Endonyms, Exonyms and Ancient Pakistan

The earliest mention of the word Sindh comes from the Rigveda - "Sapta Sindhu", the land of the seven rivers.

 

When the Vedic people arrived in India from the Eurasian Steppes (an event known as the Aryan Migration), they settled in a region called Sapta Sindhu. Here, in around 1500 BCE, they composed the Rigveda: a collection of hymns about Vedic myths, gods, rituals and identity. 

 

In the Rigveda, the early Aryans identified their homeland as the Sapta Sindhu: the land of Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Chenab, Jhelum, Saraswati and most importantly, Sindhu, corresponding roughly to modern-day Pakistan.

 

As the Aryans spread, resettled and mixed with indigenous cultures, the nomadic and pastoral practices of the Steppes gave way to permanent cities, states and kingdoms. This evolution is chronicled in the following three Vedic books: the Samaveda, the Yajurveda and the Athurvaveda composed between 1200 BCE and 900 BCE in the kingdom of Kuru.

 

Situated along present-day Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, Kuru was a kingdom ruled by warrior Kshatriya castes where the progenitors of modern-day Hinduism shaped how the religion would evolve. Further to the East, another important kingdom would come into existence in the Ganga-Yamuna doab: the Panchala kingdom. In between these two, the majority of orthodox Hindu epics have taken place in what is called the Kuru-Panchala region. The Mahabharat and the Ramayan take place here, and subsequent history of North India has been dominated by this region which includes cities like Delhi, Lucknow and Ayodhya.

 

The Kuru-Panchala and its sphere of influence are known in Hindu texts as the Aryavarta.

 

The boundaries of what constitutes as Aryavarta are not clearly defined, but two things are always true: it includes the kingdoms of Kuru and Panchala, and it does not include the mleccha tribes: the Sakas (Indo-Iranian), Hunas (Huns), Yavanas (Greek), Kambojas (Indo-Iranian), Pahlavas (Indo-Iranian), Bahlikas (Bactrian/Afghan), Rishikas (Afghan) and others. All these are categorized as "barbarians". 

 

Mleccha is also where we get the Urdu word maleechh (ملیچھ) meaning low-caste, dirty and ill-mannered.

 

So, the boundary of India in these early conceptions includes regions up until Gandhara and Sindhu (modern-day KPK and Sindh), but no further. Even in the earliest histories, there is a clear conception of “Indic” and “non-Indic”, the insiders and the outsiders.

 

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In the Mahabharata, repeatedly, the kingdom of Sindhu-Sauvira is mentioned as a united country under the rule of Jayadratha (a Sindhi king). Sindhu is located somewhere between northern Sindh and South Punjab of today. Jayadratha, who rules 10 Kingdoms out of which Sindhu is the biggest one, plays an important role as a villain in Mahabharata. He is allied with the Kauravas and in the end, his head is chopped off by Arjun, our protagonist in the story.

 

Sindhu-Sauvira kingdom is not part of Aryavarta, but it is part of the Bharat Varsha - the sphere of Indo-Aryan ancestry. One of the main characters in Mahabharata, Karn, has to say this about the kingdoms around modern-day Pakistan:

 

“The Prasthalas [North Punjab], the Madras [North Punjab], the Gandharas [KPK], the Arattas [somewhere in Punjab], those called Khasas [Kashmir / Himanchal / Western Nepal], the Vasatis [unsure], the Sindhus [Sindh] and the Sauviras [South Punjab] are almost as blamable in their practices”.

 

Karn notes a qualitative difference between the kingdoms settled around the Sindhu River (Prasthala, Madra, Gandhara, Sindhu and Sauvira), and the kingdoms of the Aryavarta around Ganga and Yamuna. There is implied superiority of the latter in the text of the story. However, despite these differences, these kingdoms are not considered foreign.

 

"One should always avoid the Vahikas [Bactrian / Afghan], those impure people that are out of the pale of virtue, and that live away from the Himavat and the Ganges and Saraswati and Yamuna and Kurukshetra and the Sindhu and its five tributary rivers."

 

Here, the narrator of Mahabharata makes a clear distinction of what is considered foreign and what is considered Indic. The region until Sindhu and its tributaries are still part of the Indic world. The ones after that are considered too foreign and impure.

