Hindustan

For other uses, see Hindustan (disambiguation).

Alvin J. Johnson's map of Hindostan or British India, 1864

Hindūstān (pronunciationⓘ) was a historical region, polity, and a name for India, historically used to refer to the northern Indian subcontinent later expanded to the entire subcontinent, used in the modern day to refer to the Republic of India.[1] Being the Iranic cognate of the Indic word Sindhu,[2] it originally referred to the land of lower Indus basin (present-day Sindh) during the ancient era,[3] but was later extended to refer to northern Indian subcontinent (including parts of eastern Afghanistan). It finally referred to the entire subcontinent since the early modern period.[4][5][6][3] Since the Partition of India in 1947, Hindustan continues to be used to the present day as a historic name for the Republic of India.[7][8][9]

The Arabic equivalent of the term is Hind.[1] The two terms are used synonymously in Hindi-Urdu. Hindustan was also commonly spelt as Hindostan in English.[10] Historically, the terms "Hindustan", "Āryāvarta" and "India proper" have denoted a similar expanse (northern Indian subcontinent).

  1. ^ a b Kapur, Anu (2019). Mapping Place Names of India. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-429-61421-7.
  2. ^ Sharma, On Hindu, Hindustan, Hinduism and Hindutva (2002), p. 3.
  3. ^ a b Mukherjee, The Foreign Names of the Indian Subcontinent (1989), p. 46: "They used the name Hindustan for India Intra Gangem or taking the latter expression rather loosely for the Indian subcontinent proper. The term Hindustan, which in the "Naqsh-i-Rustam" inscription of Shapur I denoted India on the lower Indus, and which later gradually began to denote more or less the whole of the subcontinent, was used by some of the European authors concerned as a part of bigger India. Hindustan was of course a well-known name for the subcontinent used in India and outside in medieval times."
  4. ^ Goel, Koeli Moitra (2 March 2018). "In Other Spaces: Contestations of National Identity in "New" India's Globalized Mediascapes". Journalism & Communication Monographs. 20 (1): 4–73. doi:10.1177/1522637917750131. "Hindustan," or the land of the Hindus, is another Hindi name for India.
  5. ^ Śivaprasāda, Rājā (1874). A History of Hindustan. Medical Hall Press. p. 15. The Persians called the tract lying on the left bank of the Sindhu (Indus) Hind, which is but a corruption of the word Sindh.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brill was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ "Sindh: An Introduction", Shaikh Ayaz International Conference – Language & Literature, archived from the original on 20 October 2007
  8. ^ Sarina Singh (2009). Lonely Planet India (13, illustrated ed.). Lonely Planet. p. 276. ISBN 9781741791518.
  9. ^ Christine Everaer (2010). Tracing the Boundaries Between Hindi and Urdu: Lost and Added in Translation Between 20th Century Short Stories (annotated ed.). BRILL. p. 82. ISBN 9789004177314.
  10. ^ Grierson, George A. (February 1933). "Hindustan and Hindostan". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 7 (1): 257–260. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00105889. ISSN 1474-0699. S2CID 176975272.