Question

who used the terms hindustan and hind to refer to our country. what did those terms denote.

Answer 1

Origin of the name Hindu In the words of Dr Frank Morales, the term “Hindu” is not a term that is inherent to the religion itself. Rather, the term is known to have been first coined by the ancient Persians, who were culturally, religiously, and perspectively extrinsic to the culture. The term was first used by these ancient Persians in order to conveniently designate the ancient Vedic spiritual culture, and was mistakenly used to refer to the Vedic religion as primarily a geographic and ethnic phenomenon, more than as a religio-philosophical world-view. To the ancient Persians, the word Hindu simply referred to the culture, people, religion and practices of the peoples who lived on the other side of the Sindhu River. In the ancient Avestan Persian language ‘s’ grammatically became ‘h’. Thus, the Persians pronounced the name of this river Hindhu, rather than Sindhu. Thus, ironically, the currently used word Hindu is itself a corruption of the Persian word Hindhu, which is in turn a corruption of the term Sindhu, which is itself only referring to a river, and not a religion! Thus when the word Hindu is used today to refer to the ancient religion of India, the term is in actuality a corruption of a corruption of a word whose meaning is irrelevant to begin with. 

An alternate and infrequently cited theory on the origin of the word Hindustan is based on the Sanskrit shloka from the Barhaspatya Samhita of the Rigveda (ca. 1700-1100 BCE):

हिमालयं समारभ्य यावदिंदुसरोवरम् ।
तं देवनिर्मितं देशं हिंदुस्थानं प्रचक्ष्यते ।।
Himalyam Samarabhya Yavadindusarovaram Tam Deonirmitam Desham Hindusthanam Prachakshate

"The land created by the gods which stretched from the Himalayas to the Indu (i.e. Southern) ocean is called Hindusthan, with the हिंदु (Hindu) mentioned in word हिंदुस्थानं (Hindusthan)."




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Answer 2

It was first used by foreign invaders who tried to capture north western region of Indian subcontinent.They Used the word Hindu for all the people living on the Indian side of river Sindhu(present day Indus),thus giving the name Hindustan referring to land of the beyond river Sindhu.Thus Hindustan means the land of the Indus river, that stretches from the Indus river valley and Himalayas up to the Indu Ocean (Anglicized: Indian Ocean).