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Hindus   (Hindustani:  [ˈɦɪndu]   (
 listen ) ;  /ˈ h ɪ n d uː z ,  h ɪ n d ʊ z / ) are persons who regard themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of  Hinduism .[61] [62]   Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the  Indian subcontinent .[63] [64]

The term  "Hindu"   traces back to Old Persian which derived these names from the  Sanskrit   name  Sindhu   (सिन्धु ), referring to the  river Indus . The Greek cognates of the same terms are "Indus " (for the river) and "India " (for the land of the river).[65] [66] [67]   The term "Hindu " also implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent around or beyond the  Sindhu (Indus) River .[68]   By the 16th century CE, the term began to refer to residents of the subcontinent who were not  Turkic   or  Muslims .[68] [a] [b]   Hindoo   is an archaic spelling variant, whose use today may be considered derogatory.[69] [70]

The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the local Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear.[63] [71]   Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the  British colonial era , or that it may have developed post-8th century CE after the  Muslim invasions   and medieval  Hindu–Muslim wars .[71] [72] [73]   A sense of Hindu identity and the term  Hindu   appears in some texts dated between the 13th and 18th century in  Sanskrit   and  Bengali .[72] [74]   The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as  Vidyapati ,  Kabir   and  Eknath   used the phrase  Hindu dharma   (Hinduism) and contrasted it with  Turaka dharma   (Islam ).[71] [75]   The  Christian   friar   Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in a religious context in 1649.[76]   In the 18th century, European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of  Indian religions   collectively as  Hindus , in contrast to  Mohamedans   for groups such as Turks,  Mughals   and  Arabs , who were adherents of Islam.[63] [68]   By the mid-19th century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from  Buddhists ,  Sikhs   and  Jains ,[63]   but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term  Hindu   until about mid-20th century.[77]   Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon.[78] [79] [c]

At more than 1.2 billion,[82]   Hindus are the world's  third-largest religious group   after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million (94.3% of the global Hindu population),  live in India , according to the 2011 Indian census.[83]   After  India , the next nine  countries with the largest Hindu populations   are, in decreasing order:  Nepal ,  Bangladesh ,  Indonesia ,  Pakistan ,  Sri Lanka , the  United States ,  Malaysia , the  United Arab Emirates   and the  United Kingdom .[84]   These together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world combined had about 6 million Hindus as of 2010.[84]

Contents

Etymology

Further information:  Hinduism

The word  Hindu   is an exonym.[85] [86]   This word  Hindu   is derived from the  Indo-Aryan [87]   and  Sanskrit [87] [67]   word  Sindhu , which means "a large body of water", covering "river, ocean".[88] [d]   It was used as the name of the  Indus River   and also referred to its tributaries. The actual term 'hindu' first occurs, states Gavin Flood, as "a  Persian   geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus (Sanskrit:  Sindhu )",[67]   more specifically in the 6th-century BCE inscription of  Darius I .[89]   The  Punjab region , called  Sapta Sindhu   in the Vedas, is called  Hapta Hindu   in  Zend Avesta . The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of  Hi[n]dush , referring to northwestern India.[89] [90] [91]   The people of India were referred to as  Hinduvān   (Hindus) and  hindavī   was used as the adjective for Indian in the 8th century text  Chachnama .[91]   The term 'Hindu' in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term and did not refer to a religion.[67] [92]   The Arabic equivalent  Al-Hind   likewise referred to the country of India.[93] [89]

Hindu culture in Bali,  Indonesia . The Krishna-Arjuna sculpture inspired by the  Bhagavad Gita   in  Denpasar   (top), and Hindu dancers in traditional dress.

Among the earliest known records of 'Hindu' with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text  Records on the Western Regions   by the Buddhist scholar  Xuanzang . Xuanzang uses the transliterated term  In-tu   whose "connotation overflows in the religious" according to  Arvind Sharma .[89]   While Xuanzang suggested that the term refers to the country named after the moon, another Buddhist scholar  I-tsing   contradicted the conclusion saying that  In-tu   was not a common name for the country.[91]

Al-Biruni 's 11th-century text  Tarikh Al-Hind , and the texts of the  Delhi Sultanate   period use the term 'Hindu', where it includes all non-Islamic people such as Buddhists, and retains the ambiguity of being "a region or a religion".[89]   The 'Hindu' community occurs as the amorphous 'Other' of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, according to the Indian historian  Romila Thapar .[94]   The comparative religion scholar  Wilfred Cantwell Smith   notes that the term 'Hindu' retained its geographical reference initially: 'Indian', 'indigenous, local', virtually 'native'. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves and their "traditional ways" from those of the invaders.[95]

The text  Prithviraj Raso , by  Chand Bardai , about the 1192 CE defeat of  Prithviraj Chauhan   at the hands of  Muhammad Ghori , is full of references to "Hindus" and "Turks", and at one stage, says "both the religions have drawn their curved swords;" however, the date of this text is unclear and considered by most scholars to be more recent.[96]   In Islamic literature,  'Abd al-Malik Isami 's Persian work,  Futuhu's-salatin , composed in the  Deccan under Bahmani rule   in 1350, uses the word  ' hindi'  to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word  ' hindu'  to mean 'Hindu' in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion".[96]   The poet  Vidyapati 's poem  Kirtilata   contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks (Muslims) in a city and concludes "The Hindus and the Turks live close together; Each makes fun of the other's religion (dhamme )."[97]

One of the earliest uses of word 'Hindu' in a religious context, in a European language (Spanish), was the publication in 1649 by  Sebastio Manrique .[76]   In the Indian historian  DN Jha 's essay  “Looking for a Hindu identity” , he writes: “No Indians described themselves as Hindus before the fourteenth century” and that “The British borrowed the word ‘Hindu’ from India, gave it a new meaning and significance, [and] reimported it into India as a reified phenomenon called Hinduism.”[98]   In the 18th century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus.[98]

Other prominent mentions of 'Hindu' include the epigraphical inscriptions from Andhra Pradesh kingdoms who battled military expansion of Muslim dynasties in the 14th century, where the word 'Hindu' partly implies a religious identity in contrast to 'Turks' or Islamic religious identity.[99]   The term  Hindu   was later used occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the later  Rajataranginis   of Kashmir (Hinduka, c. 1450) and some 16th- to 18th-century  Bengali   Gaudiya Vaishnava   texts, including  Chaitanya Charitamrita   and  Chaitanya Bhagavata . These texts used it to contrast Hindus from Muslims who are called  Yavanas   (foreigners) or  Mlecchas   (barbarians), with the 16th-century  Chaitanya Charitamrita   text and the 17th-century  Bhakta Mala   text using the phrase "Hindu  dharma ".[74]