Indian Empire

Indian Empire and its linguistic variations have been historically attributed to the Mauryan Empire, the Mughal Empire and the British Indian Empire.^{[note 1]}

The Greeks applied to the Mauryan Empire and its emperors as the King of the Indians^[1] or the King of India.^[2] It is not clear whether this was used in general geographical or political context.

The Mauryans themselves used the title Chakarvarti, meaning an emperor which rules all lands of the Indian Subcontinent. In one of the edicts of King Ashoka (which is now lost), he mentions his realm as Jambudvipa, an ancient term for the Indian subcontinent.^[3]

Western scholars from the period of the British Raj apply the term First Indian Empire to the Mauryan Empire.^[4][5]

Ibn Battuta called the empire under Muhammad bin Tughlaq as Hind and Sind. The Delhi Sultanate was also known as the Empire of Hindustan (Persian: Mamalik-i-Hindustan), a name that gained currency during the period.^[6]

With the Age of discovery and rise of Mughal Empire during the 16th and 17th century, various western maps used the terms Hindoostan, Indostan and in some rare cases India to describe the territories of the Mughal Empire, although the common term used to describe the empire still remained as Mogul.^[7]

Mughal administrative records also refer to the empire as dominion of Hindustan,^[8] Country of Hind, Sultanate of Al-Hind as observed in the epithet of Emperor Aurangzeb,^[9] all of these being other names of India.

The region under British control was commonly called India and officially the Indian Empire.^[10]

Various historical maps attributing Indian Empire or India and its linguistic variations to a political entity.

• Emperor of India
• Territorial Evolution of India

1. ↑ McCrindle, John Watson (1816). The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great. Today & Tomorrow's Printers & Publishers.
2. ↑ McCrindle, John Watson (1816). The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great. Today & Tomorrow's Printers & Publishers.
3. ↑ Annual Report Of Mysore 1886 To 1903.
4. ↑ Hoernle, August Friedrich Rudolf; Stark, Herbert Alick (1906). A History of India. Orissa mission Press.
5. ↑ The Cyclopedia of India: Biographical, Historical, Administrative, Commercial. Cyclopedia Publishing Company. 1907.
6. ↑ Jackson 2003, p. 86. sfn error: no target: CITEREFJackson2003 (help)
7. ↑ "India Proper or the Empire of the Mogul". www.davidrumsey.com. Retrieved 2025-03-01.
8. ↑ Hardy, P. (1979). "Modern European and Muslim Explanations of Conversion to Islam in South Asia: A Preliminary Survey of the Literature". In Levtzion, Nehemia (ed.). Conversion to Islam. Holmes & Meier. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-8419-0343-2. Archived from the original on 3 April 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
9. ↑ "Name of the Monument/ site: Tomb of Aurangzeb" (PDF). asiaurangabad.in. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015.
10. ↑ Bowen, H. V.; Mancke, Elizabeth; Reid, John G. (2012-05-31). Britain's Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, C.1550-1850. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-02014-6.