Bharat is a civilisational state with a 5,000-year-old history. It is one of the world’s oldest civilizations, with unique ways of life, global vision, philosophy, art, painting, architecture, literature, institutions, etc. However, there are several distorted historical interpretations of India’s past available to the public today. One central claim is that the Akhand Bharat was an abstract concept that did not exist in the past. Another argument is that Bharat is home to diverse cultural nationalities and, therefore, cannot be seen as a single nation. This interpretation remains the official history of post-independent Bharat.
Although we study the history of Columbus’ expedition to find India, which led him to the American continent and the trade with Bharat appears in historical documents from ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, China, Rome, etc, numerous documented histories say that Bharat was comprised of many nations representing diverse cultures and battling each other, which the British administration unified. According to this interpretation, the geography of modern India stretches from Punjab in the west, Kashmir in the north, the northeast in the east and Kanyakumari in the south. It further claims that Akhand Bharat is only an abstract concept and Bharat is an amalgamation of many nations with the Arya-Dravidian theory and the narrative that North-South India and Northeast India have different cultures and are regions worthy of being separate countries. It is still embedded in Indian public consciousness.
In fact, Bharat Varsha, the ancient name of India that became known over the world as Akhand Bharat, was eventually partitioned into modern nation-states such as Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar during colonial rule. Akhanda Bharat also lost its land due to Islamic aggression beginning in the eighth century. Besides, Independent Bharat lost its land because of partition in 1947, as well as wars with Pakistan and China. It is a fact that, Akhand Bharat was accurately and adequately described centuries ago by numerous Hindu and non-Hindu sources.
Bharat from the Perspective of Natives
Since thousands of years ago, the Indian people possessed a thorough understanding of their nation’s geography. Foreigners did not teach India geography; instead, they learned it from Indians. According to the Mahabharata, India has a triangle shape that extends from Ghazni in Afghanistan in the northwest to Sadiya in ancient Assam, with Myanmar in the east and Kanyakumari in the south. The Upanishads, Vedas, and Ramayana all share knowledge about India’s geography, even though they cannot be precisely dated using modern technologies. The places mentioned in these texts were also not outside Akhanda Bharat.
This land was known as Bharat Varsha during the Mahabharata period. The geography of Bharat Varsha is detailed in depth between the twelfth verse of the sixth chapter of Bhishma Parva and the thirty-seventh verse of the thirteenth chapter. Sanjay reveals to Dhritarashtra that the world resembles a Chakra or wheel. This chakra is divided into two halves, one like rabbits and the other like Bodhi tree leaves. This describes the earth’s polarity. Antarctica is at its core, and the Arctic is on the edges. The two hares are Eurasia and North America. The two leaves represent Africa and South America.
Further, Himavan, Hemakuta, Nishada, Neela, Shweta, and Shringavan are the six mountain ranges that divide Eurasia into seven distinct regions. Himavan is the Himalayas. The remaining five mountains are the Kailasa in Tibet and Kunlun in China, the Tien Shan in the Pamirs, the Altai Mountains in Mongolia, and the Sayan Mountains in Siberia. Bharata Varsha encompasses the area south of the Himalayas and north of the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the Mahabharata records around 150 rivers, 30 forests, 30 lakes, 80 mountains, 300 pilgrimage places, and 220 small kingdoms of Bharat.