 

"The Gandharas (or Gandharvas), the Sindhus, and the Sauviras fight best with their nails and lances. They are brave and endued with great strength. Their armies are capable of vanquishing all forces, The Usinaras [Punjab] are possessed of great strength and skilled in all kinds of weapons.”

 

Once more, the kingdoms around the Indus are mentioned together as a comparable cultural group. There is plenty spoken about the Sindhu-Sauvira, Gandhara, and even the Kasmira (Kashmir and Northern Punjab) in the Mahabharata. All of these kingdoms are part of the Mahabharat epic as they were allegedly allied with one of the two sides battling each other: Pandavas and Kauravas.

 

The Mahabharata was compiled somewhere between 400 BCE to 200 BCE, while the story being told is several hundred years old - likely from 900 BCE when the kingdoms of Kuru and Panchala were at their prime. Parts of the Mahabharata epic would continue to be updated until the Gupta period in the 3rd century AD when it was standardized.

 

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Around the same time as when the Rigveda was composed (1500 BCE), the Avestan people from Iran referred to Punjab as “Hapta Hindu”. The Avesta is the ancient Zoroastrian holy book written around the same time as the Rigveda and mirrors a lot of the same concepts as the Vedas. As the Indo-Aryans went to India, the Indo-Iranians went to Iran. Hapta Hindu clearly mirrors Sapta Sindhu.

 

When the Persians invaded the Indus Valley in 500 BCE, they took control of the region up until the western bank of the Indus river and called the unconquered people on the eastern bank the “Hindush''. The people east of the River Hindhu became the Hindus. Darius I refers to Indian people as Hindush in the famous Behistun Inscription.

 

The Greeks of the time however, including the Greeks present in the Persian army, called the region ‘Indos’ (Greek pronunciation of Hindush), and the people ‘Indoi’. As the Greeks explored more of India after Alexander's conquest of the Indus, their conception of ancient India became nearly identical to the modern conception of the Indian subcontinent.

 

In an excerpt written by Megasthenes in 300 BCE, we can see how Greeks viewed India:

 

"India then being four-sided in plan, the side which looks to the [East] and that to the South, the Great Sea compasseth; that towards the [North] is divided by the mountain chain of Hēmōdus from Scythia (...); and on the fourth side, turned towards the West, the Indus marks the boundary (...)"

 

Here, Megasthenes clearly defines India with the geographic boundaries of the Indian subcontinent today, from Khyber Pass all the way until the Bay of Bengal, from the Himalayas down to the Indian Ocean. Since 300 BCE, “India” as a geographical region was known as the entire Indian subcontinent.

 

In 200 BCE, Kautilya in the Arthashastra described India as the following: 

 

"(Brahmaputra) is the eastern boundary of Jambudvipa [ancient name of India], its western boundary being the mouths of the Indus and its southern boundary being the Indian Ocean or Rama Sethu."

 

Here again we see that the definition of India includes the region from Bengal to KPK, with Himalayas in the North and the Indian Ocean in the South. This is how India was conceptualized from the time of the earliest explorers (for outsiders). By the middle ages, the subcontinent was widely known as India in Europe, as Al-Hind in the Arabian Peninsula, and as Hindustan in the Persian world.

 

So we see that, whether we reference the Vedas, or the Puranas, or Itihasa like the Mahabharat or Ramayan, the Sindhu river and civilization has always been included in the sphere of the Indic world, the Bharat Varsha. Sources written by Persians and Greeks provide support for this claim.

 

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How we are connected to the Indian world is such a multifaceted subject that there is no singular way of answering this.

 

Whether we are divided by a hundred different rulers and kingdoms, different religions and thousands of languages, what connects is at the core our relatively recent cultural and genetic history. We are all part Harappan, Dravidian and Aryan in varying proportions. We are connected by our cultural and religious legacy - whatever religion we follow, we are all deeply influenced by Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh cultural and religious traditions. We are connected by our shared oppressions of caste, of subjugation and control. We are connected by our dietary habits, our cultural customs and tropes.

 

The hyperfocus on our differences is something that is reminiscent of Freud’s “narcissism of small differences” - the deepest hatred manifests between people who, for most outward appearances, exhibit very few differences. The British might have controlled us as one state entity, but the British did not invent the idea of the Indian subcontinent and its profoundly shared cultural history.