
less accessible than the northern plains.
The northeast differed from the south in that it was
internally more
accessible and adjoined other parts of Eurasia; but it was cut off from
them by high mountains in the north and thick jungle to the east. The
result was that its contacts with the wider world were routed mainly
through the northwest. It was this northwestern region that, until
recent centuries, served as the gateway to India through mountain and
desert. Prehistory suggests that the role of the northwest in the
making of India has been fundamental.
