Geography of India

"Limited in the South by the above mentioned Indian Ocean, and on all three other sides by the lofty mountains, the waters of which flow down to it... the inhabitable world extending southwards from Himavant is Bharatvarsha, which is the centre of Jambudvipa. The parts named and ascribed to it are located in Al Hind alone."

"The land created by the gods and stretching from Himalayas to the Indu (i.e.Southern) ocean is called Hindusthan."

"Indians would certainly try to understand the fact that for more than a hundred years in the late fourth, third and early second centuries BC, there was a state which controlled the entire natural geographical domain of south Asia. Not even the British controlled such a large area for such a long period. This fact should in any case be one of the answers to the notion that there have only been divisive tendencies in the political history of India."

"The area extending from the Himalayas in the north to the sea and a thousand yojanas wide from east to west is the area of operation of the King-Emperor."

"In its simplest terms, geography is the description, study, and classification of the earth and its features. While many branches of geography are scientific in perspective and method, what is clear from the study of Hindu India is that its geographical features—its rivers, mountains, hills, and coastlands—no matter how precisely rendered, mapped, or measured, are also charged with stories of gods and heroes. It is a resonant, sacred geography. But it is also a landscape, in that these features are connected, linked to a wider whole."

"The final editing of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is not dated later than the first centuries AD, and they are fully familiar with the concept and surface of India, as are Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha and the Puranas."

"The sea borders Hindustan on the east, west and south. In the north, the great mountain ranges separate India from Turan, Iran and China."

"Intelligent men of the past have considered Kabul and Qandahar as the twin gates of Hindustan… By guarding these two places, Hindustan obtains peace from the alien (raider) and global traffic by these two routes can prosper."

"This vast land... had been a single indivisible whole since times immemorial. Bharatavarsha had been termed by the ancients as the cradle of varnãšrama-dharma, witness to the wheel of the caturyugas, and the kshetra for chakravãrtya, spiritual as well as political. This historical memory and cultural tradition was alive as late as the imperial Guptas. Kalidasa had clothed it in immortal poetry in his far-famed Raghuvamša."

"The Mahabharata carries a complete picture of this cultural unity in its tîrtha-yãtrã-parva, which is part of the larger Vana-parva. The Pandavas accompany their Purohita, Dhaumya, on a long pilgrimage to all parts of Bharatavarsha. They pay their homage to many mountains, rivers, samgamas, lakes, tanks, forest groves and other sacred shrines which had become hallowed by association with Gods and Goddesses, rishis and munis, satees and sãdhvees, heroes and heroines. And they feel fulfilled as they never did before or after in their long lives. The same Pandavas made an imperial conquest of the whole country, not once but twice and performed a rãjasûya yajña at the end of each triumph. But the Pandava empire is a faint memory of the forgotten past. On the other hand, the sacred spots which the Pandavas visited during their one and only pilgrimage, draw millions of devotees in our own days as they did in the distant past, long before the Pandavas appeared on the scene."

"The very sound of ‘Indian sub-continent’ is shocking to the ears of those who have had the privilege of performing or participating in some Hindu saMskãras. The wording of every saMkalpa, starting with Jambudvîpe BharatakhaNDe, invokes the opposite vision of a single, though vast and variegated land, inhabited by a people who are proud of being born and having lived in it. The territorial unity and integrity of Bharatavarsha - the land that lies south of the Himalayas, east of Sakadvipa (Seistan), south-east of Vãhlîka (Balkh), west of Burma and between the two seas - was never a political contrivance created by the sword of a conqueror. On the contrary, it was meant and manifested by Mother Nature herself as the cradle of an incomparable culture - the culture of Sanãtana Dharma."

"The Ramayana, the Puranas and the Dharmashastras paint the same portrait of an ancient land, every spot of which is sacred to some cultural memory or the other. The Jainagama and the Tripitaka speak again and again of sixteen Mahajanapadas, which spanned the spread of Bharatavarsha in the life-time of Bhagvan Mahavira and the Buddha. Even a dry compendium on grammar, the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, provides a near complete count of all the Janapadas in ancient India-Gandhara and Kamboja, Sindhu and Sauvira, Kashmir and Kekaya, Madra and Trigarta, Kuru and Panchala, Kaushala and Kashi, Magadha and Videha, Anga and Vanga, Kirata and Kamarupa, Suhma and Udra, Vatsa and Matsya, Abhira and Avanti, Nishadha and Vidarbha, Dandakaranya and Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala, Chola and Pandya. The epic poetry poured out by Kalidasa, Magha, Bharavi and Sriharsha continues the same tradition of talking endlessly about Bharatavarsha as a single and indivisible geographical entity, as a karmabhûmi for Gods and Goddesses, Brahmarshis and Rajarshis, and as higher than heaven for all those who have had the good fortune of being born in it."

