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Hindu () has historically been used as a geographical, cultural or religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent.〔〔http://www.freedictionary.com/Hinduism〕 In contemporary use, Hindu refers to anyone who regards himself or herself as culturally, ethnically or religiously adhering with aspects of Hinduism.〔Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, ISBN 978-1845112738, pages 35-37〕 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 river.〔John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Narayanan (2006), The Life of Hinduism, University of California Press, ISBN 978-0520249141, pages 10-11〕 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,〔(Hindu Population projections ) Pew Research (2015), Washington DC〕 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.〔Rukmini S Vijaita Singh (Muslim population growth slows ) The Hindu, August 25, 2015; 79.8% of more than 121 crore Indians (as per 2011 census) are Hindus〕 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.〔(10 Countries With the Largest Hindu Populations, 2010 and 2050 ) Pew Research Center (2015), Washington DC〕 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.〔 ==Etymology== The word ''Hindu'' is derived from the Indo-Aryan and Sanskrit Sanskrit word ''Sindhu'', which means "a large body of water", covering "river, ocean". It was used as the name of the Indus river and also referred to its tributaries. The actual term '' first occurs, states Gavin Flood, as "a Persian geographical term for the people who lived beyond the river Indus (Sanskrit: ''Sindhu'')", more specifically in the 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I.〔 The Punjab region, called Sapta Sindhava in the Vedas, is called ''Hapta Hindu'' in Zend Avesta. The 6th-century BCE inscription of Darius I mentions the province of ''Hi()dush'', referring to northwestern India.〔 〕 The people of India were referred to as ''Hinduvān'' (Hindus) and ''hindavī'' was used as the adjective for Indian in the 8th century text ''Chachnama''. The term 'Hindu' in these ancient records is an ethno-geographical term and did not refer to a religion. The Arabic equivalent ''Al-Hind'' likewise referred to the country of India.〔 Among the earliest known records of 'Hindu' with connotations of religion may be in the 7th-century CE Chinese text ''Record of the Western Regions'' by the Buddhist scholar Xuanzang. Xuanzang uses the transliterated term ''In-tu'' whose "connotation overflows in the religious" according to Arvind Sharma.〔 While Xuanzang suggested that the term refers to the country named after the moon, another Buddhist scholar I-tsing contradicted the conclusion saying that ''In-tu'' was not a common name for the country. Al-Biruni's 11th-century text ''Tarikh Al-Hind'', and the texts of the Delhi Sultanate period use the term 'Hindu', where it includes all non-Islamic people such as Buddhists, and retains the ambiguity of being "a region or a religion".〔 The 'Hindu' community occurs as the amorphous 'Other' of the Muslim community in the court chronicles, according to Romila Thapar. Wilfred Cantwell Smith notes that 'Hindu' retained its geographical reference initially: 'Indian', 'indigenous, local', virtually 'native'. Slowly, the Indian groups themselves started using the term, differentiating themselves and their "traditional ways" from those of the invaders. The text ''Prithviraj Raso'', by Chanda Baradai, about the 1192 CE defeat of Prithviraj Chauhan at the hands of Muhammad Ghori, is full of references to "Hindus" and "Turks", and at one stage, says "both the religions have drawn their curved swords;" however, the date of this text is unclear and considered by most scholars to be more recent. In Islamic literature, 'Abd al-Malik Isami's Persian work, ''Futuhu's-salatin'', composed in the Deccan in 1350, uses the word '' to mean Indian in the ethno-geographical sense and the word ' '' to mean 'Hindu' in the sense of a follower of the Hindu religion". The poet Vidyapati's poem ''Kirtilata'' contrasts the cultures of Hindus and Turks (Muslims) in a city and concludes "The Hindus and the Turks live close together; Each makes fun of the other's religion (''dhamme'')." One of the earliest uses of word 'Hindu' in religious context in a European language (Spanish), was the publication in 1649 by Sebastiao Manrique. Other prominent mentions of 'Hindu' include the epigraphical inscriptions from Andhra Pradesh kingdoms who battled military expansion of Muslim dynasties in 14th century, where the word 'Hindu' partly implies a religious identity in contrast to 'Turks' or Islamic religious identity. The term ''Hindu'' was later used occasionally in some Sanskrit texts such as the later Rajataranginis of Kashmir (Hinduka, c. 1450) and some 16th- to 18th-century Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts including ''Chaitanya Charitamrita'' and ''Chaitanya Bhagavata''. These texts used it to contrast Hindus from Muslims who are called Yavanas (foreigners) or Mlecchas (barbarians), with the 16th-century ''Chaitanya Charitamrita'' text and the 17th century ''Bhakta Mala'' text using the phrase "Hindu dharma". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hindu」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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