The constitution of India states that India And Bharat are the official names of the Republic Of India. Hindustan is another name of the country. But have you ever wondered how India got its name?
Who Gave The Name India?
The origin of the word India comes from the Sanskrit word Sindhu meaning a large body of water, sea, or ocean. In old Persian, the ‘S’ sound in Sanskrit becomes an ‘H’ sound.
The first civilization in the subcontinent flourished along the river Indus. The Indus valley civilization or the Harappan civilization was spread from today’s northeast Afghanistan, through much of Pakistan, and into northwestern India.
About 2500 years ago, Harappans had trade relations with another ancient civilization of that time, Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia civilization was spanned across present-day Iraq and parts of Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Kuwait.
The Iranians and the Greeks(people from Greece) who came through the northwest were familiar with the Indus river. They called the river Hindos or the Indos. India was the name given to the land east of the river.
Although India got its name from the Indus river, it currently mainly flows through Pakistan.
How Did India Get Its Name, Bharat?
The meaning of the term Bharata in Sanskrit means one who is engaged in the search for knowledge. The phrase was originally used in Rigveda, the oldest Sanskrit literature dating back roughly 3500 years.
The country is named Bharatavarsha after Bharata, Rishabha’s son, according to the Skanda Purana. He was a Kshatriya born in Ikshvaku Dynasty(Solar Dynasty or Suryavanshi).
As per Jain Cosmology, Bharata was the first chakravartin (universal emperor) of the present half-time cycle. He is supposed to have conquered each of the world’s six continents. His father Rishabhanatha was the first Tirthankara of Jainism.
Lord Rama also belonged to this dynasty.
According to the Mahabharata, the Bharatvarsha name was given in honor of king Bharata Chakravarti. The Bharata Dynasty was founded by Bharata, who was an ancestor of the Pandavas and Kauravas. He was the son of Hastinapur’s King Dushyanta and Queen Sakuntala. Also, a Kshatriya Varna descendent. Bharata had conquered all of Greater India and unified it into one political entity known as Bharatvarsha.
How India Got Its Name Hindustan?
The name Hindu, like the phrase India, comes from the Indus River. Arabs and Iranians used it to refer to people who resided east of the river, and their cultural customs, which included religious beliefs. The Arabic word Hind was famously adapted as the canonical form Al-Hind for India.
In the thirteenth century, a Persian chronicler Minhaj-i-Siraj had used the term Hindustan. He used the word in a political sense to refer to the areas of Punjab, Haryana, and the lands between the Ganga and the Yamuna that were part of the Delhi Sultan’s dominions. South India, on the other hand, was never included in the term.
Fourteenth-century poet Amir Khusrau had also used the word, Hind.
In the early sixteenth century, Mughal emperor Babur adopted the term Hindustan to describe the subcontinent’s landscape, fauna, and culture.
