At 2007-07-13 18:51:14 +0530, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Many people in a country called the USA used to visit a town called > Las Vegas for a pilgrimage. And although the nation was deemed to be > free they were at risk of road accidents along the way so it was not > really as free and safe as it was made out to be.
That is a ridiculous contrived analogy. You said that people being able to travel on pilgrimage meant that there was some concept of a nation, even if split up into various kingdoms. I pointed out that barriers to travel of a certain kind existed; but also that they were the same kind of barriers that "outsiders" travelling to the subcontinent encountered, and *also* the same kind of barriers that "insiders" travelling outside the subcontinent encountered. My contention, therefore, is that pilgrimages cannot be used as you are doing to infer something about awareness of nationality. (Can you cite any notable historical examples where outsiders were entirely forbidden from travelling to or within a country?) -- ams
