Vishnu Purana
Topic: India, That Is Bharat: Names of India and Unity in Diversity · NCERT: Class 6, Ch 5 "India, That Is Bharat"; Class 7, Ch 7 "The Gupta Era: An Age of Tireless Creativity"
Meaning
The Vishnu Purana is an ancient Sanskrit text. It is one of the Puranas, the old books of stories, family lines of kings, and ideas about the world. It is famous for a short, clear definition of India: "uttaram yat samudrasya himādreśhchaiva dakṣhiṇam / varṣham tad bhāratam nāma", meaning "The country that lies north of the ocean and south of the snowy mountains is called Bhārata." The verse comes from a few centuries after Ashoka, when Bhārata had become the usual name for the whole land. The name is still in use as 'Bharat' in the north and 'Bharatam' in the south. The text's lists of royal families also mention the early Gupta lands along the Ganga, such as Prayaga and Magadha.
Example
An ancient Tamil poem from c. 2,000 years ago praises a king famous "from Kumari in the south" to "the great mountain in the north", with oceans to the east and west. This is the same land that the Vishnu Purana describes. It shows that north and south shared one mental map.
Don't confuse with
- Mahābhārata: the epic gave the early names Bhāratavarṣha and Jambudvīpa. The Vishnu Purana gives the classic boundary definition of Bhārata.