Hindustan

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This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.

Hindustan

A vaguely-defined area, sometimes applied to the whole of India north of the Vindhyas, in contradistinction to the Deccan {Dakshiu, 'south'), which lies south of them. Hindustan, in this sense, is bounded on the north by the Himalayas, on the east by Assam, on the south by the Vindhyas, and on the west extends into the Punjab and Rajputana. It accordingly comprises the administra- tive tracts forming the Lieutenant-Governorships of Bengal and the United Provinces, together with the eastern portions of the Punjab and Rajputana, and most of Eastern Bengal and Assam. In Muham- madan histories the term is used for a smaller area, comprising the east of the Punjab and Rajputana and the greater part of the United Provinces. Thus Abul Fazl treated the province of Lahore as outside of Hindustan. During the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries the term Hindustan was loosely employed by geographers to include the whole of India. The name means the 'place of the Hindus'; and it has been applied to the lingua franca of Northern India, called Hindustani or Urdu, which is a dialect of Western Hindi, with a greater or less admixture of Arabic and I'ersian vocables, according to the taste of the speaker.