Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.13

c7.13

Almost all over the geographical area described above, we find settlements of the Hindus during the early centuries of the Christian era. The term Hindu is used here in a very broad sense. It does not refer to followers of Brahmanical, as opposed to those of heterodox religions like Buddhism and Jainism. As is well-known the word Hindu is derived from Sindhu, the name of the mighty river on the western border of India. The Parsis used this name to denote also the territory lying on the bank of the river, that is to say that part of our country which was then known to them. Gradually the name Sindhu in its phonetically changed form Hindu came to denote the whole of this country. The European forms Indika, India, Inde and the Chinese from Indu are all derived form this. The term Hindu, therefore, means the same geographical area as India, as well as its people. But the people of this country never called themselves by this name before the advent of the Muslims when the sharp differences in religion necessitated the use of two different terms to denote the two distinct classes of people. Henceforth the term Hindu came to denote the people of India other than the Muslims. I have used this term in the same sense, in the absence of a better one, to denote the people of India as a whole before the Muslim invasion. The term Indian would be misleading as it would include also the Muslims who had nothing to do with the phase of colonization which it is the object of these lectures to describe.