200 INDIA who hold their deliberations either in presence of the pope, or in the house of the senior car- dinal of their number. All books that treat ex prof ease of faith or morals, of ecclesiastical discipline, or of civil society, fall within their jurisdiction ; and the judgment of the congre- gation either suppresses the book altogether, or commands it to be corrected, or permits it to be read under certain conditions, or by a certain class of persons only. The first official index or catalogue was prepared by the inqui- sition at Rome, and published in 1557 by order of Pope Paul IV. This, enlarged and reduced to a regular form by a committee of the coun- cil of Trent, was published anew in. 1564, with the sanction of Pius IV., and enlarged by Clement VIII. in 1595. The latest official edi- tion is that of 1819. The index is continually enlarged by the supplementary lists of each year. The congregation of the index origina- ted with the council of Trent under Pius IV., and its official establishment is due to Pius V. INDIA, or Hindustan (Hindu, and*to orsthan, settled habitation), a country of Asia, consist- ing in the widest sense of the great southern peninsula of that continent, and the adjacent territories S. of the Himalaya mountains and W. of Burmah and Siarn, and forming the rich- est and most populous foreign dependency of Gre.at Britain. It is situated between lat. 8 and 35 N. (or 36 30' if Cashmere is included), and Ion. 66 30' and 99 E., and is bounded N. by Chinese Turkistan and Thibet, from which it is separated by the Himalaya range, E. by Burmah and Siam, and W. by Beloochistan and Afghanistan. The entire coast of the country E. of Cape Comorin, the southern extremity of the peninsula, is washed by the bay of Bengal, while the S. W. coast extends along the Indian ocean and the Arabian sea. The extent of coast line is upward of 4,000 m. in all, of which more than half is on the bay of Bengal. The extreme length of India from N. to S. is about 1,900 m., and its extreme breadth from E. to W., exclusive of British Bnrmah, about 1,700 m. According to Dr. W. W. Hunter, di- rector general of statistics to the government of India, the empire and its feudatory states embrace a territory of 1,556,836 sq. m., with a population of not less than 200,000,000. The country is naturally divided into several great regions. In the north are the extensive de- pressed river basins of the Indus and the Gan- ges. The central portion is occupied by a dia- mond-shaped table land having its greatest length from N. to S. An elevated wedge-like district forms the termination of the peninsula, sloping from its centre to the E. and W. coasts, and southward to Cape Comorin. The Vindhya mountains stretch across the central plateau from near the W. coast, in lat. 22 10', to the Ganges valley near lat. 25. N. of this range is the northern portion of the diamond-shaped ta- ble land. Its apex is in the vicinity of Delhi ; the Aravulli mountains, an offshoot of the Vindhya, bound it on the west, and its N. E. margin is parallel with the Ganges. The Vindhya range and its continuations to the Rajmahal hills, where the Ganges turns southward toward the delta, form the northern boundary of the south- ern part of the central table land. It is fringed on the west by the Western Ghauts and on the east by the lower Eastern Ghauts, the two ranges converging at the south in the Neil- gherry hills, long supposed to be the highest mountain mass S. of the Himalaya. A peak in the Aniinalley hills, further S., is now known to be 8,837 ft. above the level of the sea, higher than Mt. Dodabetta, the loftiest sum- mit of the Neilgherries. The Western Ghauts rise from 3,000 to upward of 5,000 ft. (in some parts to 7,000 ft.), but the Eastern Ghauts rare- ly exceed 3,000 ft. A more detailed examina- tion of the physical configuration of India pre- sents the following clearly defined geographical divisions: 1. The Himalaya mountains, fully treated under their own title. 2. The plain of the Indus, which comprises the Punjauh, or fan- shaped " country of the five rivers," Jhylum, Chenaub, Ravee, Beas, and Sutlej ; the great In- dian desert; and the valley of Sinde. The Sulei- man and Hala mountains separate this region from Afghanistan and Beloochistan. The gen- eral surface of the Punjaub slopes southward from the Himalaya range. In the north is a nar- row but well watered agricultural belt of great fertility ; to this succeeds a region where rain is less plentiful, and where cultivation is confined to the valleys, from 4 to 10 m. in width, which the rivers have worn down below the level of the adjacent sterile country, to depths of from 10 to 50 ft. The alluvial plain of Sinde is arid, rainless, and absolutely unproductive with- out artificial irrigation. It is bordered on the east by the great desert, frequently termed the Thurr, a formation of hard clay overspread with shifting sand, which extends to the basin of the Ganges, being itself bounded S. E. by the Aravulli mountains. The principal conn- tries of the plain of the Indus are : the province of the Punjaub, which includes the former king- dom of Lahore; the native state of Bhawal- poor ; the western portion of Rajpootana ; and the commissionership of Sinde, under the Bom- bay government. 3. The plain of the Ganges, which, together with all central India nearly as far S. as the Nerbudda river, constitutes Hindostan proper, the name not having been applied originally to the whole country. This region is densely populated, teems with fertil- ity, and is especially rich in historical interest. On the east the basin of the Ganges unites with that of the Brahmapootra, beyond which rise the Cossyah and Garrow hills and the Burmese mountains. The slope of the Gangetic plain from the base of the Himalayas to the bay of Bengal is very gentle, not greatly exceeding 1,000 ft. of descent. The British administra- tive divisions of this part of India are: the Northwest Provinces, in which is the territory known as Rohilcund; Oude; and Bengal, of which the garden-like state of Behar forms
