Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/363

ANARCHICAL AUTONOMY 319 bitter remorse nine hundred years earlier, was depop- ulated, and mostly covered with jungle. The pilgrim observes in picturesque language that " in old days the kingdom of Kalinga had a very dense population. Their shoulders rubbed one with the other, and the axles of their chariot-wheels grided together, and when they raised their arm-sleeves a perfect tent was formed." Legend sought to explain the change by the curse of an angry saint. Harsha was the last native monarch prior to the Mohammedan conquest who held the position of para- mount power in the North. His death loosened the bonds which restrained the disruptive forces always ready to operate in India, and allowed them to produce their normal result, a medley of petty states, with ever varying boundaries, and engaged in unceasing inter- necine war. Such was India when first disclosed to European observation in the fourth century B. c., and such it always has been, except during the compara- tively brief periods in which a vigorous central gov- ernment has compelled the mutually repellent mole- cules of the body politic to check their gyrations, and submit to the grasp of a superior controlling force. Excepting the purely local incursions of the Arabs in Sind and Gujarat during the eighth century, India was exempt from foreign aggression for nearly five hun- dred years, from the defeat of Mihiragula in 528 A. n. until the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni at the beginning of the eleventh century, and was left free to work out her destinv in her own fashion. She cannot claim to