The Musulman, it must be remembered, came as an alien to India. He is no polytheist or pantheist, but a believer in the one God, and that a spiritual God, so that he holds it wrong to make any graven image, whether of man or of animal. Islam is the name which the followers of the prophet gave to their religion: it means primarily submission, and so peace, greeting, safety, and salvation, and in its ethical sense it signifies striving after righteousness. Islam is in its essence pure Theism coupled with some definite rules of conduct. Belief in a future life and accountability for human action in another existence are two of the principal doctrines of the Islamic creed. Every Musulman is his own priest, and, in theory at any rate, no divisions of race or colour are recognised among the followers of the Prophet. Musulmans are forbidden to take alcohol. The gospel of Islam is the Koran—The Book—in which are embodied the teachings and precepts of the Arabian Prophet. The Koran incorporates, as we have already seen, much that was drawn both from Hebrew and Christian teaching. More than sixty millions of the Indian population hold the faith of Islam. They are scattered all over the land, usually in a minority, although that minority, as we have already learned, is frequently powerful, for it gives ruling chiefs to many districts which are dominantly Hindu. In two parts only of India are the Musulmans in a majority, namely, in the far east, beyond the mouths of the Ganges in the newly formed Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and in the Indus Basin from the neighbourhood of Delhi through the Punjab into Sind. For this reason, and also because of its physical character—lying low beneath the uplands of Afghanistan, and separated from the greater part of India by the breadth of the desert—we may think of the Indus Valley as being an ante-chamber to India proper. In this ante-chamber, and in the Delhi passage, between the desert and the mountains, for more than nine hundred years the Musulmans have predominated.