Hindu
Hindus (Hindustani: [ˈɦɪndu] ; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent.
It is assumed that the term “Hindu” traces back to Avestan scripture Vendidad which refers to land of seven rivers as Hapta Hendu which itself is a cognate to Sanskrit term Sapta Sindhuḥ. (The term Sapta Sindhuḥ is mentioned in Rig Veda and refers to a North western Indian region of seven rivers and to India as a whole.) The Greek cognates of the same terms are “Indus” (for the river) and “India” (for the land of the river). Likewise the Hebrew cognate hōd-dū refers to India mentioned in Hebrew Bible (Esther 1:1). The term “Hindu” also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the Sindhu (Indus) River. By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not Turkic or Muslims.
The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the Muslim invasions and medieval Hindu–Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in Sanskrit and Bengali. The 14thand 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir, Tulsidas and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and contrasted it with Turaka dharma (Islam). The Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term ‘Hindu’ in a religious context in 1649. In the 18th century, European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for groups such as Turks, Mughals and Arabs, who were adherents of Islam. By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about the mid-20th century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon.
At approximately 1.2 billion, Hindus are the world’s third-largest religious group after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million (94.3% of the global Hindu population), live in India, according to the 2011 Indian census. After India, the next nine countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United States, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. These together accounted for 99% of the world’s Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world combined had about 6 million Hindus as of 2010.
While the link between “Hindu” and the Sindhu river is a primary explanation, some scholars also propose the following alternative or complementary theories regarding the origin of the term:
- Influence of Lahandi speakers: Some historians and linguists, like Dr. Ram Vilas Sharma, suggest that the word “Hindu” might have originated with speakers of the Lahandi language (used in regions of Punjab, Rajasthan, and Eastern Pakistan). These speakers reportedly pronounced the “s” sound as “h”, which could have contributed to the transformation of Sindhu to Hindu.
- Avestan language usage: The term “Hindu” or “Hendu” appears in the Zend Avesta (sacred text of Zoroastrianism) in the phrase “hapta/hafta hindu/hendu,” referring to a region of seven rivers, likely the Sapta Sindhu (Punjab and Haryana). This usage predates Islamic invasions and indicates a potentially older, non-Persian origin for the geographical use of the term.
- Geographic rather than religious initial use: Many sources point out that the term “Hindu” initially served as a geographical or ethnic identifier for people living in the area around the Indus River, and was not necessarily tied to a specific religious identity. It wasn’t until later interactions with outsiders, particularly European colonists, that the term became more strongly associated with a singular religious identity, leading to the development of terms like “Hinduism”.
It’s important to acknowledge that the etymology of “Hindu” is a subject of ongoing discussion and different scholars offer varying interpretations of the term’s evolution and earliest uses.