"It was this feeling of being at home everywhere in the country which took the Adi Shankaracharya from the southernmost tip to the farthest corners of Bharatavarsha in North and East and West and helped him found (or revive) the four foremost dhãmas at Badrinath, Dvaraka, Rameshvaram and Puri. There is no count of sadhus and sannyasins and house-holders who have travelled ever since on the trail blazed by that great acharya. Six and a half centuries later, Guru Nanak Dev followed in the footsteps of the Pandavas and the Shankaracharya in search of spiritual company."

"The image of the whole of Bharatavarsha being a chakravartikshetra is as old as the oldest Vedic literature. The Itihasa-Purana provide glorious accounts of many chakravartins-Ikshvaku, Puru, Prithu Vainya, Sivi Ausinara, Mandhata, Raghu and so on-who accompanied the ašvamedha horse demanding submission from all kingdoms and republics, big and small, spread all over the country. The rãjasûya yajña which was performed at the end of this campaign was more in the nature of a meeting of equals than a durbar held by a despot in order to humble or humiliate subordinate princes and patriarchs. Sri Krishna had demanded death for Jarasandha because the latter had violated this dharmic tradition of empire-building, and kept a hundred kings captive in his castle. The Nandas had won notoriety as an ignoble dynasty because they had also violated the standard code of conduct laid down by the rãjadharma for righteous emperors, destroyed many local dynasties, and reduced other princes to provincial satraps."

"Hindu society as a whole has ceased to remember that Afghanistan rose on the ruins of Gandhara and Kamboja, the two ancient Janapadas of Bharatavarsha which had stood guard on our North-Western gateway for ages untold."

"That land where the black antelope naturally roams, one must know to be fit for the performance of sacrifices; (the tract) different from that (is) the country of the Mlekkhas."

"Another very important feature revealed in Sangam literature is the conception of the unity of the land-mass stretching from the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari in the south. In at least two sources, Tamil kings were praised as having had supremacy amidst all the chieftains who reigned in the land between ‘the Himalayan abode of Gods’ in the north and Kumari in the south and the lands which have the sea as the frontier. The northern limit of this cultural unity is often referred to as the Himalayas. Ganges in floods, as well as ships travelling on the Ganges, is among the scenes depicted in Sangam literature. Pilgrims from all over India coming to have holy baths at Kanyakumari as well as Rameswaram (Koti) have been mentioned in Sangam literature. Speaking of Himalayas and Kanyakumari in association, is another hallmark of many Sangam poems. Apart from such spiritual-cultural unity of India depicted in Sangam poems, there is at least one poem that refers to the political unity of India. This poem, from Puranannuru, speaks of a time when the whole of India ‘from Kanyakumari to Himalayas’ was ruled as one nation, unifying the diverse geographical zones of ‘plateaus, mountains, forests and human habitations’ by kings of the solar dynasty, and identifies Tamil kings as descendants of the solar dynasty."

"I will now, O chastiser of foes, describe to thee that country as I have heard of it. Listen to me, O king, as I speak of what thou hast asked me. Mahendra, Malaya, Sahya, Suktimat, Rakshavat, Vindhya, and Paripatra,--these seven are the Kala-mountains 1 (of Bharatvarsha). Besides these, O king, there are thousands of mountains that are unknown, of hard make, huge, and having excellent valleys. Besides these there are many other smaller mountains inhabited by barbarous tribes. Aryans and Mlecchas, O Kauravya, and many races, O lord, mixed of the two elements, drink the waters of the following rivers, viz., magnificent Ganga, Sindhu, and Saraswati; of Godavari, and Narmada, and the large river called Yamuna... and Mandakini, and Supunya, Sarvasanga, O Bharata, are all mothers of the universe and productive of great merit. Besides these, there are rivers, by hundreds and thousands, that are not known (by names), I have now recounted to thee, O king, all the rivers as far as I remember."

"The whole of Hind, from Peshawar to the shores of the Ocean, and in the other direction from Siwistan to the hills of Chin."

"The land was sacred, but it wasn’t political history that made it so. Religious myths touched every part of the land outside colonial Goa. Story within story, fable within fable: that was what people saw and felt in their bones. Those were the myths, about gods and the heroes of the epics, that gave antiquity and wonder to the earth people lived on."