“Bharat: The Journey from Ancient Texts to Modern Identity”

By Suvro Sanyal.

The Vishnu Purana (2, 3, 1) mentions:

“Uttara yat samudrasya himādreścaiva dakiam.

varsam tad bhāratam nāma bhāratī yatra santatiḥ”.

 (The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhāratam there dwell the descendants of Bharat).

“Bharata” gained popularity in India during the nineteenth century. It is the shortened form of the term “Bhāratavarsa” which was first used in the first century AD in the Puranas. “Bhāratavarṣa” is derived from the name of the Vedic community of Bharatas who are mentioned in the Rigveda as one of the principal kingdoms of the Aryavarta. It is also variously said to be derived from the name of either Dushyanta’s son Bharata or Mahabharata. At first the name Bhāratavarsa referred only to the western part of the Gangetic Valley, but was later more broadly applied to the Indian subcontinent and the region of Greater India. In 1949, it was adopted as an official name for the Republic of India by the Constituent Assembly along with “India”.

The English term, is from Greek Indikē (cf. Megasthenes’ work Indica) or Indía (Ἰνδία), via Latin transliteration India, originally derived from the name of the river Sindhu (Indus River) and has been in use in Greek since Herodotus (5th century BCE). The term appeared in Old English by the 9th century and reemerged in Modern English in the 17th century.                              

Geographical Proliferation –

India’s geographical position, continental outline, and basic geologic structure resulted from a process of plate tectonics — the shifting of enormous, rigid crustal plates over the Earth’s underlying layer of molten material. India’s landmass, which forms the northwestern portion of the Indian-Australian Plate, began to drift slowly northward toward the much larger Eurasian Plate several hundred million years ago (after the former broke away from the ancient southern-hemispheric supercontinent known as Gondwana, or Gondwanaland).

When the two finally collided (approximately 50 million years ago), the northern edge of the Indian-Australian Plate was thrust under the Eurasian Plate at a low angle. The collision reduced the speed of the oncoming plate, but the under thrusting, or subduction, of the plate has continued into contemporary times.

The effects of the collision and continued subduction were numerous and extremely complicated. An important consequence, however, was the slicing off of crustal rock from the top of the under thrusting plate. Those slices were thrown back onto the northern edge of the Indian landmass and came to form much of the Himalayan Mountain system. The new mountains — together with vast amounts of sediment eroded from them — were so heavy that the Indian-Australian Plate just south of the range was forced downward, creating a zone of crustal subsidence.

Continued rapid erosion of the Himalayas added to the sediment accumulation, which was subsequently carried by mountain streams to fill the subsidence zone and cause it to sink more.

India’s present-day geographical features have been superimposed on three basic structural units:

• Himalayas in the north – stretching from the peak of Nanga Parbat (26,660 feet [8,126 meters]) in the Pakistani-administered portion of the Kashmir region to the Namcha Barwa peak in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Within India the Himalayas are divided into three longitudinal belts, called the Outer, Lesser, and Great Himalayas.
• Deccan (peninsular plateau region) in the south – a topographically variegated region that extends well beyond the peninsula—that portion of the country lying between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal—and includes a substantial area to the north of the Vindhya Range, which has popularly been regarded as the divide between Hindustan (northern India) and the Deccan (from Sanskrit Dakshina, meaning “South”).

Having once constituted a segment of the ancient continent of Gondwana, that land is the oldest and most geologically stable in India. The plateau is mainly between 1,000 and 2,500 feet (300 to 750 meters) above sea level, and its general slope descends toward the east. A number of the hill ranges of the Deccan have been eroded and rejuvenated several times, and only their remaining summits testify to their geologic past. The main peninsular block is composed of gneiss, granite-gneiss, schists, and granites, as well as of more geologically recent basaltic lava flows

• Indo-Gangetic Plain (lying over the subsidence zone) – also known as the North Indian River Plain, is a 700-thousand km² (172-million-acre) fertile plain encompassing northern regions of the Indian subcontinent, including most of modern-day northern and eastern India, most of eastern-Pakistan, virtually all of Bangladesh and southern plains of Nepal.

Also known as the Indus–Ganga Plain, the region is named after the Indus and the Ganges rivers and encompasses several large urban areas. The plain is bounded on the north by the Himalayas, which feed its numerous rivers and are the source of the fertile alluvium deposited across the region by the two river systems. The southern edge of the plain is marked by the Deccan Plateau. On the west rises the Iranian Plateau.

Many developed cities like Delhi, Dhaka, Kolkata, Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi are located along the Indo-Gangetic Plain.

Written by Suvro Sanyal

Mavericknews30 has launched a series of article starting with History of Flags and featuring ” Know Your National Flag”, in anticipation of Independence Day on August 15th, Stay tuned for the next article!

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