Ἰνδός

Forms

Ἰνδός (Indós) m (genitive Ἰνδοῦ); second declension^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Persian hiⁿdūš, the name of the Indus and its land in the Old Persian inscriptions,^[1][2] from Proto-Iranian *hínduš, from Proto-Indo-Iranian *síndʰuš (“river”), of uncertain origin.^[1] The Persian form, with Iranian /h/ for /s/, was taken over without the /h/, as in Ionic.^[2]

The Indian form itself is Sanskrit सिन्धु (síndhu, “river, stream”), which reached Greek separately as Σίνθος (Sínthos), the name of the river in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.^[1][2] From the river name the Greeks formed Ἰνδική (Indikḗ) for the country.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Aeschylus has the Indians in the Suppliants, and Herodotus uses the word both for the Indians and for the river.^[3][4][5] According to Smith, Hecataeus of Miletus was the first to mention the river.^[6]

Semantic evolution

India became known in Greece in the late 6th century BC through Scylax, who explored the Indus for Darius, and Herodotus mentions his voyage when he names the river.^[2] Herodotus and Ctesias relied on Persian information, while Scylax and later Alexander the Great explored the lower course of the river.^[2]

In the Hellenistic period the word was used especially of the Indian drivers of war elephants, as in Phylarchus and Polybius, and Hesychius glosses it as a man who leads an elephant, citing 1 Maccabees.^[3][7] As an adjective it meant “Indian” in later epigrams, and the feminine named a medical plaster.^[3] It also named a fallacy in Plutarch.^[3]

The word was borrowed into Coptic, with a first record in AD 375,^[8] and into Latin Indus.^[1][2] Medieval vernacular Greek kept it for an inhabitant of India, and it is still used in Modern Greek as Ινδός (Indós).^[9][1]

Timeline

• 6th–5th century BC – Aeschylus names the Indians in the Suppliants.^[3][4]
• 5th century BC – Herodotus uses the word for the Indians and for the river Indus.^[3][5]
• 3rd century BC – Phylarchus uses it of the drivers of elephants.^[3]
• 2nd century BC – Polybius uses it of the drivers of the Carthaginian elephants.^[3]
• 1st–2nd century AD – Plutarch records it as the name of a fallacy.^[3]
• AD 375 – A Coptic manuscript has the first record of the borrowed word.^[8]
• 4th century AD – Oribasius uses the feminine for a kind of plaster.^[3]
• 1100–1669 – Vernacular texts use it for an inhabitant of India.^[9]

Meanings

Proper noun

1. The Indus, the great river of north-western India.^[3][10]
2. (mythology) Indos, the man who gave his name to the river, or the ancestor of the Indians.^[4]

Noun

1. An Indian, usually in the plural, the Indians.^[3][4]
2. An Indian elephant driver, a mahout.^[3][7]
3. The name of a fallacy.^[3]

Adjective

1. Of India, the same as Ἰνδικός (Indikós).^[3][4]

Word family

• Ἰνδική (Indikḗ)
• Ἰνδικός (Indikós)
• Ἰνδία (Indía)

Related words

• Σίνθος (Sínthos)
• Latin Indus
• Sanskrit सिन्धु (síndhu)

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Cancik, Hubert; Schneider, Helmuth, eds. (2002–2010), Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, Leiden: Brill
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart (1940), A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e Bailly, Anatole (2020), Dictionnaire grec-français, Bailly 2020 Hugo Chávez ed., ed. Gérard Gréco et al.
5. ^ a b Keersmaekers, Alek (2021–2025), GLAUx: The Greek Language Automated corpus, https://github.com/alekkeersmaekers/glaux
6. ^ Smith, William, ed. (1854), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, London: Walton and Maberly
7. ^ a b Hesychius of Alexandria, Lexicon, ed. Kurt Latte (Α–Ο, Copenhagen 1953–1966) and Moritz Schmidt (Π–Ω, Jena 1858–1868)
8. ^ a b Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC), Freie Universität Berlin and Universität Leipzig
9. ^ a b Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
10. ^ Diggle, James, et al., eds. (2021), The Cambridge Greek Lexicon, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press