The Topography of the Indian Subcontinent

This representation of the Indian Subcontinent, taken from Google Earth, is made up of satellite imagery from the last quarter of the Twentieth Century. While some large-scale features, such as the Himalayan massif in the Northeastern part of the image, have not changed significantly since the Buddha’s time, it’s likely that others have. It’s possible that the enormous Thar Desert in the Northwest contained more pastureland in the Buddha’s time, and the fertile Gangetic plain (pretty much the area bounded by the red rectangle) was either heavily forested or swampy marshland 2500 years ago. Still, the map can be useful as a time-shifted picture of the part of the earth where the Buddha lived and in which Buddhism took birth.

A few comments that might make the image more useful:

• At the very top of the image, West of the center, is the famous Khyber Pass, the easiest route from the highlands of Iran and Afghanistan to the fertile plains of northern India. The idea that there was a migration of the Aryan people into the Indian subcontinent between 2500 and 1500 BCE goes in and out of scholarly favor, although those who argue against such a migration often seem to me to be more concerned about political correctness than historical likelihood; if there was such a migration, it’s almost certain that it came through the Khyber Pass.
• At the Eastern end of the Khyber Pass, winding from the base of the Himalayas to the Southwest to the Arabian Sea, is the Indus River valley, the focal point of the oldest advanced civilization in the region, and one of the oldest in history. The Harrapan Culture, as it’s known from the name of the first of its cities to be excavated, was quite advanced, with large, well-planned cities, advanced building techniques, and a writing that has never been deciphered. It lasted from about 3000 BCE or earlier to about 2000 BCE; many reasons have been advanced for its sudden disappearance from the historical scene, ranging from its destruction by the culturally backward but militarily advanced Aryans, attacking with horses, war chariots, and longbows; to a catastrophic tsunami, triggered by an earthquake in the Arabian Sea, rolling up the deep Indus Valley, destroying the cities built along the river banks, flooding the farms that fed those cities, and poisoning the soil with salt water. No one is certain how much influence the Harrapan Culture had on the Aryan people who created the society into which Gotama Siddhatta was born.
• The dominating feature of the Indian Subcontinent is the sudden and enormous rise of the Himalayan mountains along the northern border of the Indian nation. The Himalayas are responsible for the monsoon, the seasonal rainy period between June and September that has shaped all of Northern Indian culture; as the Summer sun heats the Thar Desert, the moisture-laden air moves in from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, hits the Himalayan wall, and drops its load of water. One of the earliest rules formulated for the Buddha’s emerging sangha was that the monks and nuns were not to travel during the monsoon, but instead gather at one of the several retreat centers donated to the community by the Buddha’s wealthy supporters. It was during these “rain retreats” that the community recited the teachings to one another and memorized them, so that they were then able to scatter when the rains ended and take the teachings to the villages and towns throughout the country.
• The Vindya Mountains, cutting across the subcontinent from East to West just south of the Gangetic Plain, are not enormously high, but they did work to limit the easy mingling of Southern and Northern cultures; the Aryan culture that emerged in the North imported ore, spices, and various other commodities from the South, and the South, in its turn, represented a major market for the agricultural and manufactured products that formed the basis of the Aryan culture’s wealth. But the South and the North remained ethnically and linguistically distinct and developed different cultural and religious norms.