The Puranas also contain detailed information about the geography of ancient Bharat. According to the Puranas, the globe, or Bhumi, is made up of seven islands or continents: Jambu, Plaksa, Saimali, Kusa, Kraunja, Saka, and Puskara. Seven oceans encircled the islands. On the island of Jambu, in the middle of the seven islands, there was a golden peak named Meru (Pamir peak) surrounded by land. Many other mountains, notably the Himalayas, branch off from it in various directions, like the lotus petals. According to Puranic geography, the island of Jambu is split into nine ‘varshas’ or sub-continents, one of which is Bharata-varsha (undivided India). Moreover, Sage Parasara and Varahamihira divided India into nine lands or Nava Khandas. According to records, Panchalam was the central capital, followed by Magadha in the east, Kaligam in the south-east, Avantham in the south, Anartha in the south-west, Sindhu Sauvira in the west, Hara Vaura in the north-west, Madra in the north, and Kauninda in the northeast. In addition, Markandeya Purana, Vayu Purana, Matsya Purana, and Vishnu Purana divided India into nine parts, with slight variances. In these Puranas, namely, Vishnu, Vayu, and Matsya, five geographical parts are mentioned, like in the Mahabharata. The Vishnu Purana states, “Uttaram yat Samudrasya, Himadreshchaiva Dakshinam, Vars tad Bharatam Nama Bharathi Yatra Santatih”. That is, “the country that lies north of the Ocean & south of the Himalayas is called Bharat, and there dwell the descendants of Bharat”. According to the Maitreya Purana, “Bharatvarsha is the name of the land ruled by Manu”. In contrast to the descriptions of Varaha Mihira, the Puranas divide ancient India into different parts, including Indra, Kasheru Math, Tamra Varnam, Gabasthi Math, Kumarikam, Naga, Soumya, Varuna, and Gandharva. Apart from these, other Puranas, such as the Agni Purana, Bhagavata Purana, Brahma Purana, Devi Bhagavata Purana, Brahmanda Purana, Brahma Vaivarta Purana, Garuda Purana, and other epics, Upanishads, and Vedas written thousands of years ago, vividly depict Indian geography. It can thus be stated unequivocally that the Indians, who regularly recited the Itihasas, such as the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Puranas, that influenced every nook and corner of India, had a thorough grasp of their nation’s geography centuries ago.
Bharat from the perspective of foreigners
According to many Greek accounts, the ancient Indians were aware of the exact form and size of their nation. According to Strabo, the Greek geologist, Alexander obtained knowledge of the structure and size of the nation from the natives before attacking India. Analysing the documentation on the journeys of Amyntas, the Macedonian ruler of Greece, and the references of Megasthenes, who visited Pataliputra as the representative of Alexander’s successor Seleukos Nikator, one could conclude that ancient India had an asymmetrical quadrilateral shape. Megasthenes’ ‘Indica’, written between 302 and 288 BC, describes India as a country extending to the ocean in the south and east, to the Indus River in the west and north-west, and as far north as the Taurus Mountains in southern Turkey. The Greeks referred to Indians living beyond the Indus River (Sindhu River) as ‘Indoi’.
Moreover, Megasthenes, who travelled across India, reports that there were no foreign colonies in India that were rich in Indigenous ethnic diversity and that the inhabitants did not create colonies abroad. He noticed that the standard of living in India was above average, with sufficient of water, food, and clean air, and the creative abilities of the inhabitants were attractive. He classified the Indians as philosophers, farmers, shepherds, craftsmen, military overseers, councillors, and surveyors. Similarly, Amir Khusru, an ancient Islamic poet (1253–1325 AD), remarked that “Hind was a paradise for the unbelievers from the advent of Adam till the coming of Islam. Even in recent times, these infields have had every pleasure of heaven like the wine and honey”. He lived under the Delhi Sultanate, and by mentioning ‘recent times’, he meant the condition of Bharat before the conquest of Islam. He observes that the cultural variety of Bharat was represented in its languages, which were classified as Sindhi, Lahauri (Punjabi), Kashmiri, Kubri, Dhur-Satnandri (Kannada), Tilangi (Telugu), Gujar (Gujarati), Ma’abari (Tamil), Gauri (the dialect of North Bengal), Bengali, Awad (Avadhi), and Delhi. It has existed in India since antiquity, and all of them were spoken by all people. However, none of these disparities stood in the way of India’s spiritual oneness as it exists today.
