HINDU is the ordinary name by which the idol-worshipping people of British India are at present known, but the term is only of recent use. The races to whom it is applied are only now fusing, under the firm rule of the British, and never, hitherto, could have had one common designation. Bharata or Bharatavart'ha is an ancient Sanskrit name for part of the countries which Europeans include in the term India. Hindu for the people, and Hindustan for the country, now so generally applied by natives as well as foreigners, are possibly of Persian or W. Aryan origin, and may have relation to the seven rivers of the Panjab, the Sabp'ta-Sindhu, which the Aryans met with in their course to the south, the river Indus being still known as the Sind'hu or Sind'h (Hitopadesa, p. 333). With the Persians, Ind or Hind and Hindu, as synonymous with black, has long been applied to the dark-coloured populations in the territories which are now com prised in British India. The Arab, the Persian, the Afghan, and Sikh, when speaking of the people of India, only call them black men ; ' and even in India the Mahomedan descendants of the Arab, Persian, Moghul, and Afghan conquerors use the same designation. Kala Admi,' literally black man, is ever in their mouths ; and Hindus them selves, in their various tongues, likewise so dis tinguish themselves from all the fair foreigners amongst them. The African races, who were formerly brought to India as the household slaves or guards of native princes, invariably, when allud ing to such of their own people as are born in the country, style them Hindi ; and the Hindu mer chants trafficking throughout Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Russia, are known to the people as Hindiki. Therefore, though a large part of the idol-worshipping people now-a-days call them selves Hindu, in this they are merely following the names given to them bytheir Arab, Persian, Afghan, Turk, Moghul, Tartar, and British rulers. Even Europeans have only of late habitually used this term, for at the beginning of the 19th century Gentoo was the everyday name employed, though it has since gradually fallen into disuse. It, also, was derived from a foreign people, the Portuguese, and was applied to the idol-worshippers, like the Gens of the Romans and Gentile of the Scriptures. It never, perhaps, reached much beyond the sea port towns, and if the better educated amongst the natives ever employed it, their doing so was merely in imitation of Europeans. And now, too, similarly, Brahmans and others, when alluding to the Teling race of their own countrymen, likewise style them Hindus.
Hindu is thus almost entirely a European con ventional term, and does not represent a nation, a race, or a religion. The great bulk of the people known by this appellation are the descendants of Turanian, Scythian, and even Aryan immigrants, who in bygone ages are supposed to have left the cold north, some offshoots moving westward, and others to the south ; for remnants of Turan ian languages are found in Baluchistan, and the seat of the great Sanskrit-speaking people was long in Kashmir, proving that one great highway to the south had been down the valley of the Indus, through Kashmir and the Panjab. But between the valley of the Indus and that of the Brahmaputra, there are 20 or 30 passes in the Himalaya through which the northern races could stream to the genial south. Amongst the first of these immigrants seemingly were Kolarian and Dravidian races, belonging to the Turanian family of mankind, bodies of whom seem to have spread themselves over the Peninsula. As to the date of their advent, however, history is silent, but there seems no doubt that great branches of the Scythic stock were occupants of India at the time that it was to a considerable extent conquered by the Sanskrit-speaking tribes of the Aryan family. In the north, the subjugation or ousting of the Turan ians from all rank and power was so complete, that Sanskrit forms of speech became the lan guages of the country; and now, in the north. Kash miri, Panjabi, Sindi, Gujerati, Mahrati, Hindu stani, and the Bengali, all of them with a large admixture of Sanskrit, are sister tongues known as forms of Hindi. South of the Nerbadda, how ever, it is otherwise. Throughout the Peninsula the languages in use differ from the Sanskrit in grammar, and only admit Sanskrit words in the same way that the Anglo-Saxon admitted terms of law and civilisation from the Norman-French. At the present day, the south of India more largely represents the Turanian, and the north the Aryan race. The fair, yellow-coloured Aryans are, how ever, to be met with south even to Cape Comorin ; but though mixing with the various 'Dravidian nations, races, and tribes for at least 3000 years, in physical form, complexion, intellect, and manners, the Brahmanical and other Aryan families are as distinct as when their forefathers first came from the north, it may be three or four thousand years ago. The great Aryan migration seems to have received its first check at the Vindhyan range, between the 14th and 8th centuries before the Christian era.