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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Hindu

Hindoo \Hin"doo\, Hindu \Hin"du\ (?; 277), n.; pl. Hindoosor Hindus. [Per. Hind[=u], fr. Hind, Hind[=u]st[=a]n, India. Cf. Indian.] A native inhabitant of Hindostan. As an ethnical term it is confined to the Dravidian and Aryan races; as a religious name it is restricted to followers of the Veda.

Hindu

Hindu \Hin"du\, n. Same as Hindoo. This is now the more commonly used spelling.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Hindu

1660s, from Persian Hindu (adjective and noun) "Indian," from Hind "India," from Sanskrit sindhu "river," specifically the Indus; hence "region of the Indus," gradually extended across northern India. The Hindu Kush mountain range is said to mean literally "Indian killer," and was said to have been the name given by the Persians to a pass where their Indian slaves had perished in winter, but this is likely folk etymology.

Wikipedia
Hindu

Hindu refers to any person who regards themselves as culturally, ethnically, or religiously adhering to aspects of Hinduism. It has historically been used as a geographical, cultural, or religious identifier for people indigenous to South Asia.

The historical meaning of the term Hindu has evolved with time. Starting with the Persian and Greek references to India in the 1st millennium BCE through the texts of the medieval era, the term Hindu implied a geographic, ethnic or cultural identifier for people living in Indian subcontinent around or beyond Sindhu ( Indus) river. By the 16th-century, the term began to refer to residents of India who were not Turks or Muslims.

The historical development of Hindu self-identity within the Indian population, in a religious or cultural sense, is unclear. Competing theories state that Hindu identity developed in the British colonial era, or that it developed post-8th century CE after the Islamic invasion and medieval Hindu-Muslim wars. A sense of Hindu identity and the term Hindu appears in some texts dated between the 13th- and 18th-century in Sanskrit and regional languages. The 14th- and 18th-century Indian poets such as Vidyapati, Kabir and Eknath used the phrase Hindu dharma (Hinduism) and contrasted it with Turaka dharma (Islam). The Christian friar Sebastiao Manrique used the term 'Hindu' in religious context in 1649. In the 18th-century, the European merchants and colonists began to refer to the followers of Indian religions collectively as Hindus, in contrast to Mohamedans for Mughals and Arabs following Islam. By mid 19th-century, colonial orientalist texts further distinguished Hindus from Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, but the colonial laws continued to consider all of them to be within the scope of the term Hindu until about mid 20th-century. Scholars state that the custom of distinguishing between Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs is a modern phenomenon.

At more than 1.03 billion, Hindus are the world's third largest group after Christians and Muslims. The vast majority of Hindus, approximately 966 million, live in India, according to India's 2011 census. After India, the next 9 countries with the largest Hindu populations are, in decreasing order: Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United States, Malaysia, United Kingdom and Myanmar. These together accounted for 99% of the world's Hindu population, and the remaining nations of the world together had about 6 million Hindus in 2010.

Hindu (disambiguation)

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent.

Hindu may also refer to:

  • An adherent of Hinduism
  • An adherent of any Indian religion
  • A person with ethnic roots in the Indian subcontinent
  • Historically, Epic India or a person or attribute thereof
  • Inhabitant of Hindustan (Hindustan being a colloquial term for India, literally "the land of the Indus")
  • Persian name for the Indus River, from Sanskrit Sindhu
  • The Hindu, an Indian English language newspaper
  • The Hindu Kush, the main mountain range in Afghanistan
  • In Canadian English, a term for Indo-Canadians
Places
  • Hindu, Hiiu County, village in Emmaste Parish, Hiiu County, Estonia
  • Hindu, Orissaare Parish, village in Orissaare Parish, Saare County, Estonia
  • Hindu, Salme Parish, village in Salme Parish, Saare County, Estonia
  • Hindu, California, the former settlement in California, US

Usage examples of "hindu".

Mahommed Babar actually said, and swore to it in the name of the Most High, that in Delhi and such-like ancient places even in Ahmedabad and Lucknow--Moslems and Hindus had fraternized and sunk old grievances in the hope of combining to clear India of foreigners from end to end.

The Hindu kingdom of Menjapahit was destroyed by the Mahommedans in 1478, and Brunei is mentioned in the history of Java as one of the countries conquered by Adaya Mingrat, the general of Angka Wijaya.

Muslim owner of a bidi shop had spread the word all along Sophia Zuber Road that a blond American movie star, naked to her waist, had licked a cow and thereby caused widespread rioting among the sensitive Hindu population.

In its ground germs it was, it seems to us, unquestionably imported into Celtic thought and Cymrian song from that prolific and immemorial Hindu mind which bore Brahmanism and Buddhism as its fruit.

Later, with the Hindu shift toward pacifism and nonviolence, the brahmin, or priestly caste, became predominant, with kshatriyas shifting into the second-highest position from around the fifth century A.

There was not even a garrison to defend Calicut, and one had to be improvised when the first horde of wounded and panic-stricken Hindus came stampeding for protection.

Gate were little enclaves of Druses, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Confucianists, Taoists, Shintoists, Hindus, Pantheists, Gnostics, Orphics, Metempsychosans, Dualists, Unitarians.

Then came the servants, observing precedence--butler, hamal, dog-boy, dhobie, sweeper, three gardeners--all salaaming with both hands, and Mahommed Babar standing straight as a ramrod over to the right because he was of the North and a Moslem, and would not submit to comparison with Hindus.

As if to celebrate their happiness, Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light, was being observed by the minority Hindu population of the State of Kashmir, when they arrived.

Not as the Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and all the mixers and appeasers and ecumenicists conceive it.

No work in Europe, not Homer in Greece or Virgil in Italy, not Shakespeare or Milton in English-speaking lands, is the national property of the nations to the same extent as the Epics of India are of the Hindus.

These examples may serve as a small specimen of the infernal ingenuity displayed in the descriptions of the Hindu hells, which are all of one substantial pattern, however varied in the embroidery.

In the course of time it would go down into legend and tradition, as the thing which the Hindu theologians call Jataka, and I felt a sort of kinship, of comradeship, with that many-armed, grinning old idol of Shiva Natarajah.

We produce nothing comparable to the great Oriental carpets, Persian glass, tiles, and illuminated books, Arabian leatherwork, Spanish marquetry, Hindu textiles, Chinese porcelain and embroidery, Japanese lacquer and brocade, French tapestries, or Inca jewelry.

Hindu butler inform him that the memsahib was not in, but due to return at any moment.