Jambudvīpa

The term is based on the concept of dvīpa, meaning "island" or "continent" in ancient Indian cosmogony.

[3] The same terminology was used in subsequent texts, for instance Kannada inscriptions from the tenth century CE which also described the region, presumably Ancient India, as Jambudvipa.

It covers whole Asia and has an area of 44,579,000 km2[citation needed] According to Puranic cosmography, the world is divided into seven concentric island continents (sapta-dvipa vasumati) separated by the seven encircling oceans, each double the size of the preceding one (going out from within).

[5][6] Seven intermediate oceans consist of salt-water, sugarcane juice, wine, ghee, yogurt, milk and water respectively.

[7][8] The mountain range called Lokaloka, meaning "world-no-world", stretches across this final sea, delineating the known world from the dark void.

Akasha Ganga is said to issue forth from the foot of Vishnu and after washing the lunar region falls "through the skies" and after encircling the Brahmapuri "splits up into four mighty streams", which are said to flow in four opposite directions from the landscape of Mount Meru and irrigate the vast lands of Jambudvipa.

Another reference is from the Buddhist text, the Mahāvaṃsa, where the emperor Ashoka's son Mahinda, after becoming a Bhikku, introduces himself to King Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura (Anuradhapura being the then capital city of the independent island found at the tip of India, now known as Sri Lanka) as from Jambudvipa, referring to what is now the Indian subcontinent.

According to Jain cosmology, Jambūdvīpa is at the centre of Madhyaloka, or the middle part of the universe, where the humans reside.

Jambūdvīpaprajñapti or the treatise on the island of Roseapple tree contains a description of Jambūdvīpa and life biographies of Ṛṣabha and King Bharata.

'’ Another, at Kubatur, expressly states that Chandra Gupta ruled the Naga-khanda in the south of the Bharata-kshetra of Jambu dvipa : this is the Nagara-khanda Seventy of so many inscriptions, of which Bandanikke (Bandalike in Shimoga) seems to have been the chief town.