Full Form of INDIA
INDIA is
neither an abbreviation nor a shortened form of a word. It is the name of a south Asian country.
Some Facts about India
India is
the largest democracy (with 91.1 crore eligible electorates) in the world,
situated in the Asian subcontinent. It is surrounded by the Indian Ocean on the
south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the
southeast. In the north lies the great Himalayan mountain range.
India ranks
seven in terms of total area (2.39 lakh square kilometer), and second in terms
of population (with 121.08 crore residents as per 2011 official census) amongst
the countries. It is also the 5th largest economy in the world as per GDP is
concerned (with a nominal GDP of USD 2.94 trillion; you can check our article on GDP).
Origin of the name India.
The name
India is actually the distorted form of the Sanskrit word “Sindhu”. In
‘Rig-Veda’ (one of the oldest scriptures in world history), the Indus river was
named as Sindhu. Neighboring Arabs or Iranians always have a general problem of
pronouncing the ‘s’ correctly. Rather they pronounce it as ‘h’, hence the land
was known as ‘Hindu’. Greeks further misspelled this name as Indus.
The English
term essentially derived from Greek Ἰνδία (IndÃa), through Latin India.
Byzantine ethnography denoted the territory beyond the Indus (Ἰνδός)
River as IindÃa, which Herodotus (4th century BC) referred to as "Indian
land". In Iranian Avesta Ἰνδός, Indos, "an Indian"
indicates to Sindh, and as per Persepolis terrace inscription, the region was
once conquered by Persian emperor Darius I (550-486 BC).
In Old
English (5th to 12th century AD), the term ‘India’ was usually used. Later it
was replaced by Ynde, Inde, or Indie (even in the works of William
Shakespeare). From the 17th century onwards, the name “India” came back,
possibly due to the influence of Latin, Spanish or Portuguese.
When the
Constitution of India came into existence (26th January 1950), the country was
officially named as “Republic of India”. The other official name of India is
“Bharat”. Another popular name of India is ‘Hindusthan’, which no longer
officially exists.
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