In this thread, I will discuss the division of earth into continents, and how the term “Jambūdwīpa” जम्बूद्वीप, perhaps attested the most number of times in world literature as a continent, lost out to the bastard time “South Asia”.

India must reclaim the term “Jambūdwīpa”.

The word “Jambūdwīpa” is attested not just in India, but in the whole Asian literature. This is how Asian civilizations like India, China, Japan etc. have seen the world, as a sacred geography centered on the Mēru mountain (Sumēru). These ideas spread through Buddhism.

The division of the geography is remarkably similar across a *vast* trove of Hindu and Buddhist literature. What’s more: this geography is attested repeatedly by direct physical observation of travelers on the Buddhist pilgrimage circuit, most notably Xuan Zhang (Hiuen Tsang).

Due to thriving and well connected trade routes, as well as mastery in astronomical observations and calculus, Asian civilizations had been *far ahead* of Europe in the field of geography. But simplistic European (Greek) divisions of geography are being imposed to this day.

This doesn’t make any sense. “Asia” is a gigantic geographical mass. That mass of Asia is absurdly and quixotically cut from Europe, whose divisions are entirely based on “convention” (that is no geological or geographical sense). See the random borders between Eurasia.