28 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES tributaries, which empties itself into the Bay of Bengal; and they pushed south to the Nerbudda, which flows into the Arabian Sea. In the plains they entirely subdued the earlier populations whom they enslaved. In the course of time they spread beyond the regions that have been spoken of, which bear the general name of Hindustan. But their conquest of the hilly regions southwards, called the Deccan, was never so complete; and the older, darker races, which are called Dravidian, to a great extent preserved their independence and their own languages and customs. Kingdoms developed into empires in Hindustan, but no Indian prince ever attempted to recross the mountains into Western Asia as a conqueror. There is a veil between India and the West, which was drawn aside only at long intervals and for brief periods, until the nations of Western Europe found an ocean route to the East only four hundred years ago. There is a great range of mountains which runs, roughly speaking, parallel to the river Tigris on the north-east from Medes and the Persian Gulf up to the mountain regions of Persians. Armenia. On the east of this, or at any rate east of a line drawn from the foot of the Caspian Sea to near the head of the Persian Gulf, the empires of Elam and Babylon and Assyria never seem to have exercised effective rule. At some period unknown, the regions immediately to the east of this land were occupied by the Aryan races called the Medes and Persians. But it is not till the seventh century B.C. that the Medes became an aggressive though still uncivilised power. Towards the middle of the sixth century B.C. Western Asia, leaving out Arabia, was divided into three great dominions. West of a line drawn from the middle of the Black Sea coast southwards to the north-eastern corner of the Mediterranean was the dominion of Lydia. The rest, south and west of the river Tigris, was the Chaldean Empire; while north and east of the Tigris lay the Median Empire. Among the Persian tribes at the south-eastern corner of this empire arose in the middle of this sixth century the mighty warrior Cyrus, who first seized for himself the Median throne, then conquered Lydia, and finally crushed and absorbed the
