In Origin, Hindu was simply the Old Persian name of the Indus River, cognate with Sanskrit Sindhu.

The Persian term was loaned into Arabic as al-Hind referring t o the land of the people who live across river Indus, and into Greek as Indos, w hence ultimately English India.[4] Hindustan or "land of the Indus" was the Pers ian name of "India", as in Greco-Roman tradition at first for northwestern India (the Indus basin) and later extended to the entire Indian subcontinent, followi ng the spread of Islam to India via Persia, Hindustan was also adopted, from the 13th century, in India itself,[5] and also came to be loaned into Sanskrit, e.g . found in Brihaspati Agama, where it is etymologized as a portmanteau of Hi for "Himalayas" plus indu for indu sarovar "southern ocean". [6][7] Persian Hindu (and hence in Urdu, and ultimately adopted into Hindustani in gene ral) was used of the native, non-Muslim population ruled by the Muslim Mughal Em pire. Natively, the term Hindu occurs sporadically in some 16th-18th century Ben gali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts, including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bha gavata, usually to contrast Hindus with Yavanas or Mlecchas.[8] It appears in So uth Indian and Kashmiri texts from at least 1323 CE,[9] and increasingly so duri ng British rule. It was only towards the end of the 18th century that the Europe an merchants and colonists referred collectively to the followers of Indian reli gions as Hindus. Eventually, it came to define religious adherence to "native religion" as oppose d to either Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism. Later the definition of Hindu ism was further narrowed to exclude "non-Vedic" (non-Vedantic) Indian religions (such as Jainism, Sikhism or Buddhism). This process continued well into the 20t h century, with the question of whether Jainism is to be considered a denominati on Hinduism put before the Supreme Court of India in 2003, and since that date l egally considered a distinct religion, see legal status of Jainism as a distinct religion in India. The English term Hinduism for the "religion of the Hindus" t aken as a whole arose in c. 1830. The Indo-Aryan form of the term, 'Sindhu', is also used in Hinduism (apart from its literal meaning "river, Indus River", as an honorific; e.g. Bhakti-Rsamrta-S indhu, Nirnaya Sindhu, Dharma Sindhu, and Sindhu Jnana.