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The Eurasian Frontier After the First Millennium A.D.: Reflections Along the Fringe of Time and Space1

Kern Institute of South and Central Asian Studies, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9515, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlands

By focusing on the ecological Arid Zone of Eurasia after 1000 A.D., this article seeks to challenge some conventional paradigms of time and space. It was only after 1000 A.D. that western Europe became more and more immune from the uprooting influences of the Arid Zone. Hence, from this time onward it came gradually into its own as a well-marked spatial category. Actually by the expulsion of its free nomads, warriors and ascetics, Europe canted its former inner frontiers outward towards ever more rigid and sacred outer boundaries. On the other hand, from about 1000 A.D. South Asia became, more than ever before, part of that much larger Arid Zone which saw the rapid rise of new, more powerful, mounted warriors groups. Therefore, South Asia's inner frontier remained very much a wide, open-ended zone which gave free rein to the nomadic tribe, the warrior band and the ascetic sect. Moreover, it conditioned the ongoing inner dualism of Indic tradition.

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