Jambudvīpa
Sanskrit endonym of the Indian subcontinent / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about philosophical region in Indians religions. For other uses, see Jambudvipa (disambiguation).
Jambudvīpa (Sanskrit; Jambudīpa) is a name often used to describe the territory of Greater India in ancient Indian sources.
This article possibly contains original research. (February 2011) |
The term is based on the concept of dvīpa, meaning "island" or "continent" in ancient Indian cosmogony. The term Jambudvipa was used by Ashoka to represent his realm in the third century BCE. The same terminology was used in subsequent texts, for instance Kannada inscriptions from the tenth century CE which also described the region, presumably Ancient India, as Jambudvipa.[3]
The word Jambudvīpa literally refers to "the land of jambu trees", where jambu is Sanskrit for Syzygium cumini.