Historical Geography of Ancient India c5.s2.1

c5.s2.1

Bounded on the north by stupendous mountain ranges and on the other three sides by the mighty seas and ocean, India constitutes a distinct geographical unit. The vastness of the country with its infinite variety of fauna and flora, races and languages, religions and culture justly entitles it to be called a great sub-continent. The remote parts of this great country revealed themselves to the observers and explorers of ancient times only gradually and by stages. It is for this reason therefore that we do not meet with any comprehensive term to designate the whole country in the earliest records. The word ‘India’ is derived from the name of the river Sindhu or the Indus.¹ The Chinese also knew the ancient name of India as Shin-tuh or Sindhu.² In the *Ṛgveda* (VIII. 24. 27) it is referred to as Sapta Sindhavas or ‘the Seven Rivers’. The designation doubtless corresponds to the term Hapta Hindu found in the *Avestan Vendīdād*.³ In the famous inscriptions of Darius at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustam the entire territory watered by the Indus and its affluents is styled simply Hi(n)du.⁴ Herodotus calls it ‘India’ which was the twentieth division of the Persian empire. It should, however, be noted that the Vedic Sapta Sindhavah and the Persian Hi(n)du corresponded only to a particular part of India lying to the north-west. But ‘India’ of Herodotus was already acquiring a wider denotation, for the Greek historian speaks of the Indians who ‘are situated very far from the Persians, towards the south, and were never subject to Darius’.⁵