Pre-Partition India
Pre-Partition India refers to an area of south Asia prior to the Partition of India in 1947. The term frequently refers to the British Raj period but there is no precise usage.
Bernard Cohn traces the origin of India as a descriptive name for an area to the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which referred to the Indus river. A pronunciation change from Sanskrit to Persian gave rise to Hindu and this was "the Persian name for the river, the country near the river, and the people inhabiting the country." It was later adopted by the Greeks and the Romans and "with some imprecision came to mean all the landmass of southern Asia". This Indus valley area, which the inhabitants themselves did not define in detail,[lower-alpha 1] was separated from Iran, Afghanistan, central Asia, Tibet, Burma (Myanmar) and the southeastern Asia mainland by natural features such as the Kirchar, Suliaman and Hindu Kush Mountains at its northwest, the Himalayas at its north and jungle-covered hills in the northeast. He says that "Historically, the term 'India' presents difficulties because of the partition in 1947 of the Indian Empire".[1]
Cohn notes that India has also been referred to as "south Asia" and "southern Asia" but, depending on the referrer, that these terms can include regions other than the present-day Republic of India, such as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.[1]
References
Notes
- ↑ Despite not having a name for the region in which they lived, "the land of the Bharatas" is mentioned in Sanskrit texts and refers to the ancient people of the Indian subcontinent. More recently, the Constitution of India harks to this with the phrase "India, that is Bharat".[1]
Citations
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Cohn, Bernard S. (1971). India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. pp. 8–9.