The Unsaturated Reader

Tag: ancient india

  • How the term ‘Hindu’ came into being

    In short, the term ‘Hindu’ derives its origin from the Sanskrit word ‘Sindhu’ that watered through the northwestern parts of the region and which now encapsulates the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. the northwest was the doorway to India for conquerors seeking to amass this land. When the foreigners chanced upon the inhabitants of this place who resided close to the banks of the Sindhu — or as it is know today, the Indus — they named the whole country after it; ‘India’ which resembles the Greek term for it.

    The syllable ‘s’ transmutes to ‘h’ in Persian (present-day Iranian) and so came the word ‘Hindu’ therefrom. Consequently, India was called ‘Al-Hind’ by Persians and Arabs. It may be of service to note here that the first Iranian inscriptions make reference to ‘Hindu’ as a district on the Indus. It neither alluded to a religion nor a community. It was only later in the 14th and 15th centuries that it came to denote the followers of a particular religion.

  • #ai1 – IH – Birth of a Civilisation

    The geological time scale is a reference system that classifies different strata (rock layers) of earth on the basis of the time during which they bestrode the land. The timescale is divided into aeons which are further subdivided into eras, periods and finally epochs. Now, an epoch is the time during which a series (or simply rock layers) is deposited. We currently live in the Holocene epoch– of the Quartenary period– which began around 11,700 years ago (approx. 9700 BCE). The humans who thrived during this period are generally referred to as ‘modern’ humans / homo sapiens. The other members of the Homo species namely Homo Habilis, Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis — our closest evolutionary cousins — went extinct by then.

    300,000 years back, modern humans began emerging in Africa. Roughly 70,000 years ago, their first ‘successful’ Out of Africa (OoA) migration took place; thus being entitled as the ancestors of today’s non-African population. 5000 years later, they reached India and thereafter leaving generations behind who would later mix with zagrosian agriculturists who had migrated from Iran. Together, they give birth to one of the most advanced civilisations of its age which took root by the basins of the Indus River — the Indus Valley Civilization (also called Harappan civilisation). The monsoon river Ghaggar-Hakra too fed the settlements.