Furthermore, India was known as ‘Tianzhu’ or ‘Yuandu’ in China during the reign of ‘Wuti’, the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty, who ruled a century before Christ. It was the Chinese version of ‘Sindhu’ or ‘Indus’. Later, it became known as ‘Tien Chu’. Huan Tsung, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who visited India in the seventh century AD, referred to the land as ‘Yin-Yu’ and described the geography of the nation comprising five divisions. He reached India through Bamiyan in Afghanistan and journeyed as far as Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu and farther north-east to Kamarupa. He lived in India for fifteen years and characterised it as a crescent-shaped nation with a narrow south and a broad north. According to his depiction, India was divided into around 80 kingdoms. Each dynasty was a sub-dynasty of the major dynasties. He viewed India as a country extending from present-day Kabul, Ghazni, and Jalalabad in Afghanistan, Peshawar in Pakistan, and Kanyakumari in southern India. Huyan Sang partitioned western India into three parts. Sindh, Gujarat, and Ballabhi. Sindh extended from the Indus Valley to Punjab and the sea. Gujjara extended from western Rajputana to the Thar Desert. Ballabhi extended from the present-day Gujarat peninsula to the seashore. He defined Madhya Bharat as extending from the Sutlej River to the Ganga’s mouth, as well as from the Himalayas to the Narmada and Mahanadi rivers. It was recorded as India’s wealthiest region. East India included the north-eastern states of Bengal, Bangladesh, Sambalpur, and Ganjam in Orissa, which provides for modern-day Assam. He divided the territory into six regions: Kamarupa, Samatata, Tamralipti, Kairana Suvarna, Odra, and Ganjam. He arrived at Kanchipuram in the South of India between A.D 639 and 640. He stated that the South of India spanned from Tapti, Mahanadi, and Nasik in the west to Ganjam, Odisha in the southeast and Kanyakumari in the south. It is worth noting that he began his tour to India from Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
Furthermore, in the Chinese text ‘Fa-kai-li-to’, India is depicted as a country of people with similar faces, divided between a thin southern and significant northern region. Before Huyan Tsang, a Chinese pilgrim named Faxian had visited India. According to the Chinese explorers’ accounts, the northern region of India includes Punjab, Kashmir, and Afghanistan, located beyond the Indus and west of the Saraswati River. Sindh, Rajput, Kutch, and the lower reaches of the Narmada River comprised the western portion, the central part from the Ganges River basin to the Narmada River basin, the whole area containing Assam and Bengal, the eastern part, and the southern part of India from Nasik to Kanyakumari. The information presented by the Chinese travellers is simpler than the nine parts of the Puranas and Varaha Mihira.
Furthermore, Ptolemy’s ‘Geography’, authored after his travel to India in A.D 130, described the nation as extending from Kanyakumari in the south to the Himalayas in the north and from the Indus in the west to the Ganges basin in the east. Although India’s natural boundaries are the Himalayas, the Indus, and the ocean, its western influence spread beyond the Indus, across Afghanistan, and into eastern Iran. This location was known as Eastern Ariana. Moreover, Pliny, a Roman traveller, stated in the first century AD that most historians did not believe the Indus River to be India’s western boundary. It is noted that it extended to the then-river Kofus or present Kabul. He also mentioned that Rome’s wealth and gold flowed into this region (India), which had a thriving commerce with ancient Rome.
In summary, for many years before and after Christ, the northern half of India was beyond the Indus River. Buddhism thrived in these areas until the 3rd and 4th centuries BC when Hindu rulers governed several countries. India’s geography and civilization extended from present-day Bamiyan in Afghanistan to Kandahar and south to the Bolan Pass. The regions of Kapisa-Gandhara, Zabulistan, and Sindh in modern-day Afghanistan were culturally part of the Akhand Bharat. The Arabs referred to them as ‘the frontier of al-Hind’. At the time, northern India was divided into eleven small kingdoms. It was bordered by Kabul and Ghazni in the west, Langhan in the north, Jalalabad, Swat, and Peshawar in the east, Bolor in the northeast, and Opokian and Bani in the south. Furthermore, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek treatise produced in the 1st century AD for Greek merchants travelling in Egypt, East Africa, South Arabia, and India, defined the west coast of India as extending from Karachi to Kanyakumari.
The first threat to Akhand Bharat’s geographical and cultural Hindu unity came with the Islamic invasion. Muslims were inspired to attack India for wealth to eliminate unbelievers and propagate Islam. In A.D 712, Muhammad Qasim’s Islamic army captured Sindh and Multan. The last Hindu Shahid dynasty in the Kabul Valley, Gandhara, and West Punjab came to an end with the 11th-century attack from Ghazni. Later, Buddhism and other religions disappeared from the region. In the 11th century, Mahmud of Ghazni, the Sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, attacked and conquered vast areas of Punjab and Gujarat. Following the seizure of Lahore and the fall of the Ghaznavids, the ruler Muhammad Ghori established the Delhi Sultanate in 1192, laying the foundation for Muslim rule in India. For 900 years of Muslim rule and 200 years of British control, they strove to eliminate Indian culture and the land correlated with it, and they were partially successful. Akhand Bharat existed till the Islamic and European invasions. The Islamic-European-Communist domination in India during the post-independent period resulted in the physical and intellectual divide of Akhand Bharat. With the establishment of Pakistan in 1947 and continuing attempts to divide South, North, and Northeast India, these forces continue to represent a danger to a united or one Bharat.
Leave a Comment