The Republic of India is principally known by two official short names: India and Bharat. As per Article 300 of the Constitution of India, the Government of India may be referred to as the Union of India in legal proceedings. An unofficial third name is Hindustan, which is widely used throughout North India. Although these names now refer to the modern country in most contexts, they historically denoted the broader Indian subcontinent.
Overview "India" () is a name derived from the Indus River and remains the country's common name in the Western world, having been used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the lands east of Persia and south of the Himalayas. This name appeared in Old English by the 9th century and re-emerged in Modern English in the 17th century.
The earliest known epigraphical attestations of the name Bharata occurs in the Hāthigumphā inscription of King Kharavela (2nd-1st century BCE), a Jain inscription at Udayagiri Caves, near Bhubaneswar in Odisha. The inscription, which records Kharavela's military campaigns, contains a reference to Bharatavarsha, indicating that the term was already in use as a cultural or territorial designation in ancient India.R. D. Banerji, History of Orissa: From the Earliest Times to the British Period, Vol. I, Calcutta University Press, 1930, p. 130.
According to Jain tradition, the name "Bharatavarsha" derives from Emperor Bharata, the eldest son of the first Tirthankara, Rishabhdeva (also named Adinatha or Ikshvāku). Jain texts describe Bharata as a universal monarch (chakravartin), after whom the land was named. This association between Bharata and the territorial name "Bharatavarsha" is a recurring theme in Jain literature.Padmanabh S. Jaini, Collected Papers on Jaina Studies, Motilal Banarsidass, 2001, pp. 57–59.U. N. Ghoshal, A History of Hindu Political Theories, Oxford University Press, 1923, pp. 24–25.
According to the Vedic tradition, "Bharat" () is the shortened form of the name "Bharatavarsha" in the Sanskrit language. It originates from the Vedic period and is rooted in the Dharmic religions, particularly Hinduism. The long-form Sanskrit name is derived from the Bharata tribe, who are mentioned in the Rigveda as one of the principal peoples of Aryavarta, which roughly corresponds with the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The initial application of the name referred only to the western part of the Gangetic Valley.Dwijendra Narayan Jha, Rethinking Hindu Identity (Routledge: 2014), p.11Upinder Singh, Political Violence in Ancient India, p.253 In 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India adopted "Bharat" (alongside "India") as one of the country's two official short names, by even explicitly rejecting "Hindustan" (at least as an official name).
"Hindustan" () is also a name derived from the Indus River, combining "Hindu" as an exonym with the suffix "-stan" in the Persian language. It has been the most common Persian name for India since at least the 3rd century, with the earlier form "Hindush" (an adaptation of the Sanskrit name "Sindhu") being attested in Old Persian as early as the 6th century BCE, when it was used to refer to the lands east of the Persian frontier in the Indus Valley. However, the name did not become particularly widespread in other languages until the 11th century, when it was popularised during the Muslim period in the Indian subcontinent. While it is no longer used in an official capacity, "Hindustan" is still a common name for India in the Hindustani language.
India
The English term is from Greek Indikē (cf. Megasthenes' work Indica) or (), via Latin transliteration .: "Apparently the same territory was referred to as Hi(n)du(sh) in the Naqsh‐i‐Rustam inscription of Darius I as one of the countries in his empire. The terms Hindu and India ('Indoi) indicate an original indigenous expression like Sindhu. The name Sindhu could have been pronounced by the Persians as Hindu (replacing s by h and dh by d) and the Greeks would have transformed the latter as Indo‐ (Indoi, Latin Indica, India) with h dropped..."
The name derives from Sanskrit , which was the name of the Indus River as well as the lower Indus Basin.: "In early Indian sources Sindhu denoted the mighty Indus river and also a territory on the lower Indus.": "Sindhu means a stream, a river, and in particular the Indus river, but likewise it denotes the territory of the lower Indus valley, or modern Sind. Therefore, the appellation Saindhavah, means "inhabitants of the lower Indus valley".... In this respect Sindhu is no tribal name at all. It denotes a geographical unit to which different tribes may belong."
The Old Persian equivalent of was . Darius I conquered Sindh in about 516 BCE, upon which the Persian equivalent was used for the province at the lower Indus basin. Scylax of Caryanda who explored the Indus river for the Persian emperor probably took over the Persian name and passed it into Greek. The terms for the Indus river as well as "an Indian" are found in Herodotus' Histories. The loss of the aspirate /h/ was probably due to the dialects of Greek spoken in Asia Minor.: "Note finally that the letter H/η was originally used to mark word-initial aspiration... Since such aspiration was lost very early in the eastern Ionic-speaking area, the letter was recycled, being used first to denote the new, very open, long e-vowel [æ:] ... and then to represent the inherited long e-vowel [ε:] too, once these two sounds had merged. The use of H to represent open long e-vowels spread quite early to the central Ionic-speaking area and also to the Doric-speaking islands of the southern Aegean, where it doubled up both as the marker of aspiration and as a symbol for open long e-vowels.": "The early loss of aspiration is mainly a characteristic of Asia Minor (and also of the Aeolic and Doric of Asia Minor)...In Attica, however (and in some cases in Euboea, its colonies, and in the Ionic-speaking islands of the Aegean), the aspiration survived until later... During the second half of the fifth century BC, however, orthographic variation perhaps indicates that 'a change in the phonetic quality of [h] was taking place' too." Herodotus also generalised the term "Indian" from the people of lower Indus basin, to all the people living to the east of Persia, even though he had no knowledge of the geography of the land.: "The term 'Indians' was used by Herodotus as a collective name for all the peoples living east of Persia. This was also a significant development over Hekataios, who had used this term in a strict sense for the groups dwelling in Sindh only."
