Sindh

Sindh begets its name from the river ‘ Sindhu’, which is primarily the original name of the river 'Indus’(Greek Sinthos, Latin Sindhus). Over the centuries it has been subjected to considerable name deviation, which are phonetic variations of root word "Sindhu". Linguistically, there have been various theories put forward accounting for the oscillatory behaviour of this name.

Sindh, the southern province of Pakistan, lies in the north western corner of the Indo-Pak Sub-Continent. It is bounded on the north by Punjab, on the east by Rajputana (India), on the south by Runn of Kuchh and Arabian Sea and on the west by Baluchistan. It covers 140914 sq. kilometers of the total area of Pakistan.

The early political history of Sindh is shrouded in mystery and mostly remains unknown. The excavation of Mohen jo Daro brought to light the existence of a highly developed urban culture in Sindh (2500-200 BC).The discovery of highly urbanized and developed Civilization brought the ancient Indus Civilization parallel to the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and the Chinese civilizations.
It is said that the Aryans were settled in a vast region of sixteen lands in the Avestan period. In addition to their patronymic and tribal names, they must have had a way to designate each other collectively by the names of their respective lands. There were some thirty names of sixteen Aryan provinces. Among them, we have Hindu ( Sindhu) and its adjective Hinduya ( Sindhi). This is the first time on record that the name ‘Sindhi’ was employed to designate the people of the valley. (Jafaery, 1981). From this we can conclude that, it was the time when this adjective of Sindhi was also employed for the language spoken in this area.

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