NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 5 How Indians Named India — THINK ABOUT IT
Book page 80 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
Have you identified the ‘snowy mountains’?
Answer
Yes — the ‘snowy mountains’ are the Himalayas.
Sanskrit verse: uttaram yat samudrasya himādreśchaiva dakṣiṇam … hima = snow + adri = mountain → himādri = the snow mountain hima + ālaya (= home, abode) → Himālaya = “the home of snow”
How you can check it on the map. Turn back to Fig. 5.2 on page 76. The long white-and-brown arc across the top is labelled H I M A L A Y A S, and it is snow-capped along its whole length — the only mountain wall in the Subcontinent that is permanently under snow. To its west the map labels the Hindu Kush, which is the western continuation of the same great mountain belt.
The same mountains, three more times in this chapter:
The Tamil poem on page 80 calls them “the great mountain in the north”.
Sri Aurobindo's quotation at the start of the chapter says “between the Himalayas and the two seas”.
Fig. 5.2 labels them in capitals right across the top of the map.
Three different sources — a Sanskrit purāṇa, a Tamil poem and a modern map — all pick the same northern wall.
Q2.
Do you think this brief description of Bhārata is correct?
Answer
Yes — it is remarkably correct for a description written so long ago, but it is a shorthand, not a complete definition. A good answer says both halves.
Where it is right
It picks the two boundaries that really matter: the mountain wall in the north and the sea everywhere else. Both are visible on Fig. 5.2 exactly as described.
It defines the land by nature, not by any king or kingdom — so the definition does not go out of date every time a ruler changes. That is why it still works today.
Other parts of India arrived at the same definition independently. The Tamil poem, from about 2,000 years ago and from the far south, uses the same four edges: Cape Kumari in the south, the great mountain in the north, the oceans on the east and on the west.
Where it is incomplete
What the verse leaves out
What Fig. 5.2 shows
It says “the ocean”, as if there were one
There are three named waters — the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean
It gives no east or west limit at all
The Tamil poem does supply them — “the oceans on the east and on the west”
It does not mention the north-west
The Hindu Kush and the passes through it are the one land gateway — the very route the Persians used in the 6th century BCE
It describes a landmass, not a country
Modern political borders cut across it: today the same land holds India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and more
Why the verse is still worth admiring: whoever composed it had no aeroplane, no satellite and no printed map — yet fixed the shape of the Subcontinent in eleven Sanskrit words. It could only have been written by people who had travelled, traded and talked to one another right across this land. As the chapter puts it after the Tamil example, “It looks like ancient Indians knew their geography well!”
Try this: write your own one-line definition of India using only natural features, then compare it with the verse. Most students end up writing something very close to it — which is the best proof that the ancient definition was a good one.