ABSTRACT
India, the land to the east of the river Indus, must have held great promise for anybody living in the arid regions of Central Asia or the mountains of what is today Afghanistan. Fertile and rich in natural resources, green and full of wonders, it exerted an irresistible attraction to the nomads roaming through the semi-desert to its north-west. But if it meant an earthly paradise, it was well guarded: in the north, the Himalayas, and in the north-west the Hindu Kush mountains provided an almost impenetrable barrier. Yet during the more than three thousand years of Indian history, time and again peoples managed to enter it. Although it is certain that neither the Arabian Sea, nor the jungles of the north-east acted as complete barriers, from the point of view of the religious history of India up to the colonial period, the influx of peoples from the north-west was decisive. Thus Indian religious history begins with the arrival of nomads who called themselves the Āryas, the ‘noble ones’, sometimes around the middle of the penultimate millennium Bce.
