'Comes from Rig Veda': Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik on the origins of 'India', 'Bharat'

Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik called out people who have been insisting that India was a name given by the British. Pattanaik said that unlike what is believed, the name India was not given by foreigners but was a deviation of the Sanskrit word Sindhu, meaning river. He said that first the Persians and then the Greeks’ inability to say the word eventually led to the word India. He also said that the term Bharat does not refer to the entire country but a specific region in the Northern part of the country. 

The author’s clarification came amid the row that was triggered following the G20 Summit dinner invites. It mentioned the ‘President of Bharat’. To top it all, several reports stated that renaming India to Bharat could be possibly taken up in the special Parliament session. 

“In the Middle Eastern mythologies, there is an obsession with one god, one life, one prophet – singularity. Indian mythology loves diversity – plurality. So many gods, many ideas, many saints, many ways of thinking – we have always been a land that has loved diversity and dynamism. So, there is a Middle Eastern concept of singularity and there is an Indian concept of plurality. So, when somebody says we should have only one name, one idea, one thought, one language, they are really drifting towards the Middle East, which is the mother of the Western civilisation. I think India should retain its identity and celebrate plurality. We belong to a land that celebrates diversity so we should not follow the Middle Eastern path – that is my personal view,” he said in an interview to India Today. 

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Explaining the origins of the word India, the mythologist said that the word India comes from the Sanskrit word sindhu meaning river, “very specifically a river that passes across India for several hundred kms before entering Pakistan”.

“From Sindhu comes the name Sindhadesha. But the Arabs could not pronounce ‘sa’ so they started using ‘ha’. So Saptasindhu became Haptahindhu, Sindh became Hind. And 2,500 years ago, we had the Persian king referring to India as Hind. The Greeks came to India and they couldn’t say ‘ha’, so they say ‘aa’ or ‘ee’. So, Indu, Indus, Indica,” he clarified.

Pattanaik said that Greek historian Megasthenes wrote Indica but he really was referring to Sindhu. He also said that apart from Sindhu, India could have potentially been a reference to Lord Rama’s grandmother Indu or Indumati. 

“We have associated it with the Greeks…some people think it is the British but not really. Really uneducated people say such things. It is not even the Greeks. It is really from a Sanskrit word from the Rig Veda,” he said. 

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When it comes to ‘Bharat’, Pattanaik says that the term first comes from the Rig Veda as well. It is a reference to Bharata, king of the Bharata clan, who won the battle of ten kings. “Now Rig Veda happens only in the Kurukshetra region. You have the Mahabharata epic, again talking about the Bharata clan…and it happens only in the northern part of India. Kuru-Panchala region is what is today roughly Delhi, Mathura, up to Prayagraj. First, the word Bharatvarsh was carved in stone about 2100 years ago in Odisha in the Hathigumpha caves. You find this word Bharatvarsh but it is referring only to the Gangetic region,  not to the entire India. So, the word Bharatvarsh refers to a certain part of North India…and it is a name given by Brahmins. So, when people say Bharat, Bharatkhand, Bharatvarsh, these are coming from Brahmin sources…something like an Aryadesh, the land of Aryans. Bharata is a victorious king of the Aryans. So, it is a very North Indian Brahminical word that emerges,” he explained. 

He also referred to Bharat, the son of the first Jain tirthankara Rishabhadeva, as a possible reference for the word ‘Bharat’. “North Indian Bharat comes from Brahmin traditions and South Indian Bharat comes from Jain traditions,” he said. 

Pattanaik said that it is an unhealthy mindset to think of external things as impure and internal things as pure, in reference to the idea that foreigners coined the term, India. 

He said that great civilisations have multiple names because different people have engaged with them. The mythologist said that a path of “monotheism, one idea, one thought” comes from a mindset that sees alternate ideas as polluting.

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