No imperial power, from the Maurya in the fourth and third centuries B.C., to the British in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries A.D., could really simplify the political geography of the Indie world from the Himalaya to the sea, from the Hindukush to the Brahmaputra. At some stage of their growth and expansion, every great, or imperial, power in this vast land of diverse peoples found it necessary to reconcile themselves to the separate existence of numerous units of polity in various degrees of subordination and dependence to superior powers.