How The India Got Its Name

Why India was called India?

Was India having other names?

We know our country by the name INDIA. But did you know, in the past, our country had other names too. Jambudvipa, Aryavarta, Bharatvarsha, Nabhivarsha and Tianzhan in Chinese and Hodu in Hebrew. Here I am discussing short story behind these names.

INDIA

The name of India is a corrupt version of the word Sindhu. The neighboring Persian pronounces ‘s’ as ‘h’ and called this land Hindu while Greeks pronounced it as Indus.

Herodotus

Sindhu is the name of the Indus River, mentioned in the Rig-Veda, one of the oldest extant Indian texts, composed in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent roughly in between 1700-1100 BC. There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the Iranian Avesta, often associated with the early culture of 2200-1600 BC.

The English term is from the Greek word Iνδία (India), via Latin India. India in Byzantine ethnography denotes the region beyond the Indus (Ἰνδός) River, since Herodotus alluded to "Indian land". Ἰνδός, Indos, "an Indian", from Avestan Hinduš refers to Sindh and is listed as a conquered territory by Persian

Darius 1

emperor Darius I (550- 486 BC) in the Persepolis terrace inscription.

Indian part capture by Darius 1

The name India was known in Old English and was used in King Alfred's translation of Orosius between the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century AD. The name was, under French influence, replaced by Ynde or Inde. It went into Early Modern English. Thus, Indie appeared the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare - both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English. The name ‘India’ then came back to English from the 17th century onwards, may be due to the influence by the Latin, or Spanish or Portuguese.

Aryavarta

Aryavarta

Aryavarta (Sanskrit: आर्यावर्त, arya+avarta means ‘home of the Aryans’) is a name for North India in classical Sanskrit literature. The Manu Smriti (2.22) gives the name to "the tract between the Himalaya and the Vindhya ranges, from the Eastern (Bay of Bengal) to the Western Sea (Arabian Sea)".

Jambudvipa

Jambudvipa was used in ancient scriptures for the name of India before Bharata became the official name scriptures began using.

According to Puranic cosmography, the entire Cosmos is divided into seven concentric island continents (sapta-dvipa vasumati) separated by the seven encircling oceans, each double the size of the preceding one (going out from within). The seven continents of the Puranas are stated as Jambudvipa, Plaksadvipa, Salmalidvipa, Kusadvipa,Krouncadvipa , Sakadvipa, and Pushkaradvipa. Seven intermediate oceans consist of salt-water, sugarcane juice, wine, ghee, curd, milk and water respectively

Continent Jambudvipa (Indian Blackberry Island), also known as Sudarshanadvipa, forms the innermost concentric island in the above scheme. Its name is said to be derived from a Jambu tree (another name for the Indian Blackberry). The fruits of the Jambu tree are said, in the Vishnupurana to be as large as elephants and when they become rotten and fall upon the crest of the mountains, a river of juice is formed from their expressed juice. The river, so formed is called Jambunadi (Jambu river) and flows through Jambudvipa, whose inhabitants drink its waters. Insular continent Jambudvipa is said to comprise nine varshas (zones) and eight significant parvatas (mountains).

Bharathavarsha

The name Bharat was after the great king Bharat, the son of Shakuntala and Dushyant, since long back in history

Nabhivarsha

India also called as Nabhivarsha after the king Nabhi, the son of Agnidhara (ruler of India) and father of Rishabha

Hindustan

As we know Persian pronounce ‘s’ as ‘h’ and they called Sindhu as Hindu. When Mughals evades India they use Hindustan means the land of Hindu ( that is river Sindhu).



                                  


INDIA

The constitution of India adopted only Bharat and India as official names of the country.