INDIA. The general name of India has always had a very wide and rather indefinite application, both in ancient and modern times. It has been generally used to designate all those vast regions of the Asiatic continent which lie to the eastward of the Indus, which were accordingly distinguished by the ancients into two great divisions, namely, India intra Gangem, and India extra Gangem. The meaning of the name, which has long been a source of perplexity to the learned, has never been clearly ascertained. It is supposed to be of ‘Persian origin, from the word Hind, or Heando, the term in the more ancient languages of Persia, which has been employed by the Greeks and Romans, and from them made its way into the modern languages of Europe. The progress of ancient discovery in India has been already narrated in our account both of Asia and Hindustan. Prior to the expedition of Alexander, all the knowledge which the Greeks possessed of India was derived from the report of the Persians. The geographical writers of ancient times, Eratosthenes, Strabo, and Pliny, procured more correct information from Alexander’s officers; and in later times the ancients extended their knowledge of India by means of commerce. The general notion of the boundaries of India within the Ganges appears to have been correct. On the north they stated the boundary to be a range of mountains, the modern Himalaya, which they considered to be the extremity of the range of Mount Taurus, and which were named Paro-pamesus by the natives, or the mountains of Emodus and Imaus. The Indus was pointed out as the western boundary; and in later times, when the knowledge of Indian geography was extended, the Ganges was considered the boundary on the east, and the ocean· on the south. Of the form and limits of this extensive region, known under the general appellation of India, the ancients entertained very erroneous notions. Of the country that lay between the Indus and the Ganges they had begun to acquire from travellers more accurate information; but their accounts respecting Southern India was still imperfect. The different geographical writers enumerate many distinct tribes who were scattered over the country between the Indus and the Ganges; but they seem not to have had sufficient information for such a classification of the inhabitants; and little instruction is conveyed concerning India in such a list of uncouth names. Of India beyond the Ganges the ancients are still more imperfectly informed, nor do they seem to have affixed any limits to its extension eastward.

This term of India has been applied with great latitude by modern geographers, not only to Hindustan, but to the countries eastward as far as China, including Arracan, Ava, Cassay, Cachar, Pegu, Tongho, Martaban, Junkseylon, Tavay, Tenassarim, Lowashan, Yemshar, and all the other districts really or nominally subordinate to the Burman empire; also Siam, Malacca, Cambodia, Siampa, Laon, Cochin China, and Tunquin. It includes, in short, all those extensive countries that he between the Indus on the west and China on the east, and that are bounded on the north by Bukharia and Thibet, on the south by the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, and on the north-east by the Chinese Sea. A particular description of Hindustan, and of all these other countries, will be found under their respective titles, to which therefore the reader is referred.

India Company. See Company. India Rubber. See Caoutchouc.