The So-called 'Granite Axial Core' of the Himalaya

Abstract

FROM time to time there appears in various contexts reference to the predominant mass of granitic rock which, it is claimed or supposed, forms the vast bulk of the Great Himalayan Range, and particularly of its highest peaks. In his presidential address to the twenty-ninth Indian Science Congress, 1942, entitled "The Making of India", Mr. D. N. Wadia said: "The sublime snow-capped peaks of the Himalaya from Mount Everest to Nanga Parbat, all are built of this axial granite core", etc. Now specifically, neither Everest nor Nanga Parbat is composed of granite, although veins of granite-pegmatite or -aplite are fortuitously to be found within their essentially sedimentary constitution, which in both cases is made up of slate, quartzite or siltstone, limestone and schist of varying kind.