Etymology
The Sanskrit word Sindhu means river, stream or ocean, probably from a root sidh meaning to keep off. Sindhu is still the local appellation for the Indus River.
In the Rigveda Sindhu is the name of the Indus river. Sindhu is attested 176 times in the Rigveda, 95 times in the plural, more often used in the generic meaning. In the Rigveda, notably in the later hymns, the meaning of the word is narrowed to refer to the Indus river in particular, for example in the list of rivers of the Nadistuti sukta. This resulted in the anomaly of a river with masculine gender: all other Rigvedic rivers are female, not just grammatically, being imagined as goddesses and compared to cows and mares yielding milk and butter.
The word Sindhu became Hindu in Old Persian. Ancient Greek: Ἰνδός Indós (borrowed in turn into Latin as Indus) is a borrowing of the Old Iranian word. The name Indos is used in Megasthenes's book Indica for the mighty river crossed by Alexander based on Nearchus's contemporaneous account.
The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians (present-day India beyond the Indus River) as Indoi (Ἰνδοί), the people of the Indus.
Read more about this topic: Indus River
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