The following texts are from an out-of-print and out-of-copyright encyclopedia originally designed for children. It was issued in a variety of forms with different contents in the USA and UK, and different editions in the three decades after it was first launched. The following excerpts in this variant come from 'The Book of Knowledge - An encyclopedia for readers of all Ages' ed. by harold F.B. Wheeler and published by The Waverly Book Company, Ltd. Farringdon St. EC4 London - either 1931 or 1932 (not later, though none of the volumes have date of publication or printing in them). The text of the article (without photos) is found here)

The interest in the coverage of India and related themes here lies in the general view of the British Colony in a British publication. At that time the Indian Independence movement was growing and Mahatma Gandhi - who had only recently landed in Bombay to begin his politics there - was nonetheless not prominent enough yet to have an entry in this fairly limited encyclopedia. A perspective from that largely-forgotten time is thus trapped or frozen in this entry, giving a view which would be difficult to reconstruct in such a popular fashion without such sources as these.

The map below, posted a a guide to the pages listed is of a much more recent date - as printed in an Indian schoolbook:-

Extent— North to South, 1,900 miles; east to west, 2,000 miles. Area, about 1,800,000 square miles. Population about 350.000,000. Physical Features. —Himalaya Mountains, the highest in the world (30,000 to 29,000 feet) ; Vindhya Range and Eastern and Western Ghats, inclosing the Deccan plateau, deserts in Sind and Rajputana. Principal rivers: Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra. Product's.— Millet, rice, wheat, barley, oil-seeds, cotton, jute, sugar, indigo, coco-nuts, tobacco, tea and opium, cotton and silk manufactures, metal work; coal, gold, and petroleum. Chief Cities.— Calcutta [1,385,000 population), Bombay (1,175,000;, Madras (650,000), Hyderabad (400,000), and Delhi, the capital [440,000). History.— Aryan invasion, about 1500 b.c- ; rise to Buddhism 6’ th century b.c. ; Alexander the Great's conquest of the north-west, 327 b.c.; Mohammedan conquest §A.D. 1001: establishment of Mogul empire, 1526; English East India Company obtained trading posts at Madras (1639), Bombay (1668), and Calcutta (1696); battle oi Plassey established British supremacy over the French, 1757; expansion of British India, 1774-1856 ; Indian Mutiny, 1857; British Crown takes over government from East India Company, 1858.