Is Hindu a Foreign Word?
Contributed By - Gayathri Krithivas
Social media has been abuzz with the statement of an erstwhile famous screen star who said the word Hindu is not native to India, but of foreign origin. He went on to add that the citizens of the land were only identified as Indians and calling them Hindus was erroneous. Armchair Indologists and wannabe experts of geography and civilization chimed in with their own ideas. Never had I seen so much scrutiny given to the term that most of us take for granted. Which of course made me want to jump in and find out all I could to try and understand the statement a bit better and in that process learn a little bit more about my own roots.
Let’s go back in time to the Harappan Civilization and the inscription on some of them of an object that looks like a vessel of sorts.
The famous Indologist Iravatham Mahadevan who also happened to be well versed in Sanskrit remarked that the object was akin to the images evoked in the Soma chapter of the Rig Veda, namely Pavamana and Indu. Pavamana refers to the flowing Soma and Indu, the Soma drops collected at the bottom of the filter. Indu, in Sanskrit is used not just for the Soma drop but for Soma itself and by extension the moon. In the Rig Veda, the river currently known as Indus is called Su-Soma. Therefore, Indu, Soma Sindhu (the drops of Soma) are both used to denote the rituals practiced during the Vedic ritual of Soma.
Fast forward a few thousand years to the time when the Avestan Gatha was written. It describes the visit of a sage named Vyasa to the court of King Gustash around 3000 BC. Here, Vyasa is described introducing himself as a man born in Hind. Popular etymological description of the word Hindu says that the Persians often replaced the sound of the letter S with the sound of H and therefore Sindhu became Hindu. But interestingly, the Persians and Arabs of that time used Hind and Sindh to denote different people. This makes it all the more intriguing, doesn’t it?
The Chinese scholars of the past were credited with documenting very clearly about their travels and the word Hien-tu to denote the people of the land appears as early as 100 BC. The Chinese referred to India as the Land of the Moon or Land of Wisdom. Soma-Moon-Indu-Hien-tu-Hindu, you get the idea.
Inscriptions of Emperor Asoka, (3rd century BC) repeatedly use the term Hida, Hida Loka to denote the people and the land of the people we call Hindus. Inscriptions from the time of King Darius refer to the land as Hidu.
The word Hindu is derived from Indu or Sindhu as it appears in the Rig Veda and many Sanskrit works, it is obvious that the origin is without a doubt Vedic in nature and not foreign. While the Persians and the Greek called all the people who lived east of the River Sindhu as Sindhus, it must be noted that the people of that land from the Vedic times had been practicing the Vedic religion or Dharma. It was only when people migrated into the land practicing other faiths, there needed to be a way to describe them another way. When the Arabs came in, they were not Sindhu people, they were called Mohameddans or the followers of Mohammed.
Today, the people of Sindhu belong to many faiths, but when we peel back the political rhetoric and remove the mentality to take for granted what is said to us from beyond our shores, we will see that we are all Hindus, the children of the land of Sindhu.
Gayathri is a nutritionist by education, educator by choice but most of all, a volunteer by heart. She loves to explore whether it is philosophy, food or travel and believes that with music as a companion, any journey is that much more memorable.