India, That Is Bharat
In India at a very early time the spiritual and cultural unity was made complete and became the very stuff of the life of all this great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas.
— Sri Aurobindo
Fig. 5.1. A scene from rural India about 2,300 years ago (north gate of the Great Sanchi Stupa)
How do we define India? 2. What were the ancient names for India?
Fig. 5.2. A physical map of the Indian Subcontinent, with some of its rivers.
Today, the India we know is a modern nation, with defi ned borders, defined states and a known population. However, it was very different 500 years ago, 2,000 years ago or even 5,000 years ago. This region of the world, which we often call the Indian Subcontinent', has had many different names and shifting boundaries. We can learn about India's past and evolution from many different sources. Let us explore.
THINK ABOUT IT
Consider the physical map of the Indian Subcontinent at the start of the chapter. What are its natural boundaries that you can make out?
In the course of history, India has been called by many names —both by its inhabitants and by visitors from outside. These names come to us from ancient texts, accounts of travellers and pilgrims, and inscriptions.
Inhabitants: People who live in a
particular
place.
How Indians Named India
The Rig Veda is India's most ancient text; as we will see in Chapter 7, it is several thousand years old. It gives the northwest region of the Subcontinent the name 'Sapta Sindhava', that is, the land of the seven rivers'. The word 'Sindhava' comes from 'Sindhu', which refers to the Indus River, or at times to a river in general.
Fig. 5.3. The northwest region of the Indian Subcontinent
Moving on in time, we see names for other parts of India appear in the literature. The Mahabhrata is one of India's most famous texts (we read about it in the theme 'Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions'). Interestingly, it lists many regions, such as Kashmira (more or less today's Kashmir), Kurukshetra (parts of Haryana today), Vanga (parts of Bengal), Prgjyotisha (roughly today's Assam), Kaccha (today's Kutch), Kerala (more or less today's Kerala), and so on.
LET'S EXPLORE
Do you recognise the names of any regions given in the map (Fig. 5.4) on page 79? List the ones that you have heard of.
But when do we come across a name for the entire Indian Subcontinent? Because ancient Indian texts are difficult to date, this is not an easy question to answer. The Mahabhrata uses the terms Bhratavarsha' and Jambudvipa', and scholars generally agree that this long poem was written from a few centuries BCE onward.
The fi rst term, 'Bhratavarsha', clearly extends to the entire Subcontinent, and the text includes the names of numerous rivers and peoples. 'Bhratavarsha' means 'the country of the Bharatas'. Bharata' is a name that first appears in the Rig Veda, where it refers to one of the main Vedic groups of people. In later literature, several kings named Bharata' are mentioned.
The second term, Jambudvipa', means the island of the fruit of the jamun tree'. This is indeed a common tree native to India, also called jambul tree', Malabar plum tree', etc. Jambudvipa' came to mean the Indian Subcontinent.
In fact, we get a good clue from an Indian emperor — his name is Ashoka and we will meet him later; for now, we can take his date to be about 250 BCE. As we will see, he left us many inscriptions. In one of them, he used the same name 'Jambudvipa' to describe the whole of India, which at the time included what is today Bangladesh, Pakistan, as well as parts of Afghanistan.
Fig. 5.4. Map of a few regions listed in the Mahabhrata. (Many of them are also mentioned in the text as kingdoms.) You do not need to remember those regions, but notice how they cover the entire geography of the Subcontinent.
A few centuries later, Bhärata' became the name generally used for the Indian Subcontinent. For instance, in an ancient text called the Vishnu Purna, we read:
uttaram yat samudrasya himádrescaiva daksinam varsam tad bháratam náma .. "The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhrata."
This name, 'Bhrata' remains in use even today. In north India, it is generally written as Bharat', while in south India, it is often Bharatam'.
THINK ABOUT IT
Have you identified the 'snowy mountains'? Do you think this brief description of Bhárata is correct?
It is interesting to note that different parts of the country adopted a similar definition for India. For instance, a poem of ancient Tamil literature, from about 2,000 years ago, praises a king whose name is known "from [Cape] Kumari in the south, from the great mountain in the north, from the oceans on the east and on the west.." You can now recognise 'the great mountain in the north', and it should not be diffi cult to identify 'Cape Kumari'. It looks like ancient Indians knew their geography well!
