CBSE Class 6 — Notes, Chapters & Practice Quizzes

Chapter 5: India, That Is Bharat

Summary

India today is a modern nation with fixed borders, but in the past this region — often called the Indian Subcontinent — had many names and shifting boundaries. We learn these names from ancient texts, travellers' accounts and inscriptions. Indians themselves gave the land many names. The Ṛig Veda, India's oldest text, calls the northwest ‘Sapta Sindhava’, the land of seven rivers, from ‘Sindhu’ (the Indus). The Mahābhārata lists many regions such as Kāshmīra, Kurukṣhetra, Vanga and Kerala, and uses ‘Bhāratavarṣha’ (country of the Bharatas) and ‘Jambudvīpa’ (island of the jamun tree) for the whole subcontinent. Emperor Aśhoka, around 250 BCE, used ‘Jambudvīpa’ for all of India. Later, ‘Bhārata’ became the common name, described in the Viṣhṇu Purāṇa as the land north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains; it remains in use today, as in the Constitution's phrase ‘India, that is Bharat’. Foreigners named India after the Indus too: the Persians said ‘Hind’ or ‘Hindu’ (a purely geographical term), the Greeks ‘Indoi’ or ‘Indike’, and the Chinese ‘Yintu’ or ‘Tianzhu’. The term ‘Hindustān’ first appeared in a Persian inscription about 1,800 years ago.

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