By the time of Alexander the Great, in Koine Greek denoted the region beyond the Indus. Alexander's companions were aware of at least India up to the Ganges delta (Gangaridai). Later, Megasthenes included in India the southern peninsula as well.
Megasthenes was a Greek ambassador in the Mauryan Empire court during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya and wrote a detailed account of his visit in Indica. He resided in the Mauryan capital of Pataliputra, noting that they surpassed in power and glory in all India.
Latin is used by Lucian (2nd century CE). was known in Old English language and was used in King Alfred's translation of Paulus Orosius. In Middle English, the name was, under French influence, replaced by or , which entered Early Modern English as "". The name "India" then came back to English usage from the 17th century onward, and may be due to the influence of Latin, or Spanish and Portuguese.
Sanskrit "drop (of Soma)", also a term for the Moon, is unrelated, but has sometimes been erroneously connected (see Middle Chinese for more).
Indies The term "Indies" refers to the land east of Indus River. It is fully interchangeable with the word India. The Portuguese initially described the entire region they discovered as the Indies. Caribbean islands were initially described as "Indies" as they were thought to be India. When they became known to be in Western Hemisphere, they were renamed as West Indies. Thus, West Indies means India in the Western Hemisphere. Indonesia's former name is Dutch East Indies which means India in Southeast Asia (this should not be confused with Dutch India, which referred to the trading posts of VOC within the Indian subcontinent).
Bharat
Bharat is a coequal name of India, as set down in Article 1 of the Constitution, adopted in 1950, which states in English: "India, that is Bharat, ..." Bharat, which was predominantly used in Sanskrit, was adopted as a self-ascribed alternative name by some people of the Indian subcontinent and the Republic of India.Article 1 of the English version of the Constitution of India: "India that is Bharat shall be a Union of States."
The Sanskrit word is a vrddhi derivation of , which was originally an epithet of Agni. The term is a verbal noun of the Sanskrit root , "to bear/to carry", with a literal meaning of to be maintained (of fire). The root is cognate with the English verb 'to bear' and Latin . This term also means "one who is engaged in search for knowledge". , the Esperanto name for India, is also a derivation of .
According to Vedic texts, Bharat is derived from the name of the Vedic community Bharatas, who are mentioned in the Rigveda as one of the original community of the Āryāvarta and notably participating in the Battle of the Ten Kings.Julius Lipner (2010) "Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices.", p.23
In the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata (200 BCE to 300 CE), a larger region of Indosphere is encompassed by the term Bharat.D. N. Jha (2014), p.11 Some other Puranic passages refer to the same Bhārata people, who are described as the descendants of Dushyanta's son Bharata in the Mahabharata.
In the Puranas refer to the land that comprises India as () and uses this term to distinguish it from other s or continents. For example, the Vayu Purana says "he who conquers the whole of is celebrated as a ". According to Jain tradition, in the Puranas – is named after Emperor Bharata, the son of Rishabhdeva the first Tirthankara of Jainism. He is described to be a Kshatriya born in the Solar dynasty. The earliest epigraphical record of Bhāratavarṣa in a geographical sense is in the Hathigumpha inscription of Jain king Kharavela (first century BCE), where it applies only to a restrained area of northern India, namely the part of the Ganges west of Magadha. The inscription also mentions that Bharat was named after Emperor Bharata, the son of Rishabhdeva.
Vishnu Purana (2,3,1), Vayu Purana (33,52), Linga Purana (1,47,23), Brahmanda Purana (14,5,62), Agni Purana (107,11–12), Skanda Purana (37,57) and Markandeya Purana (50,41), all use the designation .
The Vishnu Purana mentions:
The Bhagavata Purana mentions (Canto 5, Chapter 4) – "He (Rishabhdeva) begot a hundred sons that were exactly like him ... He (Bharata) had the best qualities and it was because of him that this land by the people is called Bhāratavarṣa."Bhāratavarṣa, Bharatvarsha Yatra, Explore the Soul of Bharat
Bharata Khanda (or Bhārata Kṣētra) is a term used in some of the Jain and Hindu texts.
The use of Bharat often has political overtones, appealing to Hindu nationalists. In 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government used the name Bharat in connection with a G20 gathering, which caused speculation on a name-change for the country. Such a change would need a constitutional amendment, meaning two-thirds of the vote in each of the two houses of parliament, and an official notice to the UN, advising how to write the name in the UN's six official languages.
Hind/Hindustan