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.
India as an ancient land with many namesNames given by Indians (Sapta Sindhava, Bhāratavarṣha, Jambudvīpa, Bhārata)The phrase ‘India, that is Bharat’Names given by Persians, Greeks and ChineseHow ‘Sindhu’ became ‘India’
Key terms
Indian Subcontinent
The large region of South Asia that includes present-day India and its neighbours, with many natural boundaries.
Sapta Sindhava
The ‘land of the seven rivers’, the name the Ṛig Veda gives to the northwest of the subcontinent.
Bhāratavarṣha
An ancient name meaning ‘the country of the Bharatas’, used in the Mahābhārata for the whole subcontinent.
Jambudvīpa
An ancient name meaning ‘the island of the jamun tree’, used for the Indian Subcontinent, including by Aśhoka.
Sindhu
The ancient name for the Indus River, from which foreign names like Hindu, Indoi and India are derived.
Constitution
The document that spells out the basic principles and laws of a nation; India's opens with ‘India, that is Bharat’.
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