DON'T MISS OUT
The Indian Constitution, which was first written in English, uses the phrase 'India, that is Bharat' right at the beginning. Similarly, the Hindi version of the Constitution mentions the same as Bhrat arthath India'.
LET'S EXPLORE
In this reproduction of the fi rst page of the original Constitution of India in Fig. 5.5 (page 82), can you make out the phrase 'India, that is Bharat"?
Constitution:
A document
that spells
out the basic
principles
and laws
of a nation.
The Indian
Constitution,
which will be
studied in Grade 7, came into
force in 1950.
How Foreigners Named India
The first foreigners to mention India were the Persians, the ancient inhabitants of Iran. In the $6 ^ { \mathrm { { t h } } }$ century BCE, a Persian emperor launched a military campaign and gained control of the region of the Indus River, which, as we saw, was earlier called 'Sindhu'. So, it is no surprise that in their earliest records and stone inscriptions, the Persians referred to India as Hind', Hidu'or Hindu', which are adaptations in their language of 'Sindhu'. (Note that in ancient Persian, Hindu' is a purely geographical term; it does not refer here to the Hindu religion.)
Based on these Persian sources, the ancient Greeks named the region Indoi' or 'Indike'. They dropped the initial letter h' of Hindu' because this letter did not exist in their Greek language.
Sindhu
Hindhu
Indoi/Indike
The ancient Chinese also interacted with India. In several texts, they refer to India as Yintu' or Yindu'. This word also originally comes from 'Sindhu, in the following manner:
Fig. 5.5. First page of the Constitution of India (source: Reprint of the original Constitution of India, Ministry of Culture, Government of India, 2000)
DON'T MISS OUT
Xuanzang (formerly spelt Hiuen Tsang, Hsuan Tsang, etc.) travelled from China to India in the $7 ^ { \mathrm { t h } }$ century CE. He visited many parts of India, met scholars, collected Buddhist texts, and returned to China after 17 years. There, he translated the manuscripts he took back with him from Sanskrit into Chinese. Several other Chinese scholars visited India over the centuries.
Another Chinese word, also derived from 'Sindhu', was 'Tianzhu'; but this word could also be understood as heavenly master'. This reflects the respect the ancient Chinese had for India as the land of the Buddha.
You are probably quite familiar with a more recent term, Hindustán', but you may not know that it was first used in a Persian inscription some 1,800 years ago! Later on, this became the term used by most invaders of India to describe the Indian Subcontinent.
LET'S EXPLORE
Can you complete this table of the many names of India?
| Persian | |
| Greek | |
| Latin | India |
| Chinese | |
| Arabic& Persian | |
| English | India |
| French | Inde |
Before we move on .
India is an ancient land, which has had many names in the course of its history. The names given by the ancient inhabitants of India include Jambudvipa' and Bhárata'. The latter became widespread in time and is the name of India in most Indian languages.
$\cdot$ Foreign visitors to, or invaders of, India mostly adopted names derived from the Sindhu or Indus River; this resulted in names like 'Hindu', Indoi', and eventually 'India'.
Questions, activities and projects
Discuss what could be the meaning of the quotation at the start of the chapter.
True or false?
$\cdot$ The Rig Veda describes the entire geography of India.
The Vishnu Purana describes the entire Subcontinent.
In Ashoka's time, Jambudvipa'included what is today India, parts of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Mahabharata lists many regions, including Kashmir, Kutch, and Kerala. The term Hindustán' first appeared in a Greek inscription more than 2,000 years ago.
$\cdot$ In ancient Persian, the word 'Hindu' refers to the Hindu religion. 'Bhärata' is a name given to India by foreign travellers.
If you were born some 2,000 years ago and had the chance to name our country, what name or names might you have chosen, and why? Use your imagination!
Why did people travel to India from various parts of the world in ancient times? What could be their motivations in undertaking such long journeys? (Hint: There could be at least four or five motivations)