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Greater India was the historical extent of Indian culture beyond the Indian subcontinent. This particularly concerns the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism from India to Southeast Asia, Central Asia and China by the Silk Road during the early centuries of the Common Era, and the spread of the Indian writing systems like the Pallava script of the south Indian Pallava dynasty to Southeast Asia〔Languages and Cultures: Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polomé by Mohammad Ali Jazayery,Edgar C. Polomé,Werner Winter p.742〕〔The World's Writing Systems by Peter T. Daniels p.446〕 and Siddhaṃ script to East Asia through Gupta Empire.〔Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, page 1215, col. 1 http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/〕 by the travellers and maritime traders of the 5th to 15th centuries. It also describes the establishment of Indianised Kingdoms in Southeast Asia and the spread of the Indian script, architecture and administration.〔Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia, from Angkor Wat to East Timor, by Keat Gin Ooi p.642〕〔Hindu-Buddhist Architecture in Southeast Asia by Daigorō Chihara p.226〕 To the west, Greater India overlaps with Greater Persia in the Hindu Kush and Pamir Mountains. The term is tied to the geographic uncertainties surrounding the "Indies" during the Age of Exploration. ==Definition and nomenclature== In medieval Europe the concept of "three Indias" was in common circulation. ''Greater India'' was the southern part of South Asia, ''Lesser India'' was the northern part of South Asia, and ''Middle India'' was the region near Middle East.〔By J. R. S. Phillips, ''The Medieval Expansion of Europe'', page 192, Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 9780520207424〕 The name ''Greater India'' ((ポルトガル語:India Maior)〔()〕〔 〔Martin W. Lewis and Kären Wigen, ''The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography'', page 269, University of California Press, 1997, ISBN 9780520207424〕 〔(Terras de Além: no Relato da Viagem de Vasco da Gama )〕〔) was used at least from the mid-15th century. The term, which seems to have been used with variable precision,〔 Quote: "Azurara's hyperbole, indeed, which celebrates the Navigator Prince as joining Orient and Occident by continual voyaging, as transporting to the extremities of the East the creations of Western industry, does not scruple to picture the people of the ''Greater and the Lesser India'' welcoming his ships (which never passed beyond Sierra Leone), praising his generosity, and even experiencing his hospitality."〕 sometimes meant only the Indian subcontinent;〔 Quote: "Among all the confusion of the various Indies in Mediaeval nomenclature, "Greater India" can usually be recognized as restricted to the "India proper" of the modern world."〕 Europeans used a variety of terms related to South Asia to designate the South Asian peninsula, including ''High India'', ''Greater India'', ''Exterior India'' and ''India aquosa''.〔Martin W. Lewis and Kären Wigen, ''The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography'', page 274, University of California Press, 1997, ISBN 9780520207424〕 However, in some accounts of European nautical voyages, Greater India (or ''India Major'') extended from the Malabar Coast (present-day Kerala) to ''India extra Gangem''〔 Quote: "From the time when Southeast Asia first rose above their horizon, Europeans—the infinitesimal number of them who cared about such matters, that is—tended to treat that vague and insubstantial region beneath the sunrise as simply a more distant part of India. This practice went back at least to Claudius Ptolemy or, possibly, one of his redactors, who subsumed a good part of the region under the rubric "Trans-Gangetic India." Subsequently the whole area came to be identified with one of the "Three Indies," though whether ''India Major'' or ''Minor, Greater'' or ''Lesser, Superior'' or ''Inferior'', seems often to have been a personal preference of the author concerned. When Europeans began to penetrate into Southeast Asia in earnest, they continued this tradition, attaching to various of the constituent territories such labels as Further India or Hinterindien, the East Indies, the Indian Archipelago, Insulinde, and, in acknowledgment of the presence of a competing culture, Indochina."〕 (lit. "India, beyond the Ganges," but usually the East Indies, i.e. present-day Malay Archipelago) and ''India Minor'', from Malabar to Sind. ''Farther India'' was sometimes used to cover all of modern Southeast Asia and sometimes only the mainland portion.〔 In late 19th-century geography "Greater India" referred to Hindustan (Northwestern Subcontinent) which included the Punjab, the Himalayas, and extended eastwards to Indochina (including Burma), parts of Indonesia (namely, the Sunda Islands, Borneo and Celebes), and the Philippines."〔"Review: New Maps," (1912) ''Bulletin of the American Geographical Society'' 44(3): 235–240.〕 German atlases sometimes distinguished ''Vorder-Indien'' (Anterior India) as the South Asian peninsula and ''Hinter-Indien'' as Southeast Asia.〔 In plate tectonic models of the India–Asia collision, "Greater India" signifies "the Indian sub-continent plus a postulated northern extension". Although its usage in geology pre-dates plate tectonic theory,〔Argand, E., 1924. La tectonique de l' Asie. Proc. 13th Int. Geol. Cong. 7 (1924), 171–372.〕 the term has seen increased usage since the 1970s. 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「Greater India」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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