The name Hindustan, which was at one time adopted by European geographers, is of Persian origin, meaning the land of the Hindus, as Afghanistan means the land of the Afghans. According to native usage, however, Hindustan is limited either to that portion of the peninsula lying north of the Vindhya mountains, or yet more strictly to the upper basin of the Ganges where Hindi is the spoken language. The East Indies, as opposed to the West Indies, is an old-fashioned and inaccurate phrase, dating from the dawn of maritime discovery, and still lingering in certain parliamentary papers. India, the abstract form of a word derived through the Greeks from the Persicized form of the Sanskrit sindhu, a river, preeminently the Indus, has become familiar since the British acquired the country, and is now officially recognized in the imperial title of the sovereign. The interpretation given by traditional Vedic scholars in India differs from what given by the above sites. In Sanskrit, Indu means one who bestows the milk of Divine Knowledge on Her devotees from the brightness of Her Divine form. It is an epithet of Saraswathi - goddess of knowledge. Indu is a variation of the original Sanskrit pronunciation Imdu. Ancient Hindu manuscripts say that Saraswathi inspired writing of the Vedas. Consonants M and V are interchangeable since they are labials. The Puranas call India as Veda Bhoomi - land of Vedas or land of knowledge (Veda means knowledge).
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 06:37:46 +0000
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