INDIA (In'dI-5.), (Heb. 1171, ho' doo).
This name occurs only in Esther i viii : 9, where the Persian king is described as reigning 'from India unto Ethiopia, over a hundred and seven and twenty provinces.' It is found again, however, in the Apocrypha, where India is men tioned among the countries which the Romans took from Antiochus and gave to Eumenes (/ Mace. viii :8). The occurrence of the name in this passage is suspicious. Luther substituted Ionia. At any rate Judas Maccabxus was mis informed if he was told that the Romans had taken India from Antiochus.
It is evident on the face of the above inti mations, and indeed from all ancient history, that the country known as India in ancient thnes ex tended more to the west, and did not reach so far to the east—that is, was not known so far to the east—as the India of the moderns. When we read of ancient India, we must clearly not under stand the whole of Hindostan, but chiefly the northern parts of it, or thc countries between the Indus and the Ganges ; although it is not necessary to assert that the rest of that peninsula, particu larly its western coast, was then altogether un known. It was from this quarter that the Persians and Greeks (to whom we are indebted for the earliest accounts of India) invaded the country; and this was consequently the region which first became generally known. The countries bordering on the Ganges continued to he involved in ob scurity, the great kingdom of tlAe Persians ex cepted, which, situated nearly above the modern Bengal, was dimly discernible. The nearer we approach the Indus, the more clear becomes our knowledge of the ancient geography of the country ; and it follows that the districts of which at the present day we know the least, were anciently best known. Besides, the western and northern boundaries were not the same as at present. To the west, India was not then bounded by the river Indus, but by a chain of mountains which, under the name of Koh (whence the Grecian appellation of the Indian Caucasus), ex tended from Bactria to Makran, or Gedrosia, en closing the kingdoms of Candahar and Cabul, the modern kingdom of Eastern Pcrsia, or Afghanis tan. These districts anciently formed part of
India, as well as, further to the south, the less perfectly known countries of the Arabi and Haurs (the Arabitx and Oritm of Arrian, vi :21), bordering on Gedrosia. This western boundary continued at all times the same, and was removed to the Indus only in consequence of the victories of Nadir Shah.
Toward the north, ancient India overpassed not less its present limit. It comprehended the whole of the mountainous region above Cashmir, Baldakshan, Belur Land, the western boundary mountains of Little Bucharia, or Little Thibet, and even the desert of Cobi, so far as it was known. The discovery of a passage by sea to the coasts of India has contributed to withdraw from these regions the attention of Europeans and left them in an obscurity which hitherto has been little disturbed, although the current of events seems likely ere long to lead to our better knowledge.
From this it appears that the India of Scrip ture included no part of the present India, see ing that it was confined to the territories pos sessed by the Persians and the Syrian Greeks, that never extended beyond the Indus, which, since the time of Nadir Shah, has been regarded as the western boundary of India. Something of India beyond the Indus became known through the con quering march of Alexander, and still more through that of Seleucus Nicator, who penetrated to the banks of the Ganges ; but the notions thus obtained are not embraced in the Scriptural no tices, which, both in the canonical and the Apoc ryphal text, are confined to Persian India.