India [antikvár]

Introduction Perhaps more than any other country in the world, India is a place of a natural, social and cultural variety' that produces for visitors an endless series of surprises and pleasures. The reasons for this are not hard to find. Firstly, India is an enormous country, almost the size of western Europe, and contains more than 850 million people: small wonder that there should be regional differences of both physical and human scenery. The second reason lies in India's recorded history of more than 4,000 years. During this time empires have risen and fallen, many religions have taken root and flourished and a succession of foreigners has settled after conquest or trade. The result is a luxuriant range of cultural forms -of language, dress, architecture, social organisation and so forth. Yet, over-arching these differences is a unity which is not only political but is based both on a common cultural heritage and on the adaptation of new elements to the traditional situation. Here lies the fascination for the traveller. He sees the great temples, mosques and palaces which symbolise the highest aspiration of religions and kingdoms and form the milestones of this immense history: he sees the texture of life as it flows past the window of the bus or car, in city or village, a life-style which contains botii the traditional and the modern: and in travelling through this vast country he meets the people of India, the world's largest democracy, lively people who respond to the interested and sympathetic traveller and who, however poor they are, have a strong sense of their cultural identity. But it is time to speak separately of some of the strands which go to make up the total experience of the traveller in India. As to India's geographical variety, the northern side of the triangular peninsula is formed by the mighty Himalayas, their snowy peaks towering over delectable valleys and their glaciers producing the rivers which sweep down to the wide plain of the river Ganges, believed to be a nourishing goddess on whose bank stands the sacred city ofVaranasi. To the west the land