Officially the republic of India has two names India and Bharat. There is also third name Hindustan which also used by the Indians on some occasions.
From the ancient times India has been known with so many different names. These names were also denoting the different geographical area at different times. From all the names some popular names are :
-
- India
- Jambudvipa
- Bharat or Bharatvarsha
- Aryavart
- Hindustan
- Tianzhu
- Sapta Sindhu
- Nabhivarsha
1. India – Name from the river
Who named our country India?
The Sindhu (Indus) river flowing east to India played a very important role in shaping Indian history as well as the naming of the Country.
The Sanskrit word Sindhu means Ocean (A river that is like an Ocean). The word Sindhu is derived from the word ‘syand’ which means ‘flow’. So, Sindhu also means flowing river.
Why Sindhu River played important role in naming our country?
The river Sindhu makes the natural border for India in the northeast. Anyone merchant, invader, or traveler who wishes to enter India has to cross the river. The river is so big and vast that no one can easily ignore, overlook, avoid, or bypass it. The people making their journey to India had to stop at the bank of Sindhu many different language-speaking people stooped at this river and pronounced it in their own language.
Journey from name Sindhu to India
The Persians were first to name the Sindhu river. They are linguistically incapable of pronouncing ‘s’ so they changed it to ‘h’ and that is how Sindhu became ‘Hindu’. The Greeks changed it further. Megatheres, the Greek ambassador to the court of the Chandragupta Maurya, recorded the region as Indos (Indus) by dropping the initial ‘h’ and ending it with ‘s’. Ending place names with ‘s’ was a common practice of the Greek chroniclers. From Greek chronicles so it became Indus. The name of the Indus crept into Latin and then old English and French which resulted in their own versions of Inde and Ynde. Finally, around the 15th century in old English, it started calling as ‘India’.
2. Jambudvipa – Name from the cosmology
Jambudvipa is a very ancient name of India before Bharat became official name.
Jambu means land of Jambu-Indian blackberry trees. And dvipa means Island.
Many believe that the first term Jambudvipa used to denote the whole south Asian continent. And Bharatvarsha was one of them. There were other nine varshas on the Jambudvipa. but then Bharats started to call their land from Himalaya to Narmada River as Jambudvipa.
But if follow the description given in our scripture, Jambudvipa is not representing only one portion of the planet but indicates the whole planet. Perhaps it is from the time when the whole earth was joined as one.
3. Bharat or Bharatvarsha – Name of the scriptures
The name Bharat has many roots in Indian Scriptures.
- According to the Jainism, Bharat was the son of the first tirthankara Rushabh deva so the part on which he ruled started to call Bharat.
- According to the Ramayana, Bharat was the brother of Rama and second son of the Dasharatha. When Ram was sent to exile, Bharat ruled as the proxy king of Ayodhya and put Rama’s sandals on the royal throne. He never sat on the throne nor called himself king. From noble doing of Bharat, region started to call Bharat.
- As per the great epic Mahabharat, Bharat was the son of the Shakuntala and Dushyant –king of Hastinapur. Bharat was a great king and ruled over large region. This region started to call Bharat.
Bharatvarsha
Bharatvarsha means the land of Bharata.
In the sixth century B.C., for the first time, Panini mentioned the term ‘Bharata’ for a region, which was only one out of 22 Janapadas (specified from Kamboja to Magadha in Northern India).
Varsha can be translated as a division of the earth as separated off by certain mountain ranges. भारतवर्ष (Bharatvarsha) is one of the nine such divisions enumerated in the shastras. (Some mention only seven.) Thus, it fits the description of a varsha perfectly as it is a massive piece of earth separated from the rest of the world by a mountain range.
3. Aryavart – Name from the people
India is called Aryavart during the later Vedic period. The Vedic period is divided into two parts
- Early Vedic period (1500 to 1000BC)
- later Vedic period (1000 to 600 BC)
The Aryans came to India during the early Vedic period and then they started to settled down near the Indus River. So, the area where Aryan first settled came known as Aryavart.
Although initially, only IndoiGangtic plain was known as Aryavart. The South part of the sub-continent was named “Dravida”. ‘Aryavart’, as mentioned in the Manu Smriti, referred to the land occupied by the Indo-Aryans in the space between the Himalayas in the north and the Vindhya Mountain ranges in the south.
4. Hindustan – Name from the Sultanate
Even nowadays many people in India used Hindustan to refer to their own country. Origin of the Hindustan is like this Hindustan = Hindu + stan.
The word Hindu came from the name of the river Sindhu. Hindu is the Persianized version of the Sanskrit word Sindhu. Persian started to call people who lived west of the Sindhu River Hindu.
In Persian the word suffix ‘stan’ means place or land. So, the Hindustan means the Place of the Hindu.
The Muslim rulers and Mughals who came to India started to call the land Hindustan. It was first used when the Persians occupied the Indus valley in the seventh century BCE.
Hindustan became a commonly used term to refer to the Mughal Empire, comprising primarily of north India, prior to British rule. However, with time and colonization, the term widened its geographical scope to include the entire territory of British-ruled India.
5. Tianzhu – Name from the travelers
Tianzhu is used since ancient times. Tianzhu is the Chinese translation of the Persian Hindu, which itself is derived from the Sanskrit Sindhu, the native name of the Indus River.
Because of the origin of Buddhism in India, many South Asian people considered it as their ‘heavenly center’ and used “ Tianzhu ” and its related terms to designate it.
6. Sapta Sindhu – Name from the region
Sapta Sindhu refers to the seven rivers in Indian mythology near the Punjab region. According to some belief, seven rivers are Indus Saraswati plus five other rivers of Punjab. But in reality, they are small seven rivers that made up the Saraswati River. The area around these seven rivers was called Sapta Sindhu so originally it refers to a very small area.
Originally Sapta Sindhu was just a geographical term. But eventually, the idea of Indic civilization grew and the idea of Sapta Sindhu also grew and the entire Indo-Gangetic plain was started to call Sapta Sindhu.
7. Nabhivarsha – Name from the king
According to the Jain literature, Nabhi was the father of the first Tirthankara Rishbhadeva.
Nabhi means the navel – the center of the body. Likewise India – the center of the world.
Varsha means season or, year or sometimes also referred to as the land.
That means the who ruled the center of the land came to know as the Nabhivarsha.